TribalScale Venture Studios: We Are Looking for Great Co-Founders
By Roger Chabra
“We built this platform from the ground-up based on our entrepreneurial experience and corporate rolodexes. All great entrepreneurs should have access to this — we are flipping the model and unfairly stacking the deck in their favour,” said Sheetal Jaitly, CEO, TribalScale. “Venture Studios supercharges the best ideas, gets them captive customers early, and takes them global from day one.”
Last week, we announced the formal launch of TribalScale Venture Studios. We are leaning in BIG and announcing a $100 million target, 5-year program to create companies with entrepreneurs to help large corporates around the world innovate in new and impactful ways. TribalScale is proud to be the largest investor in the program.
First things first. Venture Studios is not a Venture Capital fund. We don’t have a typical fund structure with management fees etc. We are a platform & pool of capital that allows us to be founders and co-founders of disruptive startups side-by-side with entrepreneurs and Fortune 500 companies. We work side-by-side in the trenches with our entrepreneurs from early ideation through to scaling and exit.
TribalScale Venture Studios is looking to partner with entrepreneurs who have disruptive idea-stage or seed-stage ventures focused on the financial services or automotive industries leveraging technologies such as Voice, AI and Blockchain.
Successful applications will be provided with a target of $500,000 per company, with additional capital available from TribalScale’s network of co-investors. If you have an early-stage idea or company that fits the industries and technologies mentioned above, please reach out, we’d love to hear from you!
We are also really proud to have announced that 5% of the profits from Venture Studios will be donated to diversity and charity causes that we as a Tribe strongly believe in. Initially, our partners in this regard are #movethedial and the Upside Foundation. We hope that this commitment sets a precedent for other startup and venture organizations to donate their profits to similar causes.
Why Great Entrepreneurs Choose to Work With Us
TribalScale has built up a great reputation for creating and co-creating some of the world’s best digital products for enterprises within the above-mentioned industries. Our team has worked on over 400 digital products in the Voice, AI, Mobile, IoT, In-Vehicle and Web sectors. Many of the products that are used in mission-critical operations of Fortune 500 enterprises or that are on the “first screen” of consumer smartphones around the world, were conceived and built by our team. We are very proud of our work in building these products in partnership with the best companies.
Building these products gives us the ability to provide a platform that gives entrepreneurs an unfair advantage over their competitors. This platform is why great entrepreneurs choose to work with us:
Unmatched Corporate Insights
Corporations and their leaders trust TribalScale with their innovation roadmaps. Every day we work alongside key executives and teams at Fortune 1000 companies to help them deliver on their innovation strategies. We understand what is at the top of enterprises’ innovation agendas. We leverage this privileged position to help our entrepreneurs get to the right corporate partner at the right time.
Strong Network
Through our work with enterprises around the world, TribalScale has built up a stellar rolodex of connections. These set of connections are unmatched in the startup world. Traditional VCs and investors have contacts (and friends) at large corporations they call on for favours for the entrepreneurs they invest in. We, on the other hand, have long-standing, active interactions and dialogues with these corporations. In addition, our Venture Studio team is deeply connected to startups, VCs and service providers in the most important startup ecosystems in the world including Silicon Valley, NYC, Israel, London and the Toronto-Waterloo corridor. We leverage our connections wherever possible to help our entrepreneurs gain unfair advantages against their competitors.
Global Distribution Capabilities
TribalScale works with large enterprises around the world through its offices in Toronto, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, and Dubai. We are a worldwide platform leveraging TribalScale’s operations and network across the globe. Our entrepreneurs leverage our distribution network to increase the pace at which they scale, globally.
Value-Add Venture Capital Funding
In our Venture Studios model, we are not simply a “consultant” or “service provider” working on the corporate dime. We are a true partner with significant money and skin in the game. We have a vested interest and shared responsibility in the success of each and every one of our Studios. Entrepreneurs are provided with significant capital and resources to develop their ideas and follow-on funding to scale these ideas into companies.
Highly Experienced Venture & Delivery Teams
Our Venture Studios team is led by a unique mix of seasoned operators and investors — Sheetal Jaitly, Kirstine Stewart, Gbemi Akande and myself. Collectively, our team has invested in and/or sat on the boards of more than 50 startups, across multiple industries on four continents, and achieved numerous successful exits. Beyond our Venture Studio team, our entrepreneurs have dedicated access to our in-house product and development resources. Each industry vertical has a dedicated team that is made up of successful Entrepreneurs-in-Residence (“EIRs”), Executives-in-Residence (“XiRs”), product managers, UX designers and engineers who were hand-picked from TribalScale’s 130-person delivery team (growing to 200+ in 2018) and the greater global technology ecosystem. This team has “been there and done that” and are experts in helping entrepreneurs conceive, validate, build and scale disruptive digital ideas into successful companies.
We believe we have a value-add platform for entrepreneurs that is truly unique in the innovation ecosystem. If you’d like to join us on this journey we’d love to hear from you!
Roger Chabra has more than 20 years of venture capital, operating and entrepreneurial experience. He currently leads TribalScale’s venture creation platform as Chief Innovation Officer.
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