The influence of differences between venture studios on differences in venture outcomes

Abstract

Venture studios present an intriguing proposition for entrepreneurship theory – a shift from venturing as an entrepreneur-driven activity to venturing as an “assembly line” serialization in an organization. We ask the question whether between-venture studio differences explain the differences in outcomes among the ventures they create. We hypothesize that venture studios explain meaningful variance in explaining venture outcomes. Our empirical study is based on a sample of 350 venture studios from 34 countries, 257 industries, and startup-founding years, ranging from 1994 to 2022. We focus on the sales, employees, and whether the venture was acquired or went IPO. Using variance decomposition analysis, we find that differences in venture studios explain most of the variance in differences in venture outcomes (~30%), with low teens to single-digit variances explained by studio-founding year, venture founding year, country, and industry effects. To our knowledge, this is the largest and most comprehensive empirical study of venture studios to date, and variance decomposition analysis presents an important first step to assessing whether the unique resources and the transaction cost benefits afforded by venture studios explain differences in performance between ventures.