
Startup Studios – are they a thing? - choosenick
http://writing.makeshift.io/pieces/startup-studios-are-they-a-thing
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EC1
I quit my job a month ago. Started a startup studio with a few buddies
(business, sales, marketing, artists, developers, designers, product
engineers). In our first month we made 50k~ish. We have a vodka brand we did
videography for, a few startups we did product design for, UX, mobile apps,
websites, everything.

Also allows us to exponentially build our portfolio and spend capital on
expanding rapidly into new areas.

After the first few startups you start to get a sense of what your internal
process looks like, this allowed us to ship products faster and charge more
too.

This all started when I was working on a mobile app startup (single app) with
my buddy and looked at him and asked "what if we sold shovels in the gold rush
instead of competing in it?"

Best decision we ever made.

I should probably write a blog post.

~~~
choosenick
Sounds interesting. I'd read it. At my company Makeshift we had a similar idea
(the shovels) - hence our strapline 'we make tools for startups'

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usumoio
This is getting ridiculous. We're having full on conversations about what to
name our already buzzword saturated offices. This studio is doing the same
thing I've seen incubators do which is the same thing smart companies have
always done. Provide good places for people to work hard.

It will never matter what you call the office as the terms are arbitrary. Find
a place to work and then just work hard. Call it the immaculate teakettle
house if you like, just make money while you do it. What is in a name, an
office by any other name is still where I code.

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AVTizzle
Hmmm... I've never heard the term "startup studio" before, and this post
didn't really define it before diving into the nuances of it.

(i.e. I feel like I started reading about horsepower and power-to-weight ratio
before being told I was reading about a car.)

... Does anyone else know what a "startup studio" is?

~~~
ulisesrmzroche
Looks like they want to take the concept of a movie studio maybe. There are
some similarities, I think, between the two industries, mainly in that they
are both really about producing hits, but I dunno, it's also a bit of a
stretch. Once you're done with Post-Production, you're pretty much done.
Stories don't require much maintenance.

~~~
zrail
There's a lot that happens with the artifacts after post production but it's
not very glamorous. Initial distribution, licensing, merchandising,
negotiating rental and streaming windows (i.e. more distribution), disc
releases, special editions, etc etc.

Stuff like that for franchises like The Hobbit or the Twilight series can
easily last a decade. There was recently an article about how The Shawshank
Redemption is still being distributed and is still amassing residuals 20 years
down the line[1]. Operations don't stop after opening night.

[1]:
[http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230453610...](http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304536104579560021265554240)

~~~
ulisesrmzroche
Yeah, but you're talking about Operations, not Production. You don't just keep
adding new scenes to a film once it's done, or fix bugs. You make sequel if
people really want it that bad.

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lhnz
Well they are certainly a thing when you can point out examples of them aren't
they.

Perhaps this structure works best in cultures that have difficulty accepting
failure. Moving on to another project when one isn't working out is easier
than admitting defeat after the failure of a whole company. It's the same
obviously but psychologically it's easier for us.

Generally I have this sneaking intuition that the success of the multiple
project approach depends on the size of the market and the type of consumers.
It's fairly well accepted that it's harder to start rocket-ship type startups
in the UK than it is in the US. Perhaps we are better suited to this approach?

Either way, I like the idea and it seems to be the business version of what
more product-focused engineers do in their spare time. I am personally aiming
to create a project a year at this point and would like to make them additive
too if I can.

This, to me, is companies operating as people.

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CodeCube
The Melrose Center in Orlando has an interesting model. They provide tons of
infrastructure and space for all kinds of creative and technical work: video,
audio, electronics, 3d printing, along with workstations loaded with all kinds
of software:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxkyuXAzAIg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxkyuXAzAIg)

All for free for county residents :)
[http://tic.ocls.info/](http://tic.ocls.info/)

Also in Orlando - [http://starterstudio.com/](http://starterstudio.com/)

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sprobertson
I didn't know there was a term for it, but I've been running a "startup
studio" ([http://prontotype.us/](http://prontotype.us/)) for the last two
years. Our terms are a bit different - we take only take a minority share and
don't (currently) work on the marketing side of things, but the concept is the
same - building software for early-stage entrepreneurs to validate their idea
& market.

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sixQuarks
I consider IdeaLab [http://www.idealab.com](http://www.idealab.com) to be the
ultimate Startup Studio. Science ( [http://science-inc.com](http://science-
inc.com) ) also labels themselves a startup studio.

If your "studio" is doing design/development work for other companies, that
automatically disqualifies you as a startup studio (in my book)

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DarkTree
Sounds like a condensed version of Google

