Venture design

Venture design is one of six foundational skills/services I leverage in my work in investment analysis. I also do venture design projects stand-alone or bundled with other services:

• Opportunity recognition
• Venture design (this service)
• Team building
• Customer development
• Product development
• Product growth

Venture design is a process that uses strategy, analysis and financial modeling as generative design tools to turn an opportunity into a long-term big business.

Another way to think of venture design is as a map of the idea maze for an opportunity that shows a new path and explains why this path will succeed when other paths have failed.

The work product is a fundable seed stage deck.

Woven into a compelling, mission-driven narrative, this seed stage deck answers the following questions for the new venture:

What's the problem?

What's the solution?

Who's the customer?

How will the solution be sold?

How many customers will buy it?

How much will it cost to design and build?

What's the sales price?

Who is the competition?

When will it break even?

This said, it's important to note that the answers to these questions are credible, testable hypotheses and not necessarily facts. The customer development and product development stages are where these hypotheses are rapidly tested, revised and iterated on until they are true.

What is my experience in venture design?

I created the first group text messaging service and founded a company named 3jam to will it into the world. As 3jam's CEO, I used the venture design process to raise Series A and Series B funding from New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and Norwest Venture Partners, two of Silicon Valley's top venture funds. I grew the product to millions of users and the business was sold to Skype.

I have used the venture design process to conceive and fund many other businesses. Being an active early stage investor in more than 30 businesses, I also have the benefits of "both sides of the table" and am exposed to a constant stream of new ideas and best practices in venture creation and investment.

If you'd like to know more about how I can help your organization, please send me a message. I would love to talk.