About thirty people across eight teams, working on the same bets. Each team has a clear scope, a small headcount, and the autonomy to ship. Most teams sit between four and eight people.
Most venture studios look great on a portfolio page and quietly fall apart at the supplier conversation. We built the team structure around the part that usually breaks. Sourcing and Manufacturing runs as a standalone function, not as a sub-team under Operations — it has its own mandate, its own QA process, and a direct line to the studio's senior leadership.
Engineering, Product, Quant, and the others all work in a more traditional matrix against active ventures. Each venture has a dedicated lead from Product and Engineering, with shared services from Sourcing, Operations, and Strategy.
The founding partner and operating leadership. Sets studio thesis, allocates capital across ventures, owns external relationships with investors and partners.
Sources new venture opportunities. Tracks the external founder pipeline, runs first conversations, and prepares investment memos for the studio's weekly deal review.
Owns due diligence on co-built ventures and external co-investments. Manages the studio's capital allocation across tranches and prepares quarterly portfolio reviews.
Supplier identification, vetting, contracting, and ongoing QA. Maintains relationships across Greater China, runs the studio's supplier scorecard, and handles inbound + outbound freight.
Design, UX, and product management across active ventures. Each venture has a dedicated PM who runs the product roadmap and bridges between Engineering and the venture's user research.
Software, AI/ML, and hardware integration. Most engineers rotate across two or three ventures at a time. The team owns the studio's shared infrastructure — model serving, data pipelines, deployment.
Systematic strategies and market microstructure research. Supports the studio's Algo Trading sector and runs Lumen as a flagship internal venture. Also builds infrastructure for the broader portfolio where applicable.
Legal entities, finance, hiring, and external partnerships. The team that takes the operations off the founder's plate in a Founder Studio engagement. Also runs the studio's partnerships with co-investors and academic groups.
Each active venture has a dedicated team lead from Product and Engineering. They pull in Sourcing for any physical product work, Quant where applicable, and Operations for the back-office functions. Strategy & Research provides market intelligence on a project basis.
Every venture runs a 30-minute weekly standup with the dedicated Product, Engineering, and (where relevant) Sourcing leads.
The full studio meets for 90 minutes on Mondays to review the deal pipeline and the state of active ventures.
Venture leads present against their OKRs. Capital tranches are released against milestone delivery. No-go decisions are made here.
The studio steps back from execution for two days to revisit sector theses, kill ideas that aren't working, and originate the next batch.
We're a small team and we hire slowly. Most of our best people came through referrals or through working with us on a venture before joining full-time. If you've shipped something in one of our sectors and are curious about the studio model, send a note.
We hire across all eight teams. Current demand is highest in Sourcing (manufacturing-side), Engineering (AI/ML and embedded), and Quant Research.
Send a note →We respond to every inbound within five working days, even if the answer is no.