Why on earth should a founder take a venture studio deal in 2025?
In a market where late-stage VCs are throwing big money at pre-idea founders, why would entrepreneurs look to a venture studio?
If you're an ambitious AI founder in 2025, the options have never been more varied or more confusing.
As someone who has been building and investing in AI since 2016 (and an entrepreneur myself), I spend a lot of time speaking with founders who are looking for their next move. They’re typically repeat founders with industry domain expertise interested in founding an AI-native venture and looking for the right partner to help get them there.
Sometimes we discuss Merantix Capital’s “founder-in-residence” program, where a founder explores multiple AI business cases over four to eight weeks with us, spends the next 2-4 months on validation ( building commercial traction), and if we both build conviction, we invest €1M for 15% preferred shares and 10% common shares (institutional co-founder equity).
To be quite frank, with multi-stage VCs pouring capital into pre-seed stage and “pre-idea” companies, there is mounting pressure on the studio model that makes it seem outdated. The reality is more nuanced. For the right type of founder, the venture studio model is not only viable, but the smartest path.
Caveat: I am biased. At Merantix Capital, our venture studio is core to our identity, through which we’ve helped create more than 10 amazing companies like Cambrium, Deltia, Ovom Care, and Libra. We also make investments in companies that were founded outside of our studio approach (about 50% of our latest fund).
Take it from me, over 20 years as a founder and eight years as an investor, I’ve seen trends in the early-stage ecosystem come and go, but the really successful founders have always recognized that how you start matters just as much as what you start.
Current market dynamics are dizzying
The early-stage AI market today is flooded with capital. Major VCs (especially those with large growth or crossover funds) have aggressively moved downstream, writing large checks at the earliest stages of company formation. In many cases, they're backing operators or repeat founders without a concrete idea, betting that these individuals will figure it out.
Why? In part, it’s a hedge. Late-stage investing has become more challenging, but the excitement around AI has created a sense of urgency to secure early access to promising talent. The big funds can easily afford to write off early bets as the cost of staying in the game.
This capital abundance brings its own issues. With more money chasing a relatively static pool of talent, founders are under pressure to scale fast and meet unrealistic expectations, often before they’ve validated a problem, let alone a tangible product or GTM.
What do venture studios do differently?
This is where the venture studio model (and I would argue our venture studio!) stands apart. Instead of betting on potential, we are a partner in the core foundation of a successful venture: early validation, commercial traction, capital efficiency, and team quality.
It’s true, we write smaller checks than a mega-fund, and our founders may take slightly more dilution upfront. We won’t argue otherwise. But we offer something large funds can’t: deep support at the earliest stages from an AI ecosystem that includes corporate design partners, domain experts, and an in-house talent pipeline centered at our AI Campus in Berlin and the AI Hub in London.
Many of our portfolio companies have paying clients at or soon after incorporation—often secured through our ecosystem. Four of our last five studio startups, for example, reached €500K in revenue within the first six months. Three also went from pre-seed to seed in under 10 months.
That level of early traction simply isn’t possible without trust and access, two things the Merantix platform offers in spades.
Efficiency is the edge
Capital efficiency is more important than ever these days. Startups without early validation often overbuild. That means bigger teams and more burn just to get in front of customers. Our approach flips that script. With early access to design partners and strategic customers, our startups can iterate faster, avoid premature scaling, and stretch €1M in ways others need €3-5M.
Other investors might want a fully-formed team, but we’re comfortable starting with a strong founder and co-building the right team from there (including co-founder matching through our network). That flexibility means we can bring in the right people at the right time without overstaffing.
When we put out a call for specific profiles on these teams, we receive hundreds of applications within days. That talent density is a force multiplier, and one of the key reasons our companies punch above their weight.
Who is the venture studio model right for?
The plain truth is that the studio model isn’t for everyone. It’s best suited to founders who:
Are repeat entrepreneurs and understand the complexity of building from scratch
Have deep operational experience and want to lead but not go it alone
Bring technical expertise but need commercial or regulatory co-founders in complex sectors
The venture studio model is, in short, best for founders who are long-term thinkers. Those are usually the best founders! They understand that speed, talent, and traction matter more than retaining an extra few points of equity early on. Not to mention that higher traction in the beginning typically means less dilution in later rounds for founders.
Moving beyond the buzz
Why did I feel the need to write this? I don’t want to sound defensive or over-advertise our venture model. It isn’t for everyone and, like I said, half of our fund is geared towards “non-incubations” too.
But it also has bugged me that “venture studio” has become a dirty word in VC, because I think it’s a great model that produces huge results.
There’s a lot of noise in the AI world right now. Every startup is "agentic” and every founder is a visionary. But building enduring companies still requires the hard stuff: talking to users, recruiting great people, and making products people actually want.
That’s what we help founders do. Not through hand-holding, but through actual partnerships and a trusted brand. Our value is acceleration through talent and traction.
 | A guest post by
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