The Venture Studio Model: How We Build Companies Differently

The startup world has long celebrated the mythology of the lone founder in a garage, fueled by passion and ramen noodles, grinding their way to success. While these stories make for compelling narratives, they obscure a fundamental truth: building successful companies is incredibly difficult, and most startups fail.

At Getia, we take a different approach. As a venture studio, we systematically build companies using proven methodologies, shared resources, and accumulated expertise. This article explores what that means and why we believe it represents the future of company creation.

What Is a Venture Studio?

A venture studio (also called a startup studio, company builder, or startup factory) is an organization that creates companies using its own internal resources, ideas, and teams. Unlike venture capital firms that invest in external founders, or accelerators that mentor existing startups, venture studios generate ideas internally and build companies from scratch.

Think of it as a factory for startups. Just as a manufacturing plant has established processes, specialized equipment, and trained workers to produce products efficiently, a venture studio has established methodologies, shared infrastructure, and experienced builders to create companies systematically.

The Traditional Startup Model: Why It Often Fails

Before diving deeper into the venture studio model, we think it's worth understanding why traditional startups struggle. According to various studies, somewhere between 70-90% of startups fail. The reasons are well-documented:

1. First-Time Founder Challenges

Most first-time founders face a steep learning curve. They need to simultaneously master product development, sales, marketing, hiring, fundraising, legal compliance, and financial management. This is an enormous ask, and mistakes in any area can be fatal to the company.

2. Resource Constraints

Early-stage startups typically operate with minimal resources. They can't afford specialized legal counsel, experienced CFOs, or dedicated HR support. This forces founders to either do everything themselves (poorly) or ignore critical functions entirely.

3. Isolation

Entrepreneurship can be lonely. Founders often lack access to others who have faced similar challenges. Without a network of experienced advisors, they're left to figure things out through trial and error.

4. Idea Risk

Many startups fail simply because they're building something nobody wants. Founders fall in love with their ideas before validating that there's genuine market demand.

How Venture Studios Address These Challenges

The venture studio model directly addresses each of these failure modes:

Experienced Teams from Day One

At Getia, every company we build benefits from our accumulated experience across multiple ventures. We've made the mistakes, learned the lessons, and developed playbooks that new companies can leverage immediately. A first-time CEO in our portfolio isn't really a first-time CEO—they're building on a foundation of proven processes and institutional knowledge.

Shared Resources and Infrastructure

Our portfolio companies share access to legal expertise, financial management, technical infrastructure, and operational support. This means a new company can have enterprise-grade capabilities from day one, without the cost of building everything from scratch.

Built-In Community

Every founder in our studio is part of a community of builders facing similar challenges. They can share insights, collaborate on solutions, and learn from each other's successes and failures in real-time.

Rigorous Idea Validation

Before we commit significant resources to building a company, we rigorously validate the market opportunity. We conduct customer interviews, build minimum viable products, and test assumptions systematically. This reduces the risk of building something nobody wants.

The Venture Studio Process at Getia

Our company-building process follows a structured approach that has been refined over multiple ventures:

Phase 1: Ideation and Validation

We continuously generate and evaluate new company ideas. These ideas come from our team's experience, market research, customer conversations, and technological trends. For each promising idea, we ask: Is there a real problem? Is it a problem people will pay to solve? Can we build a defensible business around the solution?

Phase 2: MVP Development

Once we validate an opportunity, we rapidly build a minimum viable product. Our shared technical resources allow us to move quickly—we're not starting from zero with each new company. We have established development practices, reusable components, and experienced engineers who have built similar products before.

Phase 3: Market Testing

With an MVP in hand, we test the market. We acquire early customers, gather feedback, and iterate on the product. This phase is about learning as quickly as possible and adjusting our approach based on real market data.

Phase 4: Scaling

Companies that demonstrate product-market fit receive additional resources to scale. This might include dedicated leadership, additional funding, expanded teams, and intensified marketing efforts.

Why Norway? Building in the Nordic Ecosystem

Getia is based in Norway, and we believe the Nordic ecosystem offers unique advantages for building technology companies:

High Trust Society

The Nordic countries consistently rank among the world's most trusting societies. This creates a business environment where deals can move quickly, partnerships are more easily formed, and there's less friction in commercial relationships.

Technical Talent

Norway has a highly educated workforce with strong technical skills. The country's emphasis on education and innovation produces engineers and builders who can compete globally.

Quality of Life

The work-life balance in Norway allows us to attract and retain talented team members. People can build meaningful companies without sacrificing their health or families—leading to more sustainable, long-term thinking.

Government Support

Norway offers various programs supporting innovation and entrepreneurship, from research grants to tax incentives for R&D. This support reduces the financial risk of building new companies.

Our Portfolio Approach

We currently operate several companies across different verticals, all unified by a common focus on building tools that help businesses operate more effectively:

Each company in our portfolio benefits from the others. We share learnings across companies, leverage common technical infrastructure, and create synergies where possible. When we solve a problem for one company—whether it's implementing better analytics, improving customer onboarding, or optimizing for search engines—those solutions often benefit our entire portfolio.

The Future of Company Building

We believe the venture studio model will become increasingly prevalent in the startup ecosystem. As the tools and technologies for building software become more accessible, the differentiator shifts to execution and market knowledge. Venture studios, with their accumulated experience and systematic approaches, are well-positioned to execute consistently.

This doesn't mean individual founders will disappear—far from it. But we expect to see more founders choosing to build within studio environments, leveraging the resources and expertise that studios provide while maintaining the autonomy and ownership that drives entrepreneurial ambition.

Conclusion

Building companies is hard. The venture studio model doesn't make it easy, but it does make it more systematic, more efficient, and ultimately more likely to succeed. By combining experienced teams, shared resources, rigorous validation, and a supportive community, we create an environment where great companies can be built more consistently.

At Getia, we're not just building individual companies—we're building a company-building capability that compounds over time. Each success makes the next one more likely. Each failure teaches lessons that benefit future ventures. This systematic approach to entrepreneurship is, we believe, the future of how great companies will be created.