Venture studio, venture builder or startup studio: what the words mean

Quick answer: venture studio, venture builder and startup studio usually describe the same thing: a team that creates its own products from scratch, again and again, sharing people, tools and infrastructure between them. The labels differ more by habit than by meaning. What matters is who has the idea, who builds it and who runs it afterwards.

If you have read our piece on what a venture studio actually does, you will know we describe ourselves as a studio that builds its own products. People often ask whether that is the same as a venture builder or a startup studio. This article sets out how the words are used, how they differ from agencies and incubators, and how we use them ourselves.

What is a venture studio?

A venture studio is an organisation that comes up with product ideas, builds them itself and runs them as businesses, several at a time. The defining feature is that the studio does the work. It is not advising other founders or building to someone else's brief; it is choosing the problem, writing the code and answering the customers.

In practice, that means a studio has one team and one set of tools serving every product. At Unavoidable Studio, that team builds and runs products including Unavoidable CRM, Unavoidably Secure, Unavoidably Social and AisleReply, all listed on our portfolio page.

What is a venture builder, and is it different?

Most of the time, a venture builder is the same thing under a different name. You will also see "venture builder" used for teams that build new products together with a partner, such as a larger company that wants a new product but not a new department. When the term is used that way, the partner usually brings the market or the problem, and the builder brings the product team.

So the honest answer is that the difference depends on who is speaking. If someone calls themselves a venture builder, ask whose idea the product is and who will run it once it launches.

What is a startup studio?

A startup studio is another common name for a venture studio. The word "startup" signals that each product is meant to become a company in its own right, rather than a feature or a side project. Beyond that, the model is the same: one team creating a series of new products, using what it learned on the last one to move faster on the next.

How is a studio different from an agency or an incubator?

An agency builds for clients, and an incubator supports other people's companies. A studio builds for itself. Those three relationships lead to very different ways of working:

• Agency: the client owns the idea and the product. The agency is paid for its time and moves on when the project ends.
• Incubator or accelerator: outside founders own and run their companies. The programme offers advice, space and connections for a set period.
• Venture studio: the studio comes up with the idea, builds it and keeps running it. It lives with every decision it makes.

That last point shapes everything we do. Because we run what we build, we care about the boring parts: billing that works, support that gets answered and documentation someone can follow at midnight. We wrote about that in running several products with a small team.

Which term does Unavoidable Studio use, and why?

We use "venture studio", because it describes what we do without needing a footnote. We choose problems, build products for them and run those products ourselves, one after another, with one team. Unavoidable Studio Ltd is a company registered in England and Wales, number 17367981, and its Companies House record lists its business as software development, which is a fair summary of our days.

The word "studio" also matches how the work feels. Each product is different, but they share a workshop: the same sign-in, billing and hosting foundations, described in shared infrastructure across a studio. That shared base is what lets a small team look after several products properly.

Does the label matter?

Not much. What matters is how the work is done. If you are trying to understand any studio, builder or startup studio, three questions will tell you more than the name:

1. Whose idea is each product? The team's own, a partner's or a client's.
2. Who builds it? An in-house team, contractors or the founders of each company.
3. Who runs it after launch? If the people who built it also answer the support emails, you are probably looking at a studio.

For how we decide which ideas earn a place in the first place, read how we choose what to build next. For more from the studio, browse the rest of the blog.