Last week I committed to building our startup studio in public.

A lot of people don't understand what a studio is, so I'll explain a bit about the fundamentals before talking about Assembler Labs. https://twitter.com/iseff/status/1341446614800605187

At its core, a startup studio is simple: an organization that creates and invests in companies at the absolute earliest stage.

Startup studios go by lots of other names:

* studios
* venture studios
* incubators
* venture design
* product studio
* startup lab

Every studio has their own flavor:

* how they're structured
* how they're funded
* what they do
* how much equity they take
* how they invest
* what they focus on

I'll discuss each of those at another time, but let's start with "what the heck does a studio actually do?"

Since studios are in the business of creating and investing in companies, there are obviously two core operations:

* company creation
* investment

The best reasonto work with a studio is to have a well-oiled machine help with the creation aspect of a startup:

* ideation
* idea validation & strategy
* product development
* marketing
* fundraising

I call this "being the perfect co-founder."

At AL, we work with founders from an idea-on-a-napkin all the way to spun-out business with a product, ready to be funded by us and other investors.

We run ideas through a validation process. And we have engineering, marketing, design, and product abilities.

9 out of every 10 ideas that we work on don't get spun out. Our bar is really high.

Whenever we kill an idea, we give it back to the founder if they want to keep going. Us killing an idea doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad business, just not a good fit for us.

Once the business is spun out, we cut the first check. This is the investment aspect.

Every studio is a little different here. Some don't write checks, some write big checks, some partner with funds that write the check, etc.

But that's it: studios are organizations that create and invest in companies.

They do so at the earliest possible stages: an idea-on-a-napkin, or even just a problem without a solution yet.