For the past decade, Crowdlinker has helped build a variety of digital solutions with multiple clients across a range of industries. Honing these skills has helped maximize our ability to run valuable experiments to validate business opportunities. Put simply, our studio is tailor-made to generate great ideas and develop them into successful businesses. 

We have taken all the experience from our days as a product company to help innovate, validate, and create core products for other ambitious startups. 

We developed our venture builder model to allow us to dedicate our time and resources to systematically producing new companies which we can help grow. 

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What is a venture builder model?

During a venture project, our team's lead new product development builds with new and existing clients. It’s an opportunity to sit at the same side of the table as our clients and work together, equally incentivized towards a common goal. 

Venture builder models aren’t necessarily revolutionary, but they are changing the way new companies and products are created. By their very nature they encourage accessibility, innovation, solution validation, risk mitigation, increased productivity, and a smoother process for startup creation. 

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Why choose a venture builder model?

There are many use cases for entering into a venture partnership with a digital product studio like Crowdlinker. You might have identified potential in a new market focus, or you may want to launch an entirely new product or company. 

For entrepreneurs and emerging markets, ventures can have many benefits:

• Fill the funding gap

• Ventures can help early stage startups accelerate their growth before they receive funding.

• Save time

• Founders are able to rapidly develop new products and launch them in the market quicker than the competition. 

• Access to resources

• Stakeholder engaged in a venture builder model are typically more involved in the operational aspect of a project than a traditional VC or Founder.

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What does a typical contract look like? 

We follow a combination of cash and equity split models under the SAFE (simple agreement for future equity) financial agreement. This is an agreement for equity in the company following a future round of funding. 

Our venture builder models work in 2 forms:

• 50/50 cash equity - Set at a certain hourly rate, clients pay upfront for some of the costs using cash, with the rest covered by an equity investment in the business. 

• 100% equity - Every hour in the project is equity that will be converted at a later time. That means zero cash up front.

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Who qualifies for a venture project?

The SAFE model ensures that equity only converts following a round of funding, making these types of projects quite high risk for investors. 

To mitigate this risk and ensure success for our clients, we pick our investment types based on a few specific factors. We look at things like alignment with the Founder/s and their team, market opportunity, and what value we can bring to the project.

What we look for:

• Serial Entrepreneurs

• Individuals with the experience of starting a company from scratch, who understand the process of developing new products.

• Subject Matter Experts

• Those who have existing knowledge within the particular vertical that the project is intended for.

• Innovators

• Those who are disrupting the market with innovative projects that satisfy an identifiable gap/need. 

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Our studio is home to a highly talented, tight-knit group of developers, making us the ideal partner for founders seeking a strong technical lead. 

If you’re a founder thinking about a venture project, understanding what sort of skill sets might be most useful to your project could help you decide on choosing the right partner. Here are some other things to consider:

• Vision alignment
• Culture fit
• Breadth of knowledge/expertise
• Reputation 

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Value of joint venture with Crowdlinker

A joint venture presents a valuable opportunity to align goals and objectives between interested parties so that they can focus on the most impactful output. Generally, the benefits of a joint venture are transferable, however, each studio will have a unique set of strengths they can bring to a project. 

Here’s what we bring to the table:

• A leading digital product studio that designs, builds, and launches scalable business solutions for some of the world's top startups and enterprises.
• An already established, in-house team of designers, product managers, and software engineers capable of creating category leading products.
• An in-house digital marketing team that can promote your product/service and secure users.
• Talent that doesn’t need micromanaging. We operate as self-managed, autonomous teams.
• We always act as true partners, aligned and incentivized towards achieving the same goal.

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If you’d like to learn more about how the venture builder model works in action, check out this case study from our latest partnership with Yumba.

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