startups – Sean Shadmand

The Studio Era of Startups Has Begun

For decades, the startup game has been a one-shot endeavor. You rally a team, raise money, pick a problem, and commit. If you’re lucky, you pivot when you have to, maybe once or twice. But fundamentally, you’re placing a single bet. Pouring your time, capital, and reputation into one idea.

That world is changing quickly.

The world is focusing on their ability to now code more with fewer people, or allow folks with less coding skill to vibe code to success. The fact is, the amount of code was never what made a startup successful, or the number of coders. If that were they case no startup could disrupt a large, well funded, company. More significantly, a new paradigm of startup is emerging, one that leverages the startup creativity and ingenuity. One that helps founders evolve from creating a company with a product, but for just as much cost and time a studio of bets. One that moves with the agility of a hacker and the creative churn of a film studio. And AI is the accelerant.

Imagine if all the studios and accelerators you know were now able to be run by a few founders, with as little funding and workforce as the typical garage startup.

Every Startup Can Now Be a Studio

What’s different today isn’t the concepts, it’s the economics.

The execution bottleneck has collapsed:

Build v1 of an app in days, not months
Ship a prototype in the time it used to take to write a product spec
Generate research, copy, and flows on command
Test real experiences with minimal investment
Multitasking and directing employees has merged into one skill.

A solo founder can now run what used to require a venture studio’s entire apparatus. A three-person team can operate multiple product lines simultaneously in a pre-seed stage or earlier stage.

This isn’t just “faster iteration” it’s a change in who gets to play and at what breadth an entrepreneur can address a market.

The old studio model was top-down: institutions funding experiments. The new model is bottom-up: individuals becoming their own institutions.

When indie hackers ship 12 products in a year and 2 of them hit, that’s not hustling. That’s systematic creative output.

The Rise of the Experiment Engine

The shift isn’t just technical it’s philosophical.

Traditional startups were binary: succeed or fail. Traditional studios were capital-intensive: big bets, long cycles.

But now you can run a creative system where:

Failure is cheap
Iteration is constant
Signal emerges from volume
Products are hypotheses, not commitments

This is what studios do, but now it has been democratized. Again, it isn’t the amount of code and workforce people should be focusing on as they predict the future, it is the breadth of creative experimentation and lack of wide nets of attempts to fund a winning idea be limited to heavily venture funded organizations.

Pixar doesn’t bet the farm on a script — they storyboard, test scenes, rework characters. Record labels don’t drop millions on a demo — they release singles, test styles, build momentum.

Now individual founders can operate with the same creative methodology at a scale never before possible.

Remember “ghetto testing”? Half-baked landing pages, fake feature toggles, manually faked automation? All just to see if anyone cared.

Today, you don’t need to fake it. AI and automation let you spin up real features, fast with polish, interactivity, and branding.

This isn’t just efficiency. It’s a mindset shift. Testing doesn’t feel like cutting corners anymore. It feels like genuine creative exploration.

From Founders to Creative Directors

In this new world, successful founders aren’t just CEOs. They’re creative directors.

They guide taste. They shape vibe. They ask: “what world do we want to live in, and what prototypes can get us there?”

The core skill isn’t managing or scaling, it’s imagining boldly and moving quickly enough to find signal before the market shifts.

The Individual Studio Playbook

The next generation of great startups will operate more like personal creative studios:

Default to prototyping — Ideas aren’t precious until they prove value
Build multiple product lines — Portfolio thinking, not single bets
Use AI as infrastructure — Not just to code, but to design, write, and explore
Kill fast — Speed means nothing without the ability to stop wasted motion
Treat products as experiments — Hypotheses to test, not commitments to defend

The Democratization of Venture Capital

When the cost of experimentation drops to near-zero, everyone becomes their own venture capitalist.

You don’t need Rocket Internet’s playbook. You don’t need Betaworks’ capital. You don’t need Y Combinator’s batch.

You just need curiosity, taste, and the willingness to ship quickly.

More strange tools. More niche apps. More absurd experiments that just might work. We’re not heading into a world with fewer opportunities — we’re heading into a world where more people get to be entrepreneurs.

The studio era isn’t coming. It’s here.

The question is: Are you ready to be your own venture studio?

More tips for early stage startups

Key Strategies for Startups: Control Your Tech, Move Fast, and Value Equity

If you’re a tech company, don’t outsource your core tech to another firm.

Think of your core tech as the heart of your company. It’s what sets you apart and drives your unique value. When you outsource this vital part, you risk losing control and potentially building something unnecessary as you adapt to feedback. No matter how loyal and supportive an outsourcing firm may seem, their primary goal is to grow their own business, not yours. Even if you offer them equity, their interests won’t fully align with yours—they are billing by the hour while you’re focused on trimming down for an MVP.

I’ve seen many bootstrapped firms spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, only to end up with an unfinished product they don’t fully understand. By keeping your core tech in-house, you stay agile, protect your intellectual property, ensure everything aligns perfectly with your vision and goals, and invest in your corporate tech culture.

You’re supposed to be a fast, nimble startup. Being stealthy will more often hold you back than set you up for a “blowout” go-to-market strategy.

You are building your startup because something is missing from the market. This inherently means it has yet to be addressed or addressed successfully. Either you will be the one to succeed where others have failed, or you won’t. Rarely does a large firm, which is not already chasing the market you are attacking, suddenly “steal your idea”. Large firms are slow-moving and full of bureaucracy. They have not innovated because their goal is to preserve their brand and existing income streams. If they did “steal your idea” chances are they would do a horrible job. More importantly, if you can’t do better than what they attempt, what’s your “x-factor”?

More likely, those large companies will become one of your investors or try to acquire your business and novel expertise. Why would they risk building a new department or team internally (and potentially fail – bad for the brand) when they can simply buy it after it has proven successful? If you’re still not convinced and think a few months to a year of stealthiness will prevent another company from copying you, consider this: if it were possible to copy you so easily, would you really have a chance of succeeding in the long term anyway?

As a startup, your biggest strengths are your speed, focus, talent, and flexibility. Large companies aren’t built for these advantages. Staying in stealth mode might seem like a smart strategy to build suspense or keep others in the dark, but it will slow you down and limit your options. Early feedback from customers, investors, and the market is invaluable for refining your product and strategy. By staying too secretive, you miss out on crucial insights and an opportunity to build relationships. Instead, embrace openness—engage with your market, gather feedback, and iterate quickly.

You aren’t bootstrapping well if you are paying others cash to do your core work. Your equity is even more precious and should motivate value, knowledge, and culture.

Bootstrapping is all about making the most of your resources. If you’re spending cash on tasks you could handle internally, you’re not bootstrapping effectively. Instead, consider using options to attract and motivate talent who are passionate about your mission. This not only saves cash but also builds upon your value with equity while creating a committed team culture that’s deeply invested in the company’s success. Equity can be a powerful tool when focused on building long-term value. Remember, your cash is limited. Equity will be the foundational element for future rounds, when used wisely it can drive long-term value and loyalty.

You may not yet be a venture business

It’s exciting to think about raising money, but venture is meant to fuel powerful growth and value. If you already have paying customers lined up, and those sales or design partners could lead to changes in the product you may be giving up equity for the wrong business. If you need money to pay for the time between invoices and payments consider debt financing to cover your float. This isn’t always the most exciting feedback to hear, but if you haven’t considered these tactics then you may be doing a disservice to your business’s ability to evolve properly.

Get a Visa for your Startup

Have a startup? Thinking about living in a new city? Maybe even one abroad?

Well, you may be in luck.

If you haven’t noticed, there is a globalization of startups happening. The world is becoming not only more accepting of the startup mentality, but working hard to nurture it. So much so that many countries now offer visas, and even cash, to startups willing to relocate.

Below are a few I’ve heard of. If you know of others let me know and I will add it to the list!

Singapore

Singapore Entrepreneur Pass

New Zealand

NZ Work Visa

Ireland

Start a business in Ireland

Hong Kong

http://www.rosemont.hk/worldwide-location/hong-kong-entrepreneurs-visa-/

Netherlands (Dutch)

Dutch Startup Visa / PDF

Denmark

Startup Denmark

Interested in getting a visa to the U.S?

U.S. Startup Visa Options

How Google Works

It’s always hard to tell how far a company’s ideals are from the reality of what is truly applied in practice. With Google’s over 50K workers, it’s tough to imagine the ideals laid out in the book are carried out through each and every employee. I sure hope so.

Whether they are or not, I found the concepts put forth compelling and exciting. Their definition and support of what they coin as “smart-creatives” paints a pretty accurate picture of what the doers, thinkers and makers in the SF entrepreneurial scene are made of. Their layout of methodologies and practices that replace the old corporate mindset with those based on “first-principles” are is truly after my own heart. To hell with tradition and “shoulds” – the world is more dynamic than ever and a management team that is as dynamic and forward thinking is necessary to stay ahead.

This book is a must read for entrepreneurs, managers and those ready to partake in the new generation of our technological workforce. Yes, there were inconsistencies in some sections and from time to time it sounded a bit self-promoting, but for the most part it provoked the formation of great questions and thoughts for our book club.

Fair warning, if you are a recent MBA student I would suggest putting of reading this for a couple of years. There are many references to how the Google way is able to overcome what they consider poor methodologies MBA students are taught to implement. Since I was reading this while taking some personal growth online MBA classes it was clear that the two visions for what creates success diverge.

http://www.amazon.com/How-Google-Works-Eric-Sc…/…/1455582344

You can see my running read book list on Facebook here https://www.facebook.com/sshadmand/books

Steve Jobs in the beginning

Here are a couple videos that show Steve Jobs growing his philosphy, company vision, and product. One comes with a nice narration around his time building Next Computers. It’s a great glimpse into his fundemental beleifs that guided hmthroughthe years. The other is hi giving a lecture of where Apple came from and where it is going.

This video narrates Jobs creating Next Computers with the first group of employees at their company retreats.

This video is an early presentation by Jobs from 1980 describing how Apple started, what he sees its affects being, and some interesting insight into what he sees in tech startup potential and the growth of the human race.

What do you and Sonic the Hedgehog have in common?

Have you ever played Sonic the hedgehog? Man, what a classic! The objective: Get your hedgehog, named Sonic, to jump, run and even roll through a stage, avoiding the array of animal-ish enemies, only to reach a guarded exit, protected by your arch nemesis, Dr. Evil. Beat him and the entrance to the next level is opened. Keep this up, level after level, enemy after enemy, and you will win the game. — But wait there’s more! If you are attacked without a collection of magical “rings” in your possession, you will die. With one or more rings you can narrowly avoid death by attack.

So which was more important, getting to the next level, or acquiring the rings? Well, any kid would tell you: Duh, both! Obvi. If you only collect the rings you may never get to the end of the level. Alternatively, if you only try to get to the end of the level, rendering yourself ringless, you dramatically decrease your chances of survival.

Of course, one could play the perfect game, dodging all would be attackers, and avoiding falling off cliffs to a spikey-floored doom. By doing so you would indeed win the game, just as anyone else. But who could make it through all those levels without one misstep, one slipped finger, or distracted moment when your Mom calls you down for dinner? I’m going to take a stab at it and say — not a single person. So, thanks to those gracious creators at Sega, you were given those wonderfully magic rings, giving you a fighting chance. You and everyone else jumped at the opportunity, capturing as many rings as you could. You mitigated risk, balanced your options, and grabbed on to what ever you could, outside of the clearly laid goal of completing the level, to of course do just that, complete the level and win the game; achieve success.

That is not a theme reserved for just hedgehogs named Sonic, or any game for that matter. Success is a goal some of us can see, and once we see it, we direct our focus directly at achieving it. But it is often that deterministic direction that creates a far more subtle misdirection.

Nine out of ten startups fail, right? I bet most of them are hard workers and/or have great ideas and/or have a focus and/or goals. A major hurdle to overcome, one that is far less obvious then the cliche advice to work harder/smarter, and the basis for why so many startup fall victim to those one-in-ten odds, is that it is the very focus on the goal that can cause the unbalance in your business, and ironically dooms your chances in achieving it.

Success may live on a straight-line, but the line seen is not necessarily the path to take. The best path is almost always one that dances around the line formed. Looking away, towards an entirely different direction, can reveal a path with far less hurdles when the focus is returned to the goals directive. You must let something go in order to truly have it — a cliché theme that works in almost any environment, and often takes a lifetime to master. Simply put, our “rings” come in the form of friendships, support systems, a passion for what you do, mistakes that need to be made, failures to learn from, vacations to escape to, and random ideas that inspire. When we remember to grab onto those rings when the opportunity to do so arises, or even sometimes when it doesn’t seem like it can, we will be far more able to last the “attacks” the startup game will inevitably throw our way.

So my fellow hedgehogs, should you grab at all the rings you can, even if at times by doing so you are unable to race towards the goal? Most definitely! Any kid who had a sega will tell you: you have to do both. Duh! Obvi.

Every Startup Can Now Be a Studio

The Rise of the Experiment Engine

From Founders to Creative Directors

The Individual Studio Playbook

The Democratization of Venture Capital

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