I’ve founded and run software companies of my own. Your venture gets built by someone who has done it before.
Companies come to venture building from three directions. Whichever brought you here, the first step is the same: a decision document the board can act on. The note under each card shows where I’ve done the work before.
The domain knowledge and the customers are already yours. What’s missing is the person who has taken a product from idea to paying market and can do it again inside your company.
Founded Colossal Games · shipped Commando Jack to #1 in 36 countries with EA Games / ChillingoThat means its own legal entity and P&L, protection from the parent’s processes, and revenue reported like any business you own. A lab gives you none of that.
Built and led a ~15-person team · raised £450k+ · no salary for 5 of its 7 yearsYou’ve seen the demos. What you haven’t seen is a number: what AI would earn or save in your business, and what finding out costs. The decision document is that number.
Ships production software with AI (Claude Code) under my own architecture · AI & data features for Coca-Cola, Mars, Unilever and L’OréalCreating a new company from scratch: validating the idea, setting up the entity, building the product, finding the first revenue. A venture builder is the operator who does that work. Corporate venture building does it with an established company as the backer, using assets the parent already owns: brand, customers, domain knowledge.
Corporate venture capital is a different job: CVC buys stakes in other people’s startups and waits. Venture building creates and runs your own. The same goes for digital transformation, which modernises the business you already have. Venture building makes a new one next to it, with its own P&L.
The nearest relative is the innovation lab, and labs fail so often the failure has a name, innovation theatre: demos, press coverage, no revenue. The problem is baked in: a parent company’s own processes suffocate the new venture. That’s why you hand the work to an outside operator with room to run.
I also offer this as: corporate venture builder · venture building company · corporate venture studio · venture studio (UK) · corporate innovation consultant · digital product studio · entrepreneur in residence.
If it’s a new product development consultant you’re after, the decision document is that job under an older name: what to build, what it costs, how it’s governed, and when you’d stop. You can commission it on its own. A fair question: “How is this different from the consultants we’ve already paid?” They handed over a recommendation and left. Here, the person who wrote the document stays on to form the entity, recruit the team and ship the product, and you judge the result on a live P&L.
Three stages, in a fixed order: the decision document, then building the company, then running and growing it as a business.
Board-ready · fixed fee · 2–3 weeks
Set up outside the parent’s processes
A live P&L, reported on one page
Unmitigated capital exposure is the primary reason boards reject new venture initiatives. To address this risk upfront, below is a transparent cost breakdown anchored in established market benchmarks:
Marked benchmarked average annual budget for a studio’s core team and tooling before any venture earns (2025). Underfunded studios have a market name: zombie studios.
Quoted per venture; UK senior interim and fractional rates run £800–£2,000 a day (published market range).
Quoted before any work starts. The document stands alone; any builder can execute it.
Cash is always part of my deal, along with shares. A retainer or salary, plus an agreed stake in the new company. Never equity only. The decision document is yours to take to anyone, its fee credits in full against the build if you go ahead with me, and you can stop the venture at any milestone.
If the job is modernising systems you already run, that’s transformation consulting, not this. If the need is technology leadership over an existing product, that’s a fractional CTO or technical cofounder. And if you’re a founder rather than an established company, start at the venture readiness audit.
This framework isn't theory; it’s built on real experience. It comes from companies I’ve founded, products I've shipped inside corporate environments, and the hard-won experience of knowing exactly when to pull the plug on a failing venture.
Hired and led a ~15-person team; put in place publishing and platform relationships (Apple, Microsoft, Google), QA, legal and investors. Launched Commando Jack to #1 in 36 countries with EA Games / Chillingo, 2M+ downloads. Raised £450k+, including £50k in 2 weeks at a £1.25m valuation. Revenue peak of £600 per day from one app.
Microsoft award winner · top 10 of 150+ studiosTrusted with the global Happy Meal app across ~40 markets and 42 languages. Assessed the ~30-person external development partner and got close to the commercials. Found ~£2m in potential annual savings within 3-months of joining.
R/GA offered me a permanent role heading the functionInherited an overdue digital-twin programme on NEOM’s giga-project. Diagnosed the issues across team, delivery practice, architecture and platform, then restored dependable execution.
Strategic recommendations presented to the CEO and boardI founded a VR telemedicine platform and reached a provisionally agreed NHS physiotherapy pilot. When the NHS sponsor moved on and the funding ended, I wound it down. The stop clause in your decision document is written by someone who has applied one to his own company.
Single-sponsor dependency · the lesson now informs the stagesThe consultancy I founded and staffed delivered for JP Morgan, HP, IBM, McDonald’s and EE, and cut development cost 40% on a JP Morgan engagement. It generated a passive £1,500+ a day, my involvement dropped to four hours a month (effectively £1,000/hr). This freed the time and funded Colossal Games and Immersive Medical. Today I’m shipping a subscription product, AI-assisted under my own architecture, launching 2026. Track record, products and demo videos: the work · the validation.
Send a one-page brief or schedule a 20-minute discovery call at no charge. We will assess mutual fit, determine if the venture model suits your goals, and provide a fixed quote for the Decision Document.
A 2–3 week sprint to deliver board-ready scope, capital requirements, governance, and kill criteria. You own this IP regardless of next steps.
Green light, pivot, or stop. Halting the project here is a valid, successful outcome - limiting your total exposure to the fixed cost of the document.
We incorporate the entity, hire the team, and launch the product. Progress is measured against a live P&L from month one, with future capital gated by formal board decisions.
Venture building is the end-to-end process of creating a company from scratch: validating the business case, structuring the entity, shipping the product, and securing early revenue. A venture builder is the dedicated operator who executes this work. In corporate venture building, the backer is an established enterprise. This gives the new venture an "unfair advantage" by allowing it to leverage assets the parent company already owns—such as brand equity, distribution channels, and deep domain expertise.
CVC buys equity in someone else’s startup and waits for a return. Venture building creates and runs your own. The fundamental difference: CVC is an investment vehicle, while venture building is an operational capability. You don’t deploy a fund to do it; you bring in a builder to execute it.
Digital transformation modernises the legacy systems and processes within your existing operations - typically structured as a traditional consulting engagement focused on efficiency. Venture building is entirely different: it’s about creating a brand-new business next to your core operations, complete with its own product, P&L, and legal entity. If you're looking to build entirely new revenue streams rather than just fixing internal processes, you're on the right page.
While a full venture studio requires a $1.4M–$2.5M annual baseline budget (market benchmark, 2025), the single-operator model mitigates this capital risk. The commitment is strictly phased: starting with a fixed-fee Decision Document, and converting to a retainer or salary (at standard UK senior rates of £800–£2,000/day) plus equity only once the board approves the build.
All IP belongs to the new venture. Before execution, we set up a separate legal entity, lock in the exact equity split (the parent's stake and mine), and assign the IP. This shields the parent company from operational liability and lets the venture move fast.
You generally have four paths:
It requires an operator who owns the three disciplines that are usually split across different hires: the product instinct to invent it, the technical depth to build it, and the commercial discipline to make it pay.
Most companies have to hire a trio of executives to cover this ground. I am that rare operator who owns all three natively, and I have the hard numbers to prove it:
It’s essentially the in-house title for what I do. You bring an experienced founder inside your company to build a net-new venture, leveraging the assets you already own. Venture building is the exact same work, just structured as an external engagement rather than an internal hire. I actively take on both. If you have the backing to stand up a new division and need the right operator in-house to actually build it, let's talk.
Yes. A studio means parallel teams and multiple products in flight - a different beast from a single venture, and the one I know: a ~15-person games studio running several titles, a staffed consultancy running concurrent client work. The budget above is simply what that parallelism costs to run.
Recommendations stop with them. Execution starts here. While the first deliverable—a board-ready decision document—looks like consulting work, it carries hard capital figures, a stop clause, and a roadmap. Then, I stay on to form the entity, hire the team, and ship the product. You aren't paying for advice; you're paying for a live P&L.
A 20-minute call to check fit, no charge. Your venture gets built and run by someone who has founded and run software companies of his own. I read every message and reply if I can help.