Venture Studios Are Manufacturing Founders Instead of Finding Them

Eighty candidates cycled past each other at a long table in Bengaluru one September evening, each getting six minutes to decide whether the stranger across from them could be their co-founder for the next several years. That ritual — a "carousel", in the vocabulary of London-based "talent investor" Entrepreneurs First (EF) — is the visible face of a model now reshaping early-stage venture capital: the venture studio, which builds companies in-house rather than backing founders who arrive with their own ideas.

"I was so nervous," one 24-year-old participant recalled. "I'm pretty sure I was blushing."

Four rounds of these founder speed-dates ran through the evening. The goal, per EF, is to admit "cracked people" — from PhDs to high-school dropouts — into a three-to-six-month India programme, long before they have either a business idea or a co-founder. The endgame is a VC-scale business eventually incorporated in the US.

How the studio machine works

The mechanics are deliberately industrial. EF encourages participants to break up with prospective co-founders as many times as it takes to find the right match. Each surviving pair then zeroes in on an idea and sprints to make it investor-ready within three months. The few teams left standing — winnowed from roughly 40 — get flown to San Francisco to pitch Silicon Valley investors.

"It is not," one of EF's talent investors clarified, half-smiling, "a Love Island for aspiring founders."

The economics vary sharply across studios. EF takes an 8% stake in the companies it spawns; India's The Foundery takes as much as 75%. That spread captures how differently the model is being packaged — but the shared thesis is the same: turn company-building into a systematic, repeatable process and cut early-stage risk out of the portfolio.

What does this change for founders?

India now has a televised version of the format too. The Foundery, a 90-day residential venture studio, flies participants to a "sanctum" in Alibaug, Maharashtra, and matches them with a pre-researched idea from the studio's "Idea Vault". Its backers are heavyweight names: entrepreneur and film producer Ronnie Screwvala, Future Group's Kishore Biyani, and Zerodha's Nikhil Kamath.

Here's the practical question for anyone considering the route: what are you actually signing up for? At EF, you arrive with nothing but yourself and leave — if you survive — with a co-founder, an idea and a shot at US capital, giving up 8% for the privilege. At The Foundery, you execute someone else's pre-vetted thesis, with the studio holding up to 75% of the upside.

The irony isn't lost on observers of The Foundery. Its three founders describe their own origins as middle-class risk-takers without a safety net, driven by ideas they believed could change India. The studio they back replaces exactly that figure — the visionary founder wagering everything on an idea rooted in their own life experience — with a candidate matched to a pre-vetted concept that isn't theirs.

The speed trade-off

The model rewards velocity, and that shapes what gets built. Studios gravitate toward businesses that can be built and validated fast — AI products aimed at the US market are the current favorite. Speed, though, can cost what organic company-building leaves time for, like real chemistry between co-founders.

Some studios have gone further and dropped the outside founder altogether, hiring executives to run the companies they create. Studios pitch themselves as an asset class in their own right, but investor appetite in India hasn't caught up yet. Until it does, the manufactured founder remains a bet on process beating instinct — with the carousel still spinning in Bengaluru.