APPROACH
AI has made a prototype cheap. It has not made a company cheap. An incubator gives founders a semester; what they need is people in the seat: product, commercial, finance, legal. That is the gap we close.
WHAT WE BACK
USEFUL TECHNOLOGY. REAL BUSINESSES.
SMEs need tools that make the working day better, not speculative technology looking for a use.
Our focus is vertical B2B platforms: software built around a particular industry's workflows. We look for embedded intelligence that improves cashflow, operational efficiency, compliance, risk visibility and governance.
A working prototype is the starting point. A business with paying customers, repeatable sales and its own leadership is the destination.
THE GATE.
Every opportunity comes to the partners before it takes more than a few hours. We answer four questions, and we answer them in weeks, not months.
Q1
Who owns the customers?
A founder or partner with an existing book of clients is the fastest route to market we know. If nobody owns them yet, the bar is much higher.
Q2
Is the problem worth solving?
We look for people already paying for a worse answer: spreadsheets, manual work, an incumbent nobody likes.
Q3
Can the bench carry it?
If a venture only works with one of us at the keyboard, it doesn’t scale. We check that an operator could run it day to day.
Q4
Do the terms align us?
Equity, cash and time are agreed upfront and written down, so nobody’s incentives drift.
PROTOTYPE TO PLATFORM, WITH GATES TO PASS.
- 01
0–3 months
Validate
Customer Zero: early adopters engaged, ideally paying. Gate: a real problem, with real buyers.
- 02
3–9 months
Build
Production platform built on the Studio Stack. Gate: early adopters using it every week.
- 03
9–18 months
Launch
First repeatable sales motion; key hires. Gate: £250k to £500k+ ARR.
- 04
18–24+ months
Standalone
Own leadership and board. Gate: £1m+ ARR, and raises seed or is cash-generative.
PRIVATE EQUITY GRADE SUPPORT, SIZED FOR START-UPS.
We deliberately back fewer, so every venture gets capability it couldn’t afford, or find the time to find.
Tech
Product, engineering, security, hiring.
Commercial
Strategy, partnerships, fundraising, investor relations.
Marketing
Positioning, demand, the story the market hears.
HR
The operator bench, key hires, the people plan.
Finance
Billing, reporting, the numbers investors will read.
Legal
Terms, contracts, governance from day one.
A WIDER WAY IN
NO WARM INTRO REQUIRED.
Founders, not networks.
Bring us a real customer problem. Your postcode, school or previous exit is not the investment case. We look through regional networks, accountants and trade bodies, as well as direct approaches.
A bridge to the next investor.
We build towards ventures that angels and early-stage funds can back: a working product, evidence of demand and a team able to deliver. The studio does the work and diligence alongside them, rather than competing for businesses that already have traction.
RETURNS AND IMPACT
A DOUBLE DIVIDEND.
In the ventures.
Fewer, better-supported businesses, built to generate cash. Trade sales and secondaries can return capital to the studio, alongside the jobs and revenue the ventures create.
Across their customers.
Less time and money wasted on disconnected systems and manual work. The productivity benefit reaches beyond our portfolio to the SMEs using its products.
Measured, not assumed.
Our plan is to publish an annual 021 Productivity Ledger, tracking what the ventures improve for their customers. We also intend to share the playbook and lessons, including what did not work.