The super{set} studio model for early-stage venture It is still early days for the startup studio model. We know this because at super{set} we still get questions from experienced operators and investors. One investor that we’ve known for years recently asked us: “you have a fund — aren’t you just a venture capital firm with a different label?”
He had a point: yes, we manage a fund, but we only deploy it in the service of companies we co-found. Unlike VCs, we do not source outside companies to invest in. Similarly, we don’t hold the infamous “Monday meeting” to determine what investments to make. The fund is a necessary component of our model, but investing is not what we do.
At its simplest, at super{set}, we show up as experienced company builders and as more than just the first money in the door. We are hands-on co-founders: making the first hires, architecting the product, and landing the first customers.
You might be wondering — don’t VCs do the same thing, or at least say they do? Don’t the best VCs jump in at a moment’s notice to put out fires, settle disagreements between co-founders, and help land big whale customers? Perhaps some do. But even there, it’s often at a different cadence or from a different perch, unlike how we show up at super{set}.
As one prominent VC told us early in our careers: “We’re professional critiquers. See, you craft, we critique. That’s how this works.”
That distinction has stuck in our heads ever since. In a traditional venture fund model, VC investors make bets on people (founders), markets, and technical disruptions. Founders do the same thing: they bet on people (co-founders, early employees, investors), markets, and technical disruptions. The difference is, founders are on the field playing ball while investors are coaching on the sidelines. Founders craft, VCs critique.
As serial entrepreneurs, we know that building a company from scratch is hard. Building in the early stage is a pride-swallowing and soul-sucking experience. As founders, we got pushed to the ground and kicked in the head again and again, only to pull ourselves up and get back to work. However involved and invested VCs may come to feel about a company, they aren’t taking those blows. They’re comfortably ensconced in a well-appointed office, with a more-than-comfortable salary alongside diversified portfolio returns. Crafting is fundamentally different than critiquing.
In traditional VC investing, there is no need to blur the line between craft and critique. The skills and experiences required to perform as a successful investor are of course not the same as what is required to meet the challenges of launching, leading, and exiting a startup. Entrepreneurship and venture capital are cousins, but hardly the same thing. So, why mix the two in a studio model?
At super{set}, we focus on creating the soil conditions for success. At Rapt, our first company started in 1999 just before the Dot-comTech Bubble popped, we zigged and zagged a lot, and ultimately executed a successful pivot away from supply chain optimization of physical goods to pricing and inventory optimization of digital advertising. While every company buildout requires continuous course correction, there was lots of improvisation in our first go at entrepreneurship — arguably too much.
For our second company, Krux, we did everything we could to avoid the years of flailing we underwent at Rapt. We sat at the kitchen table for months, not just jawboning and spitballing but establishing detailed product blueprints and organizing go-to-market plans. The second company’s journey was still hard, but the early formation discipline allowed us to better avoid ditches, anticipate threats, and seize opportunities — and had something to do with the bigger, stronger outcome we achieved.
After we sold Krux to Salesforce in 2016, with a significant return for all stakeholders, we wanted to take this insight and scale it in a way that wasn’t happening in the early-stage venture ecosystem. Getting the soil conditions right at inception (especially for a first-time founder) is crucially important and difficult to do. A VC showing up at a quarterly board meeting to dole out some critique is often not enough to set a new company on the path to success.
Likewise, an accelerator or incubator offering a high-touch model that is time-bound to a few months (and then drops off a cliff after “demo-day”) is just as lackluster. This shows in the low percentage of accelerator graduates that reach maturity. Early-stage companies require a high degree of dedicated craftsmanship over a long period.
There has to be another way — and it is from this frustration that we started super{set}. At super{set} we don’t critique, we found and build over a long time horizon to create the soil conditions for success.
We are not anti-VC (we have been fortunate to work with many VCs with whom we have high regard), and the art of critique should not be discounted in company building. The best VCs that we have worked with have seen many failures and a few successes over their careers, and they know how to identify patterns and re-package them as critique for founders. Being able to pattern-match and say “this person is going to be a good hire,” “this product has a flaw in the business model,” or “this customer is going to be a good early partner” is valuable for early-stage companies and their founders. But this type of critique is more helpful in a company’s growth phase and is less beneficial at formation.
At super{set}, we pattern-match much earlier than VCs because we originate businesses ourselves. The first patterns we look for are customer pain points that can be solved with data-driven solutions. We recognize challenges — and thus opportunities — that often are not apparent to industry participants, through our lens of decades in software engineering, data management, AI, and ML. We intuit the patterns that we know and can monetize as new company opportunities.
Our philosophy of craftsmanship doesn’t end after the ideation phase. After identifying a viable data-driven solution and business opportunity, we go to work assembling the team. Our first hire is a product-oriented co-founder. Once that co-founder is onboard, we don’t pour a scotch and sit back in our armchairs while they do all the work; we show up side-by-side with them, shovel in hand. We are in it for the long haul, we’re not an incubator that spins off ideas after the first milestone.
Post-formation, we look for patterns and turn them into playbooks. A pattern allows you to discern a phenomenon or possibility; a playbook prescribes a set of methods and tools for exploiting it.
Our playbooks operate at conceptual, strategic, and applied levels. They include mindsets for shared perspectives on building data-driven companies, methods that are best practices for solving common business problems, and tools and templates that accelerate a new business’ speed to market. Playbooks are everything we wished we had at our fingertips when we were sitting at the kitchen table organizing our plan of attack at Krux.
Playbooks in hand, we stand with our product co-founders at the whiteboard to map out the product architecture and the staging and sequencing of the product roadmap. From there we work together to hire an engineering team, and with this early founding team we build out our product theses as full-fledged working prototypes.
We apply patterns and playbooks not to critique existing businesses but to form and scale new ones entirely. This early, pre-seed formation focus has positive downstream effects for recruiting the team, building out the product, and landing the first customers.
So back to the original question: “you have a fund — aren’t you just a venture capital firm with a different label?” Respectfully, no. We started super{set} because we saw a fundamentally different approach for early-stage investing. Investing in super{set} is a direct shot of adrenaline into companies we found and build. VCs ask, “can we pick a winner?”, while we at super{set} ask “can we build a winner?”
To build a winner, no amount of money is a substitute for the on-the-ground operational and formation acumen required to create the soil conditions necessary for success. You can throw billions of dollars at any engineering problem, but at the end of the day, you need engineers, not financiers, to build the thing you’re after.
We’re about founding and building, and then taking the long ride — because when you take the long ride, you can build world-changing companies. Yes, some parts of our model look like traditional VC, but we’re operating in a different lane as a different asset class entirely.
Transcript
In the first episode of The Closed Session, meet Tom Chavez and Vivek Vaidya, serial entrepreneurs and podcast hosts.
read moreIn the second episode of The Closed Session, Tom and Vivek discuss the framework for starting your own company from scratch, and the three dimensions that should be taken into account.
read moreYou’ve decided to launch a business, but before you hurtle blindly into the breach, you need a bulletproof plan and a perfect pitch deck to persuade your co-founders, investors, partners, and employees to follow you into the unknown.
read moreIn this episode of The Closed Session, Tom and Vivek talk about dilution, methods, mindset, benchmarks and best practices for raising investment capital for a new tech startup.
read moreNow that you've written the business plan and raised money, it's time to recruit your early team. In this episode, Tom and Vivek cover the do's and dont's of building a high-output team - who to hire, how to build chemistry and throughput, how to think about talent when your company is a toddler versus when it's an adolescent.
read moreWelcome to Season 2 of The Closed Session! In this first episode of 2020, Tom and Vivek talk about the five companies super{set} launched in 2019 and the lessons they’re learning as they go.
read more
Tom and Vivek talk about inclusion and reflect on their personal experiences as brown guys in tech. Inclusion feels like a moral imperative, but does it really make for stronger, better companies? Are there unintended consequences of acting on good intentions to 'fix' an inclusion problem at a company? Why is tech so lacking in diversity, and what can we do to get it right?
read moreWe are living in a time of extraordinary concern about the negative consequences of online platforms and social media. We worry about the damage interactive technologies cause to society; about the impact to our mental health; and about the way that these platforms and their practices play to our most destructive impulses. Too often, the experiences we have online serve only to polarize, divide, and amplify the worst of human nature.
read more
This post was written by Habu software engineer, Martín Vargas-Vega, as part of our new #PassTheMic series.
read moreThis post was written by Ketch Developer Advocate, Ryan Overton, as part of our #PassTheMic series.
read moreThis post was written by Ketch Data Privacy & Compliance Specialist, Jocelyn Brunson, as part of our #PassTheMic series.
read moreThis post was written by Ketch Sales Director, Sheridan Rice, as part of our #PassTheMic series.
read moreThe super{set} studio model for early-stage venture It is still early days for the startup studio model. We know this because at super{set} we still get questions from experienced operators and investors. One investor that we’ve known for years recently asked us: “you have a fund — aren’t you just a venture capital firm with a different label?”
read more
This post was written by MarkovML Co-Founder, Lindsey Meyl, as part of our #PassTheMic series.
read moreWhere do the ideas come from? How do we build companies from scratch at super{set}?
read more
Coming up with new company ideas is easy: we take the day off, go to the park, and let the thoughts arrive like butterflies. Maybe we grab a coconut from that guy for a little buzz. While this describes a pleasant day in San Francisco, it couldn’t be further from the truth of what we do at super{set}. If only we could pull great ideas out of thin air. Unfortunately, it just doesn’t work that way.
read more
The wheel. Electricity. The automobile. These are technologies that had a disproportionate impact on the merits of their first practical use-case; but beyond that, because they enabled so much in terms of subsequent innovation, economic historians call them “general-purpose technologies” or GPTs...
read more
In our last post, we discussed how data is the new general-purpose technology and that is why at super{set} we form data-driven companies from scratch. But new technologies are a promise, not a sudden phase change.
read moreWhen a VC decides to invest in a company, they write up a document called the “Investment Memo” to convince their partners that the decision is sound. This document is a thorough analysis of the startup...
read moreThis post was written by Ketch Solutions Engineer, Sahiti Surapaneni, as part of our #PassTheMic series.
read moreWhat does it mean to be a super{set} co-founder and who do we look for? Why is the Head of Product the first co-founder we bring on board?
read more
Considered by some to be “America’s Second Independence Day,” Juneteenth has only recently entered the national zeitgeist. Celebrated on the third Saturday in June, it became a federal holiday just last year under President Joe Biden. Many companies are left wondering how to acknowledge the holiday. We sat down with Eskalera’s co-founder Dr. Tolonda Tolbert to get her take.
read more
Has someone looking to make a key hire ever told you that they are after “coachability”? Take a look at the Google ngram for “coachability” — off like a rocket ship since the Dot Com bubble, and it’s not even a real word! Coaching is everywhere in Silicon Valley...
read more
At super{set}, we stand side-by-side and pick up the shovel with our co-founders. Our first outside co-founder at a super{set} company is usually a Head of Product. Let’s unpack each portion of that title....
read more
Pankaj Rajan, co-founder at MarkovML, describes his Big Tech and startup experience and his journey to starting a company at super{set}.
read more
The decision to start a company – or to join an early stage one – is an act of the gut. On good days, I see it as a quasi-spiritual commitment. On bad days, I see it as sheer irrationality. Whichever it is, you’ll be happier if you acknowledge and calmly accept the lunacy of it all...
read moreTom and Vivek describe how building the best product is like planning the perfect heist: just like Danny Ocean, spend the time upfront to blueprint and stage, get into the casino with the insertion product, then drill into the safe and make your escape with the perfect product roadmap.
read more
Tom and Vivek discuss what the very first customers of a startup must look and act like, the staging and sequencing of setting up a sales operation with a feedback loop to product, and end with special guest Matt Kilmartin, CEO of Habu and former Chief Revenue Officer (CRO) of Krux, for his advice on effective entrepreneurial selling.
read more
Reflections after a summer as an engineering intern at super{set}
read more
Gal Vered of Checksum explains his rationale for leaving Google to co-found a super{set} company.
read more
The era of easy money - or at least, easy returns for VCs - is over. Tom Chavez is calling for VCs to show up in-person at August board meetings, get off the sidelines, and start adding real value and hands-on support for founders.
read more
Tom and Vivek describe what the ideal CEO looks like in the early stage, why great product people aren’t necessarily going to make great CEOs, and what the division of labor looks like between the CEO and the rest of the early team. They then bring on special guest Dane E. Holmes from super{set} company Eskalera to hear about his decision to join a super{set} company and his lessons for early-stage leadership.
read more
o11y - What is it? Why is it important? What are the tools you need? More importantly - how can you adopt an observability mindset? Habu Software Architect Siddharth Sharma reports from his session at super{summit} 2022.
read more
Othmane Rifki, Principal Applied Scientist at super{set} company Spectrum Labs, reports from the session he led at super{summit} 2022: "When Inference Meets Engineering." Using super{set} companies as examples, Othmane reveals the 3 ways that data science can benefit from engineering workflows to deliver business value.
read more
Head of Infrastructure at Ketch, and Kapstan Advisor, Anton Winter explains a few of the infrastructure and DevOps headaches he encounters every day.
read moreTom and Vivek jump on the pod for a special bonus episode to call BULLSHIT on VCs, CEOs, the “categorical shit,” and more. So strap yourselves in because the takes are HOT.
read more
The Move Accelerates the Rapidly Growing Startup Studio’s Mission to Lead the Next Generation of AI and Data-Driven Market Innovation and Success
read more
Announcing Jon Suarez-Davis (jsd) as super{set}’s Chief Commercial Officer: jsd tells us in his own words why he's joining super{set}
read moreTom and Vivek describe the lessons learned from fundraising at Rapt in 1999 - the height of the first internet bubble - through their experience at Krux - amid the most recent tech bubble. After sharing war stories, they describe how super{set} melds funding with hands-on entrepreneurship to set the soil conditions for long-term success.
read more
Tom and Vivek have come full circle: in this episode they’re talking about closed session board meetings in The {Closed} Session. They discuss their experience in board meetings - even some tense ones - as serial founders and how they approach board meetings today as both co-founders and seed investors of the companies coming out of the super{set} startup studio.
read more
Arthur Patterson, founder of venture capital firm Accel, sits down for a fireside chat with super{set} founding partner Tom Chavez as part of our biweekly super{set} Community Call. Arthur and Tom cover venture investing, company-building, and even some personal stories from their history together.
read moreArthur Patterson, the founder of venture capital firm Accel, sits down for a fireside chat with super{set} founding partner Tom Chavez as part of our biweekly super{set} Community Call.
read more
This month we pass the mic to Sagar Gaur, Software Engineer at super{set} MLOps company MarkovML, who shares with us his tips for working within a global startup with teams in San Francisco and Bengaluru, India
read more
Arthur Patterson, legendary VC and founder of Accel Partners, sits down with Tom Chavez to discuss insights into company building. Tom and Vivek review the tape on the latest episode of The {Closed} Session.
read more
Chris Fellowes, super{set} interned turned full time employee at super{set} portfolio company Kapstan, gives his 7 recommendations for how to turn an internship into a job at a startup.
read more
Kicking off the fourth season of the {Closed} Session podcast with a great topic and guest: Frida Polli, CEO and co-founder of pymetrics, which was recently acquired by Harver, joins us to talk about the critical role that technology and specifically AI and neuroscience can play in eliminating bias in hiring and beyond.
read more
Obsessive intensity. Pack animal nature. Homegrown hero vibes. Unyielding grit. A chip on the shoulder. That's who we look for to join exceptional teams.
read more
Go-to-market has entered a new operating environment. Enter: RevOps. We dig into the next solution space for super{set}, analyzing the paradigm shift in GTM and the data challenges a new class of company must solve.
read more.jpg)
We are delighted to share our new episode of the {Closed} Session podcast with guest Alyssa Hutnik. Alyssa looms large in the privacy world, and she’s been thinking deeply about the intersections of data, technology and the law for nearly two decades. She’s also the Chief Privacy and Data Security Architect at Ketch, a super{set} company, as well as a lawyer. Hope you enjoy the episode!
read more
super{set} startup studio portfolio company’s seed funding round was led by Forerunner Ventures with participation from Ulu Ventures Raise will enable boombox.io to accelerate product development on the way to becoming the winning creator platform for musicians globally
read more
On the heels of boombox.io's $7M seed fundraise led by Forerunner, Tom Chavez and Vivek Vaidya sit down with boombox co-founders India Lossman and Max Mathieu for a special episode straight from super{summit} 2023 in New Orleans!
read moreGo-to-market has entered a new operating environment. Enter: RevOps. We dig into the next solution space for super{set}, analyzing the paradigm shift in GTM and the data challenges a new class of company must solve.
read moreThe wheel. Electricity. The automobile. These are technologies that had a disproportionate impact on the merits of their first practical use-case; but beyond that, because they enabled so much in terms of subsequent innovation, economic historians call them “general-purpose technologies” or GPTs...
read moreThe decision to start a company – or to join an early stage one – is an act of the gut. On good days, I see it as a quasi-spiritual commitment. On bad days, I see it as sheer irrationality. Whichever it is, you’ll be happier if you acknowledge and calmly accept the lunacy of it all...
read moreo11y - What is it? Why is it important? What are the tools you need? More importantly - how can you adopt an observability mindset? Habu Software Architect Siddharth Sharma reports from his session at super{summit} 2022.
read moresuper{set} startup studio portfolio company’s seed funding round was led by Forerunner Ventures with participation from Ulu Ventures Raise will enable boombox.io to accelerate product development on the way to becoming the winning creator platform for musicians globally
read moreArthur Patterson, founder of venture capital firm Accel, sits down for a fireside chat with super{set} founding partner Tom Chavez as part of our biweekly super{set} Community Call. Arthur and Tom cover venture investing, company-building, and even some personal stories from their history together.
read moreThis post was written by Ketch Solutions Engineer, Sahiti Surapaneni, as part of our #PassTheMic series.
read moreHead of Infrastructure at Ketch, and Kapstan Advisor, Anton Winter explains a few of the infrastructure and DevOps headaches he encounters every day.
read moreAnnouncing Jon Suarez-Davis (jsd) as super{set}’s Chief Commercial Officer: jsd tells us in his own words why he's joining super{set}
read moreOthmane Rifki, Principal Applied Scientist at super{set} company Spectrum Labs, reports from the session he led at super{summit} 2022: "When Inference Meets Engineering." Using super{set} companies as examples, Othmane reveals the 3 ways that data science can benefit from engineering workflows to deliver business value.
read moreReflections after a summer as an engineering intern at super{set}
read moreHas someone looking to make a key hire ever told you that they are after “coachability”? Take a look at the Google ngram for “coachability” — off like a rocket ship since the Dot Com bubble, and it’s not even a real word! Coaching is everywhere in Silicon Valley...
read moreChris Fellowes, super{set} interned turned full time employee at super{set} portfolio company Kapstan, gives his 7 recommendations for how to turn an internship into a job at a startup.
read moreThe era of easy money - or at least, easy returns for VCs - is over. Tom Chavez is calling for VCs to show up in-person at August board meetings, get off the sidelines, and start adding real value and hands-on support for founders.
read moreWhen a VC decides to invest in a company, they write up a document called the “Investment Memo” to convince their partners that the decision is sound. This document is a thorough analysis of the startup...
read moreIn our last post, we discussed how data is the new general-purpose technology and that is why at super{set} we form data-driven companies from scratch. But new technologies are a promise, not a sudden phase change.
read moreThis post was written by MarkovML Co-Founder, Lindsey Meyl, as part of our #PassTheMic series.
read moreThis post was written by Ketch Developer Advocate, Ryan Overton, as part of our #PassTheMic series.
read moreObsessive intensity. Pack animal nature. Homegrown hero vibes. Unyielding grit. A chip on the shoulder. That's who we look for to join exceptional teams.
read moreThis post was written by Ketch Sales Director, Sheridan Rice, as part of our #PassTheMic series.
read moreAt super{set}, we stand side-by-side and pick up the shovel with our co-founders. Our first outside co-founder at a super{set} company is usually a Head of Product. Let’s unpack each portion of that title....
read moreComing up with new company ideas is easy: we take the day off, go to the park, and let the thoughts arrive like butterflies. Maybe we grab a coconut from that guy for a little buzz. While this describes a pleasant day in San Francisco, it couldn’t be further from the truth of what we do at super{set}. If only we could pull great ideas out of thin air. Unfortunately, it just doesn’t work that way.
read moreThe Move Accelerates the Rapidly Growing Startup Studio’s Mission to Lead the Next Generation of AI and Data-Driven Market Innovation and Success
read moreThis month we pass the mic to Sagar Gaur, Software Engineer at super{set} MLOps company MarkovML, who shares with us his tips for working within a global startup with teams in San Francisco and Bengaluru, India
read morePankaj Rajan, co-founder at MarkovML, describes his Big Tech and startup experience and his journey to starting a company at super{set}.
read moreThis post was written by Habu software engineer, Martín Vargas-Vega, as part of our new #PassTheMic series.
read moreWe are living in a time of extraordinary concern about the negative consequences of online platforms and social media. We worry about the damage interactive technologies cause to society; about the impact to our mental health; and about the way that these platforms and their practices play to our most destructive impulses. Too often, the experiences we have online serve only to polarize, divide, and amplify the worst of human nature.
read moreGal Vered of Checksum explains his rationale for leaving Google to co-found a super{set} company.
read moreConsidered by some to be “America’s Second Independence Day,” Juneteenth has only recently entered the national zeitgeist. Celebrated on the third Saturday in June, it became a federal holiday just last year under President Joe Biden. Many companies are left wondering how to acknowledge the holiday. We sat down with Eskalera’s co-founder Dr. Tolonda Tolbert to get her take.
read moreThe super{set} studio model for early-stage venture It is still early days for the startup studio model. We know this because at super{set} we still get questions from experienced operators and investors. One investor that we’ve known for years recently asked us: “you have a fund — aren’t you just a venture capital firm with a different label?”
read moreThis post was written by Ketch Data Privacy & Compliance Specialist, Jocelyn Brunson, as part of our #PassTheMic series.
read more