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LeadsCon and WorkBook6 to launch Partnership Marketing Summit
LeadsCon and WorkBook6 to launch Partnership Marketing Summit
Earlier today, WorkBook6 and LeadsCon announced the formation of Partnership Marketing Summit, which will take place…
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What makes great sales people great?
What makes great sales people great?
"Don't let them try to upsell you There's a reason they make chocolate and vanilla, too If there's any doubt, then…
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JT Benton posted thisAlmost every week, someone from a university asks me how to sell a venture studio inside their institution. It comes up frequently enough I thought I’d write about it in a more 1:many format. Honestly, the first step is often the hardest: building consensus. Here’s how that typically goes, and where it stalls: 1. A champion understands the model. They can’t unsee it. The individual gains conviction that this is the right thing for their institution, so they begin to socialize it. 2. General support surfaces, but with lot’s of ambiguity. Vibes check is a go, but the actual definition of the opportunity itself begins to drift as more people weigh in. 3. The comparison cycle starts. “Is it a studio, or an incubator? Will there be pitch contests? We’ve tried that before. Should we call it an accelerator? I’ve heard those are cool!” The champion just can’t get anyone above or around them to see the opportunity the same way. Typically, this is where progress stalls. It’s too hard to get everyone on the same page. We haven’t provided enough context to our constituents, so they fill in the blanks on their own. Lately, though, I’ve seen a growing roster of folks navigate this process really well and get to the other side. Here’s how they’re doing it: 1. The champion starts early and sets the foundation. “This is what a studio is. This is how it’s different from other models. This is what it might look like, here. Here are some examples of what this has looked like amongst our peers.” 2. When this lands, they begin with a nominal investment in the design. The business model, the ecosystem map, the thesis, the flow of capital, governance structure. With an eye toward concision, we help them frame the opportunity for the stakeholders and give a clear map of the build. The folks who are winning aren’t smarter or even better resourced - they’re just cadencing the process and filling in the blanks for their stakeholders before they heuristically fill them on their own. If you’re studio curious and trying to map out the next steps, let’s talk about it.
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JT Benton posted thisSomething I’ve seen happen … a bunch. A university launches a venture building program. The idea is to create a vehicle that can move faster than the institution around it. The first hire is made, and the whole thing slows right back down to the institution’s normal pace. This breaks in two places: First, the roles are still sourced through the university's job architecture. The role spec values academic bona fides (a PhD, for example) but the operator they need is someone who has built and sold companies. Second, they play defense with capital. Institutions are used to defending their resources instead of allocating them into risky builds. A venture builder’s job is to make a lot of small bets quickly and kill the bad ones fast. This cadence runs at a right angle to the schedule imposed by the host organization. Y’all, nobody is trying to be slow. These processes make sense at the scale of a university; the problem is that a venture builder operates at a pace that doesn’t match to the parent institution's clock. I see the fix as structural. Set the mandate and give the builder entity a clear understanding of what is expected to produce. Then, let it cook. If the builder is accountable for the outcome, give it the agency to deliver it. This is about speed, not control. A venture builder that cannot run at the appropriate pace is going to fail to deliver.
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JT Benton shared thisSharing for reach!JT Benton shared thisAnnouncing the Call for Papers and Contributions to the 2nd Annual Symposium on Venture Builders. (Link in the comments.) The Symposium, which will be held at Wolfson College, Cambridge on 29 April, 2027, brings together academics researching the topic with practitioners-- across the course of the day we anticipate 10 contributions from academics and 10 from practitioners. John-Erik Hassel and I are the co-convenors, and we are aware of numerous interesting collaborations that arose from the first Symposium earlier this year. The Call for Papers is seeking academic work in progress or completed papers on 1) Models and Institutional Design; 2) Governance, Incentives and Dynamics; 3) Effectiveness, Value Creation and Systemic Outcomes. The Call for Contributions is looking for practitioner talks addressing recurring problems, difficult decisions, an unexpected result or an unresolved tension. This year, we are especially emphasising submissions relating to corporate venture building-- please spread the word to folks you know working in/on that domain. The deadline for both calls is 28 February 2027. Looking forward to welcoming a fantastic group to Wolfson to advance the "state of the art" in Venture Building. Maja Sophie Klimaschewski Isabell Welpe Timothy Barnes Christopher Haley Jim Shaikh Ekaterina Murzacheva, PhD Dr. Constanze Coelsch-Foisner Davide Viglialoro Dr. Vincent Göttel Denis Kovalevich James Mawson James Cole Helen Alexander Phil Clements, CFA, CAIA, FDP Andrew Hatcher Renato Del Grosso Ferdinand Mittermeier Anna Chechel James Hayward Thomas West, CFA Vincent Kapur Huw Thomas-Cotter Nikolaj Penava Richard Anson Juliana Emmanuelli Olfa Chelbi Ayobami Lemboye, ACA 🔮 Michael Eichelberger Trent Greenland Hitomi Ishida Andrew Kell Pavani Aysola Linn Clabburn Rishi Chowdhury James Tabor Coco Newton Adam Juhasz
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JT Benton shared thisI post a lot about venture building in and around our research institutions. Today I decided to take a step back and explain why this matters so much to me. I think we’re at a critical place and I worry that we're over-thinking what it takes to meet this moment. First let's frame the problem. Our innovation backlog is growing by the day. U.S. universities spend more than $117 billion a year on research (NSF, FY2024). The IP resulting from this research has untold value to our economy and our national security. Typically, it follows one of two paths: a licensing deal or it sits on the shelf. This is unpacked for me every day by the folks tasked with making these ecosystems run better. The gap is actually super-clear: The end-point for research is just too far away from the starting point for investors. Some people call this the valley of death - the distance that exists between institutional research and investible ventures. The solution isn’t monolithic programing, it’s just bridging this gap. You can call that bridge whatever you want - a studio, an innovation hub, whatever. The noun isn’t nearly as important as the verb it performs: venture building. A platform designed to build companies. That's what's missing on most campuses and in most regions. A handful of schools and economic development orgs are pioneering this change right now. For others, it will require a shift in thinking - changing what gets measured and designing for a different outcome. If you’re leading a commercialization, venture building or research function in an institutional setting, I want to hear your story. Ping me 1:1 and let’s connect, live.
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JT Benton shared this🔥🎯🏆 Neal Ghosh’s newsletter is live. Ch. 1 is a banger!JT Benton shared thisA university commercialization group had a venture concept with an external investor with a check in hand. The venture was still waiting on a person nobody put in place. I keep seeing this stall. A normal startup forms its team first and goes looking for money. A venture builder runs that sequence backwards. The thesis and the technology come first, the money shows up, and the team comes last. So the bottleneck moves onto a person or people nobody budgeted for. Pull the word "talent" apart and you find three jobs. Startup programs budget for one person to do all of them: a founder, paid very little, expected to carry the venture through every stage. For a long time I misread why these ventures stall. That is why it is the first thing I wanted to write about. Decision Surfaces is my newsletter: a place, twice a month, to think through the decisions venture builders get stuck on. Issue 1 is attached to this post. It names the three jobs, where I had it wrong, and the belief that stops builders from acting even once they agree. If you run a program with money waiting and a venture stalled, who are you still waiting on? Subscribe if you want the next one.
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JT Benton shared thisAll the feels for this one. I just love the way Myrto Lalacos brings people together, and I can't wait for my partner Neal to share what's happening in the studio world RIGHT NOW. If you've followed my content on venture building and still need a little help connecting the dots, this is an excellent place to start. Step one: Register for this event. Step 2 (optional): shoot me a DM to schedule time to chat about your venture builder.JT Benton shared thisNeal Ghosh, Managing Partner at 9point8 Collective, is speaking at the Global Venture Studio Innovation Half Day. Neal is an economist turned venture builder. Previously at Amazon, he led AI initiatives and helped set up the company's first internal venture studio. He went on to co-found The Venture Studio Forum, a community for the founders, operators and investors building studios. Through 9point8 Collective, he co-developed the Venture Studio Index, an open standard for benchmarking studios, built from operating inside 20+ studios and researching around 500 more worldwide. That research and his wider experience helping set up venture studios around the world is the foundation of his keynote, The State of Venture Studios 2026: Models, Capital and Who Is Pulling Ahead, covering: → Which studio models are producing investable companies, and why → Where capital for studios and studio funds is flowing now → The metrics LPs and studio builders can use to judge a studio's performance For studio founders and emerging GPs, LPs weighing a first studio allocation, and operators considering building a studio of their own. Thursday 29 October, 8 to 11am PT. Live online. Scan to find out more and register. Hosted by Myrto Lalacos of The Emerging VC, Vineet Shah of 8 Clockwise and Vish Rao Dumpeti of Forward Share Ventures. #venturestudios #venturecapital #fundmanagers
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JT Benton posted thisI coached both of my boys’ basketball teams when they were younger. Every season (typically early) someone would try something unnecessarily complicated. A behind the back pass, a 360 layup, a way-too-deep three. The kids were trying to look cool. I always did the same thing, whether the shot went in or not. I pulled them out and said “You know what’s really cool? Points on the board.” They’d nod, go back in the game, and focus on getting an easy bucket. I’m pretty loosey goosey with the sports analogies, but I think this translates really well to venture building. I've watched so many startups spend cycles on things that don’t actually move them toward validation. Big, public demo days. Weeks polishing a deck. Practiced monologued pitches. You know what’s really cool? A paying customer. It’s simple proof that you solve a problem and that the solution you offer is worth paying for. I'm not saying skip investor prep or ignore community building. I'm saying if your venture has a trophy and no revenue, you're measuring the wrong things. Treat the market as the judge, and know that it votes with its wallet. What does your validation process actually look like before you call a venture ready to scale?
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JT Benton reacted on thisJT Benton reacted on thisToday we made some changes to 9point8collective.com, and to the platform behind it. The website is the smaller part. What changed is how a venture builder gets intelligence about its own operation. I watched the same thing happen across several builders. A university or a corporate group did the hard work of designing its program. The work went into documents. The documents went into a drawer. Six months later, the operating context and strategy had moved, and nobody caught the drift. The simple idea we adopted - we stopped ending with documents. The work now lives in a digital twin: one model of how your venture builder invests, spends, decides and reports. When the context, goals, and plans change, the model changes with it, and every insight reads from it. Your team works in it every week. Behind every insight is our research on hundreds of venture-building operations around the globe. The people who build ventures have a hard job, and an important one. They build better when they intelligence they can act on every week. If you know someone working on a venture builder, introduce us.
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JT Benton posted thisYou build more trust by listening to people than you do by talking at them. Venture builders need to hear this. Our models are complex and the concepts are often novel to the stakeholders we’re coming to for support. For many, the instinct is to over-prepare and get everything polished. That’s a monologic game: prepare and pitch so well that the outcome is irrefutable. I don’t think it works. At all. An independent studio operator told me about a meeting with a group of university commercialization officers. They expected him to pitch. Someone kicked off the meeting with a half-true joke. “What’s your spiel?” For many, the instinct would be to pull up a presentation. Instead, he just explained how his studio builds companies. How it permeates its networks. How it decides which ventures to take on next. How money and ideas move through the operation. Plain language, no theater. He pulled up the materials that mattered most in each section of the discussion, but only as a backdrop. His words and body language steered the meeting. It became a dialogue. The TTO officers interrupted him and asked questions. That’s a good thing. They even started floating ideas for collaboration. They stopped sizing him up and started leaning in. The meeting ended with a mutual agreement to collaborate, and a clear path forward. I think there’s a really important lesson here. Show up as humans, ditch the polish. Share what you know and why you’re passionate about it. Give your counterparts the opportunity to do the same. If you’re working to advance a venture building concept and you’re not sure how to get the support you need, let’s chat. I’d love to know what you’re working on.
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JT Benton reacted on thisJT Benton reacted on thisWe support founders who are PRE idea. And the biggest failure patterns we’ve seen in venture creation is an emotional one, not a strategic one. Founders pursue what seems like the “right” idea or a “good” idea on paper. But the idea doesn’t light them up! At best, it’s a grind to some success. At worst, it’s a long arduous journey to nothing.
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JT Benton reacted on thisJT Benton reacted on thisThis morning I texted a mentor to see how he was doing, and I found out a few hours later from his business partner that he died on Friday. He had been going through some things. I had known him a few months. On our first call he asked how I was, and he meant it, which almost never happens on a call that’s supposed to be about business. So I told him everything, the good, the bad, and the ugly, right away, to someone I had known for about as long as it takes to microwave leftovers. Then he told me his, and neither of us flinched. I was wearing a black striped Paul Smith sweater. He said he wanted one just like it if he could get me an investor check. He was helping with some investor outreach, we were working on content about the future of work, he was wildly accomplished, and he still spent part of our first call angling for my sweater. He was one of the warmest, most genuine people I have ever met. That one conversation skipped years of dinners and laughs and intellectual sparring. Some people are unicorns that way. They touch you in a few seconds and it sticks. I didn’t know him long and I’m grieving anyway, mostly for what was coming. I know I’m not the only one feeling it today. I’ve spent years thinking about how we can build life and work in this new world, and he believed in phae. So I’m going to keep moving forward, and keep trying to give people some hope in a world where it can be hard to find. Who did you click with in the first few seconds and do they know it? Make sure to let them know.
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JT Benton reacted on thisThis great opportunity to invest in BioLattice came to us via our membership with Nittany Angels (accredited investor friends of Penn State University: join us - It's a great group full of inspiring folks!). BioLattice is on track for a medical breakthrough that can have hugely positive impacts on the lives of millions of people per year while reducing treatment costs. CorneaClear is a bioengineering marvel with massive social impact; boisei labs is honored to be able to help support its continued development and then scaled adoption. The quoted post has a link to our own news story about this investment. Here also is a story from Penn State: https://lnkd.in/eJ5jvtsQJT Benton reacted on thisWe have joined BioLattice's Seed funding round, investing with Nittany Angels to fund a bioengineered solution addressing cornea blindness. While the current standard of care for cornea blindness is transplanted donor tissue, only 1 in 70 patients who need a donor cornea receive one, and there are often transplant complications. BioLattice addresses these and other limitations, at lower cost! We see massive social benefits arising from more accessible vision restoration and are proud to be able to support this great product and inspiring team. See our full story here: https://lnkd.in/euT3SW-F
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JT Benton reacted on thisJT Benton reacted on thisI just got the green light on something I've been working toward for over a year. Eshelman Innovation at UNC is launching the AI Venture Innovation Lab. Here's the backstory. We built Kalphai, an agentic AI platform that runs our Kairos venture studio end to end. It does the intake, the assessment, the program management, and the coaching. It's live on real faculty deal flow today and deploying to partner academic medical centers. What we learned building it: AI can take hundreds of hours off a university innovation team's plate. What nobody has figured out, including us, is whether it produces better companies. That's a research question, and nobody is answering it. The Lab exists to answer it. We're hiring two Research Assistant Professors: (1) Venture Methodology, to formalize how AI-enabled venture creation works and measure whether it beats the conventional path across multiple institutions. (2) Applied AI and Data Governance, to prove that agents running on sensitive institutional data behave correctly, stay calibrated, and keep each institution's data its own. These are faculty appointments on a production platform with real multi-site data. No teaching load, no tenure clock, and a direct line into how universities commercialize research in the GenAI era. Postings go up through UNC HR soon. If you're a researcher who'd rather study the thing while helping build it, or you know one, I'd love to talk.
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