How We Work

EVALUATION CRITERIA

Total addressable market size

(At least $1B+)

Competitive differentiation

Achievable go-to-market motion

Technological feasibility

Market timing

Idea vetting

We conduct a thorough assessment of ideas and put those through our rubric with advisory input to determine go/no-go on the startup.

Green light

For our startups, we co-create by working with one or two co-founders to build the company from scratch.

Funding

We put in the first money and provide crucial assistance and mentorship on raising a seed round.

Talent

We allocate our in-house team of experienced early-stage builders and innovators to accelerate the time to market and minimize early risks.

Our process

Idea Phase

The 24 and Up team will stress-test the idea to validate the solution for market need, conducting customer discovery, competitive research, and consulting with domain space experts and advisors before evauating against our own rubric.

Validate Phase

With a vetted opportunity, the next step is access to in-house talent resources to formalize a product vision, define value propositions and use cases, and start a proof of concept or prototype product. Together with the CEO/founder(s), we’ll craft a pitch deck outlining the opportunity, the product, and the strategy.

Pre-Seed Phase

Dedicated 24 and Up engineers will build a Minimum Viable Product and we’ll begin recruiting early design partners. The leadership team will work to secure pre-seed funding to continue the march towards First Customer Release.

Build Phase

In the Build phase CEO/founder(s) will hire their founding team, focus on early customer acquisition, and work to hit early financial milestones in pursuit of Seed funding.

Up Phase

Around the 24 month mark, the startup company has initial customers, an early team in place, and a maturing product roadmap. 24 and Up guides them towards their first institutional round of fundraising, while continuing with board representation and advisory as the startup grows.

The studio co-founder model

Co-founder support

The studio as a co-founder serves as a network multiplier for founding teams. We bring our expansive network of investors, talent, and potential customers to support in the early days of the business. We help to make connections across geos and industries to source domain expertise, investment opportunities, and future growth potential. We understand the bar is higher than ever for fundraising. We help to refine messaging, respond to trends in the market, and design a financial model that optimizes funding. Our defined development process and timelines ensure that we monitor and manage resourcing to budget during the critical early days of funding.

Experience

As a startup studio we offer the benefit of insights at scale, starting with the cohesion of a single team who share an understanding of roadblocks, common missteps, and best practices that can accelerate or haunt an early stage business. We are able to de-risk and crowdsource solutions across our projects. Our centralized resources assist in company set-up including legal, operational support, HR, and finance so the founder focus is on creating the right product to make the business a success.

CEO development

In some cases, the studio validates an idea before bringing on a CEO, and other times co-create companies from day one with a founder. In either case we will partner with a CEO who has a compelling vision and strong point of view early in the process. Our experienced leadership team and network of advisors offer mentorship and expertise, whether a CEO is a repeat founder or first time entrepreneur, as they make their first pitches, build their foundational team, and adapt as their business scales.

How we work