If you are starting to familiarize yourself with the entrepreneurial ecosystem, you may have heard of a term that is increasingly common in our country: 'venture builders'. In many cases, this concept is confused with that of accelerator or incubator, however, there are significant differences between them.
The venture builder is understood as a kind of factory for emerging companies. Their way of proceeding is usually to adapt ideas or business models that have proven to have some traction or work in other countries or markets and to try to replicate them and apply them to the local market. In other words, they use 'the same formula' or template to create new startups. In addition to providing this basis, The venture builder usually provides resources such as offices and services such as legal, administrative, technical, etc. What he captures from outside is talent. Thus, it is common for these figures to organize days to find the entrepreneurs who best fit each of the startups they shape from scratch. They are going to look for the team of co-founders, identifying the best CEO, COO, CTO, etc. for each particular project. With this, we can already deduce why these 'factories' are the same as an incubator or an accelerator. They share with them their mission to give impetus to a company that has just been born, however, a venture builder does not act as an external figure who acts as a springboard, finding the startup already set up and with its team of co-founders configured. What it does is form it ad hoc.Another detail that differentiates them is that incubators and accelerators in many cases are left with a fairly small percentage of equity, or they may not even ask for participation.. However, it's common for venture builders to appropriate a significant amount. By contributing practically everything, except the execution and the workforce, it is understood that they own the project, with more than 50% of their capital.
Venture builders Made in Spain
In Spain we have some well-known venture builders that have been founded by important figures in the entrepreneurial world in our country. This is the case of Antai Venture Builder, created by Gerard Olivé and Marc Vicente in 2012. It has resulted in such interesting projects as the app for buying and selling second-hand products Wallapop. Another example is Venture Builder core, driven by Carlos Blanco. Nuclio was created in 2016 and has become known for its Nuclio Weekends. Some of the startups that have 'manufactured' are Housfy, Finteca or the subscription jewelry rental service Verone.
A different model
As a separate case, we can talk about the so-called 'corporate venture builders'. They are a kind of factory for startups but launched by large corporations. In other words, it would combine a typical venture builder with the scope of a corporate accelerator. In Spain, the first corporate venture builder would be Byld, born from Sonar Ventures and formed by executives from companies such as Banco Santander, Coca Cola, NTT Docomo or Rocket Internet
