Weeks 01—03
Ideate
A thesis gets written up against a market we already know, with the three things that must be true stated on one page.
GATE — Signed thesis + kill criteria
LONDON VENTURE STUDIO — EST. 2021
We start the companies we want to exist.
Startup Garage builds ventures in-house on a twenty-week clock — thesis to incorporation — then recruits the founding CEO and writes the first cheque.
The studio model
Twenty weeks from whiteboard to a company with a CEO.
Four gates. Most theses never clear the second — that is the point.
Weeks 04—08
Validate
Twenty-plus conversations with the exact buyer named in the thesis. We look for the fastest disproof, not encouragement.
GATE — Paying pilot, or the venture dies
Weeks 09—16
Build
The studio bench ships the narrowest product a customer will pay for — product, design, and engineering in-house.
GATE — Second and third customer
Weeks 17—20
Spin out
The venture is incorporated, a founding CEO is recruited in, and our first cheque lands on their first day.
GATE — Company, CEO, capital
Why a studio
Great companies rarely start with a lone genius —they start with a system. We run every idea through the same pipeline, kill most of them early, and put real capital behind the few that survive.
12+
Startups built
$40M+
Follow-on capital raised
25+
Founders recruited
6
Sectors we build in
01
Ideas are cheap
Every concept faces the same thesis pipeline and kill criteria. Most die on the whiteboard — by design.
02
Evidence decides
Prototypes reach paying customers in weeks. Signed demand — not opinion — earns a venture its build.
03
Founders finish it
We recruit founding CEOs into validated businesses and stay on the board through Series A.
What a founding CEO inherits on day one
CapitalPre-seed at spin-out, follow-on through Series A
ProductA shipped v1, not a prototype
CustomersSigned pilots that already pay
TeamFounding CEO recruited, first hires briefed
BoardStudio partner in the room through Series A
NetworkCorporate partners, LPs, and operators on call
Twelve companies that did not exist before we started them
All venturesNorthwind Pay
Cargo Copilot
Ledgerline
Buildstock
Practice OS
Ironclad
Tradeflow
Project Halo
Venture Nine
Venture Ten
Fintech
Payments, credit, and compliance rails that widen access to financial services.
Applied AI
Software that removes entire back-office workflows across industries.
Digital Health
Tools that make care more proactive, connected, and affordable.
Cybersecurity
Trust infrastructure for a digital-first economy.
B2B Marketplaces
Digitizing fragmented supply chains where trust is the product.
Sustainability
Climate innovation for a cleaner, more resilient future.
Spotlight — spun out 2022
Northwind Pay
FINTECH · SERIES A
THE VENTURE
Northwind Pay moves money between regional SMEs and their overseas suppliers — settling in hours, not days, at a fraction of the correspondent-banking spread. Built in the garage over 20 weeks, spun out in 2022, now serving importers across three markets.
FROM THE FOUNDING CEO
“The studio handed us a validated business, not a slide deck. We had signed pilots and a working v1 on the day I started — my first job as CEO was to sell, not to guess.”
Elena Vasquez — Founding CEO, Northwind Pay
RESULT
90 days
idea to first revenue
3 pilots
enterprise pilots signed
£1.2M
pre-seed round closed
The bench
Who actually
builds them.
Product, design, engineering, and capital sit in the same room. Ventures borrow the bench until they can hire their own.
— Hover a photo to see details.
Meet the bench
Amara Okafor
Studio Lead
Elena Vasquez
Head of Build
James Mercer
Investments
Priya Raman
Founder Recruiting
Sofia Lindqvist
Operations
Daniel Abara
Validation
Marcus Hale
Design
Nina Torres
Engineering
Playbooks, post-mortems, and studio math — written from inside the garage.
All notes
Contact
Let's start
something.
Talk to the studio
Partnership, LP enquiries, or you just want to know how the model works.
hello@startupgarageltd.co.ukBuild with us
Bring your own company — or step in as founding CEO of one we've already validated.
Start an application