Why launching makersPad ?

BACKGROUND

On the one hand, countless great ideas might not individually be worth billions of dollars, but have the strong potential to be profitable, delightful, and fill a real need or problem. Countless talented people, scattered across the globe, don’t even get a chance to make their vision a reality, as they fear failures or don’t even know how to get started.

On the other hand, 90% of start-ups will fail, because of the following reasons:

#1 Lack of market needs.

Not solving a large enough pain-point in a scalable way.

#2 Ignoring users.

Not putting user research and customer experience at the heart of the strategy.

#3 Running out of cash.

Consequence of not finding product market/fit fast enough. Also, not paying adequate attention to figuring out a realistic Cost of Customer Acquisition (CAC) that shall be significantly lower than the Customer Life Time Value (CLTV).

#4 Lack of focus.

Mostly because of a toxic ecosystem.

#5 Not the right team.

Co-founders fronting issues to steer a Minimum Viable Product. Mistake and sometimes ego for not seeking a small amount of external help.

This situation is both tragic and wasteful.

CURRENT SOLUTIONS

There are two common structures on mission to helping initial start-up building and reducing their risks of failure: Incubators and Accelerators.

Not all business incubators are the same, and vary widely in services and resources provided. The average incubator actually has two full-time staff and 25 businesses. That’s a lot of service to provide for two people. So are Incubators really providing all the services they say ? Most entrepreneurs we talked to find Incubators invaluable. Entrepreneurs are left alone in defining and executing the entire business.

What early stage start ups need is daily accompaniment at both operational and strategic level; such a deep dive involvement is better found into accelerators, not incubators.

Most accelerators on-board few start ups having already iterated their business model. Accelerators ensure immersive education, focused attention, compressing years’ worth of learning into a period of a few months, called batches. However, do start up ask themselves what is the tacit term sheet?

We believe neither Incubators nor Accelerators are un-locking entrepreneurship innovation at scale.

TRENDS

Sharing and collaborative economy.

The on-demand services create a socio-economic system that redefines the way society as a whole access and share resources; The sharing economy includes co-creation, which reduces uncertainty.

Knowledge economy.

Knowledge worker produces ideas, knowledge, and information. We believe that labor costs will become progressively less important, and traditional economic concepts such as scarcity of resources and economies of scale will cease to apply.

Remote working is booming in every corner of the globe.

We think that going remote with a distributed team makes businesses more successful. Work with the best talent (wherever they are), eliminate expensive office overhead, play a big part in reducing our carbon footprint.

These society shifts contribute to the creation of the venture building (also known as start up factories or start up studios) ecosystem. Start up studios help enhance access to resources by having most of them internally, and by building networks and ecosystems from which more on-demand resources can be instantly pulled.

We believe entrepreneurs should take these concepts to the next levels by transforming the startup business model, re-configuring solidarity, understanding knowledge is a common good, and, ultimately shaping the way society generates income.

Can we unlock true collective intelligence ?

THE RISE OF START UP STUDIOS

Start up studios are organizations that - a bit similar to Music studios – produce multiple startups in parallel, with in-house resources, in a sustainable way.

Studios have most start up building capabilities (like development, design, marketing… and of course cash) in-house; this allows entrepreneurs to focus on what matters most: product, customer, growth.

Pillars for a thriving startup studio are:

Its Core Team.

Building the founding team of a studio is even a bigger challenge than building the founding team of a start up! Such core team also needs a mindset that enables them to work on multiple start ups in parallel.

Processes.

Tailor Lean Startup, Design Thinking, Agile development frameworks work, in a mass-production mode; from ideation, to resource allocation, through Minimum Viable Products, then spin off and/or exit with support for transition.

Initial funding.

Scaling in building products and businesses demands a large amount of cash (either Studios Founder cash, Doing Agency work, Find Corporate or Family offices funding)

Do current studios unlock entrepreneurship innovation at scale ?

We don’t believe so.

TOXIC ECOSYSTEM

We believe that the current structures are giving the chance to only a happy few to make their vision a reality. Countless great ideas from thousands Project Holder’s individuals, ready to share their valuable knowledge and engage their savings worth several 10 K€ for an Minimum Viable Product, are lost.

As we already highlighted, this is both tragic and wasteful.

We live in a world where competitiveness relies on innovation. Clayton Christensen simply summarizes that a disruptive innovation concerns any simple, cheap and easy-to-access service or product solution, which is actually made easier by digital.

What if one did not have to make a company before making a product or service?

Why creating a legal entity, finding and renting a space to work, buying the necessary assets etc shall be the first step in the entrepreneurship innovation journey ?

This company-first mentality is toxic, stressful, and seems to be un-questioned.

We believe such a way of thinking indeed limits the number and kind of great enough products or services that are born in the world every year.

WHAT IF ?

What if a shared-brain could power a Pad, similar to a musicPad, orchestrating the birth of digital Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) ?

What if anyone, makers-minded, could be given the chance to start an innovation entrepreneur's journey, friction-less ?

At makersPad, we ambition to unlock innovation journey for anyone, at scale. We aim to focus on B2B SaaS business.

WHAT DO YOU THINK ?