Kaj started by explaining the inspiration for Ivy Innovation Studio:

• Wanted to develop a better model for early-stage venture capital and entrepreneurship.
• Brought together an A-team of early-stage innovators whose broad goal is to build multiple technology startups together.
• This model enabled them to engage, incentivize, and inspire those early contributors to stick with the team beyond the first successful product, instead of losing them to another company as they pursue their next challenge.
• Key to this model is a set of incentives and equity structures that allow innovators to benefit in a way that compares to being a founding member of a startup, retaining ownership and upside for what they contribute.

The innovation studio model was designed to solve the following problems:

• Resolved a key problem in technology startups and the venture capital community: the loss of time and investment when a great team splits up
• Ivy Softworks’ unique funding term structure enabled the team to experiment with multiple big ideas, staying focused on developing the strongest of them without having to worry about the usual stability and financing risks of startups
• From an investor’s perspective, their capital is better utilized by leveraging it across multiple ideas with the same A-team, rather than betting on just one idea built from scratch by a new team

So, was Ivy Innovation Studio successful? Yes, however, all of the 34 plus employees became employees of a promising concept called Atlas Informatics as of April 22, 2016.

Atlas Informatics: The first complete personal search index, with the customer at the center and surrounded by everything the customer interacts with digitally. Data is accumulated automatically across all one’s devices, apps & data.

Atlas Slide

About the Speaker