Toronto-based TribalScale has launched the $100 million Venture Studios program, which will create startups in the blockchain, AI, and voice space over the next five years.
TribalScale is the largest investor in the program, and will also have corporate, institutional, and angel investors participate in the fund. Venture Studios will launch with four industry vertical programs in financial services, automotive, media, and travel and hospitality.
The executives behind Venture Studios will donate five percent of the profits to diversity and charity causes.
“We built this platform from the ground-up based on our entrepreneurial experience and corporate rolodexes. All great entrepreneurs should have access to this – we are flipping the model and unfairly stacking the deck in their favor,” said Sheetal Jaitly, CEO of TribalScale. “Venture Studios supercharges the best ideas, gets them, captive customers, early, and takes them globally from day one.”
The company has been working on developing the program over the past year. Kirstine Stewart, who recently joined the team as president and chief revenue officer, said that the company’s developments in the voice and AI space in Venture Studios are part of what brought her to the company.
“Venture Studios has assembled a strong team made up of entrepreneurs, executives, and technologists,” said Stewart. “Collectively our team has invested in or sat on the boards of dozens of startups over the past twenty years, achieving many successful exits. This team has ‘been there and done that’ and are experts in conceiving, building, and scaling disruptive digital ideas.”
TribalScale has partnered and worked with early-stage entrepreneurs on their ideas through Venture Studios, including Vouchr, AskTheDoctor, and WorkTango, which are leveraging the TribalScale platform. This year, the company expanded its focus to include ideation and scaling of startups, including Decibal, an AI and voice-based platform, and Every Financial, which offers a bank account for small business.
TribalScale will be offering startups $500,000 in cash and support to accepted companies.
TribalScale will be offering startups $500,000 in cash and support to accepted companies, with follow-on capital for promising startups. According to The Globe and Mail, over 14 weeks, startups will help entrepreneurs from the ideas phase to development of MVP in exchange for equity decided on a case-by-case basis. The studio is looking for both early-stage companies and entrepreneurs with strong ideas.
“Over the past decade, enterprises have invested heavily in corporate innovation labs. The question is, where should the next hundreds of billions of dollars of budgets be spent to level up enterprise innovation output? We believe the next model for innovation labs should leverage innovation from both inside and outside of an enterprise,” said Roger Chabra, chief innovation officer of TribalScale. “To truly achieve innovation DNA within their ranks, enterprises need to leverage the smarts and hustle of great entrepreneurs, and they need strong platforms and processes from partners like TribalScale. That is what Venture Studios is all about.”
The executives behind Venture Studios will donate five percent of the profits to diversity and charity causes. Its first partners are Move The Dial and the Upside Foundation.