The Four Instruments

February 2017. An entrepreneur I was trying to recruit asked me a question that stopped me cold: “What’s the difference between you and a regular investor?”

I started listing things: “We provide capital, mentorship, connections, resources…”

He cut me off. “So does an investor. They give money and advice. Why would I give you 60% of my company for that?”

Fair question. And I realized I didn’t have a clear answer.

That conversation forced me to articulate exactly what a venture builder does that an investor doesn’t. Over the next few months, working with our portfolio companies and reflecting on what actually moved the needle for them, I developed a framework: the Four Instruments.

These aren’t abstract concepts. They’re the specific, measurable ways a builder creates value for its startups. If a builder can’t actively deploy all four instruments, they’re not actually a builder; they’re just an investor with extra steps.

The Four Instruments Framework

Every interaction between a builder and its portfolio companies falls into one of four categories:

1. Control Instruments: How the builder maintains oversight and governance
2. Transfer Instruments: Resources the builder provides directly to startups
3. Motivation Instruments: Mechanisms that keep entrepreneurs committed and aligned
4. Outsourcing Instruments: Operational tasks the builder handles so entrepreneurs don’t have to

The following table provides an inventory of resources and assets the builder contributes, classified according to the four instruments:

TABLE 1-1
The Four Instruments of builder value creation
Control Instruments	Transfer Instruments	Motivation Instruments	Outsourcing Instruments
Board of Directors	Money	Ownership	Accounting
Reserved Matters (Shareholders' Agreement)	Debt	Salary	Tax
Shareholder Majority	Customers	Community	Grant Writing
	Reputation	Stability
	Processes
	Technology
	Suppliers
	Talent
	Space

Miss any one of these, and the builder’s value proposition collapses. Master all four, and you create a competitive advantage that solo entrepreneurs and traditional investors can’t match.

Control Instruments: The Uncomfortable Truth

Let’s address the elephant in the room: control.

Most entrepreneurs hate the idea of giving up control. They imagine overbearing board members micromanaging their decisions, killing their autonomy, turning their startup into a corporate bureaucracy.

I get it. But here’s what I’ve learned: appropriate control instruments don’t constrain good entrepreneurs; they protect them.

Shareholder Majority: Why Builders Hold 51%+

This is the most controversial control instrument. The builder typically owns the majority of shares (often 60-70% at the start).

New entrepreneurs see this and think: “They’re taking my company!”

Experienced entrepreneurs understand: “They’re investing heavily and need downside protection.”

Here’s the reality. The builder is investing significantly more than just cash. It provides infrastructure, expertise, customer access, operational support (often worth $100K+ in real value). It also takes on substantial risk. If the company fails, the builder loses more than the entrepreneur does in absolute terms.

The majority shareholding isn’t about power for power’s sake. It’s the mechanism that allows builders to make long-term commitments to startups.

As a reference point, let’s work with the idea that a builder holds 55% at incorporation, leaving 45% distributed among the entrepreneurs. This figure is designed so that after a 10% dilution in subsequent funding rounds, the builder’s stake drops to 50%—a figure that still carries significant control capacity. As we can see in the following table, this leaves each entrepreneur (assuming two) with 20%:

TABLE 1-2
Cap table evolution through successive funding rounds
Stakeholder	Incorporation	Seed Round	Series A
Venture Builder	55.00%	50.00%	45.00%
CTO	22.50%	20.00%	18.00%
CEO	22.50%	20.00%	18.00%
External Fund 1	—	10.00%	9.00%
External Fund 2	—	—	10.00%

This structure also prepares the company for a future scenario where a new investor enters in exchange for 10%. In this situation, the builder’s stake drops to 45%, losing majority control at the shareholders’ meeting.

However, this isn’t a major problem. By the time external investors are interested, the risk of entrepreneur malpractice has been reduced through the company’s own evolution. The business progress—demonstrated by new investor interest—validates the entrepreneurs as competent and trustworthy partners. At that point, the builder no longer needs to maintain majority control.

This logic reveals the most important reason why the builder should hold the majority: it’s the most trustworthy partner, both for entrepreneurs and investors. The builder has the deepest knowledge and the most to lose from malpractice. Once entrepreneurs have proven themselves equally trustworthy, majority ownership becomes less necessary.

Additionally, the presence of new shareholders on the board adds their own layer of oversight, allowing the builder to relax its control function over the startup.

The Story of the Split Decision

In 2018, we had two co-founders who wanted one third of the company each (33.3%), leaving the builder with an equal 33.3%. On paper, this seemed fair to them: they were doing all the day-to-day work.

We explained: “If we don’t hold a majority, we can’t raise additional capital for this company from our fund investors. They require us to maintain majority control for governance and risk management. Without that, you won’t get our full support”.

They pushed back. We held firm.

Eventually, they agreed to the standard 70/30 split (builder 70%, co-founders 30% total).

Six months later, one co-founder wanted to leave. Under the original one-third-each structure, repurchasing equity and appointing a replacement would have required agreement among three equal holders; an easy recipe for stalemate. With the builder holding a majority, we could execute the buyout and reconfigure the team quickly, without freezing the company.

We orchestrated a clean transition: bought out the departing founder’s shares, recruited a replacement, kept the company moving. The remaining founder later told me: “I’m glad we structured it your way. If we’d each had 25%, we’d both be stuck.”

Control instruments exist to prevent paralysis, not to enable tyranny.

Board of Directors: The 3-Person Structure

Builders typically use a simple board structure: three members total.

• Two from the builder
• One entrepreneur (usually the CEO)

This creates clear decision-making authority while keeping the entrepreneur actively involved in governance.

Why not a larger, more “balanced” board? Because boards exist to make decisions, not to be democracies. A 5-7 person board with multiple external members sounds sophisticated, but it creates slow decision-making and political maneuvering. Early-stage startups can’t afford that.

The 3-person structure means:

• Speed: We can make critical decisions in a single meeting
• Clarity: Everyone knows the builder has final say, but the entrepreneur has real input
• Accountability: Two builder reps means we can’t have internal disagreements that paralyze the board

This isn’t permanent. As the company matures and raises external capital, the board expands and the builder’s control naturally dilutes. But in the critical 0-24 month period, this structure works.

The Duties of a Board Member

Serving on a board of directors is a privilege loaded with responsibility and an opportunity to have significant impact on a business’s future. Management members who will occupy this position need to understand what the role entails and what’s expected of them.

In essence, the board of directors is the management and administration body of a company, and its primary objective is to ensure the company is creating value for its shareholders. More specifically, some of the board’s main functions include:

• Defining strategy
• Establishing and controlling annual budgets
• Overseeing and supervising senior executives (technically, it’s the General Shareholders’ Meeting that approves or disapproves their management, though this usually happens at the board’s request)
• Establishing executive compensation policy
• Authorizing share transfers

The healthiest relationship between a board member and an entrepreneur-CEO is one where both see themselves as peers. A good board member is understanding and willing to help, but is also honest and transparent about their vision for the company—both its opportunities and its challenges.

When guiding a CEO, one of the most effective approaches a board member can use is sharing examples or anecdotes from other successful companies they’re involved with. Success stories have a powerful influence on CEO thinking.

How to Conduct a Board Meeting

The board’s primary tool is board meetings. These are spaces where matters of greatest relevance to the company and its shareholders are presented.

Regarding how to conduct a board meeting, it’s worth noting that topics must be worked on, considered, and agreed upon in advance.

Far too often, board meetings become forums for discussion where participants try to make important decisions live and in real-time. This is a bad idea for several reasons. First, truly strategic decisions require time for reflection and consultation. Second—and probably more urgent—board meetings are formal proceedings, and everything said must be recorded in minutes that have legal implications.

Therefore, board members should agree on topics to be addressed in advance and resolve any disagreements before the meeting takes place.

Reserved Matters: Protection Without Majority

Reserved matters in a shareholders’ agreement are a perfect control instrument for situations where the builder doesn’t hold a majority stake or has a minority of board seats.

To mitigate these minority situations, shareholders can agree to establish board reserved matters or general meeting reserved matters. These are important topics that a shareholder wants to be able to veto if needed.

For example, in a company whose board has five seats and the venture builder only has two, the shareholders’ agreement can list a set of decisions requiring four of the five possible votes—instead of the three votes that constitute a simple majority.

This way, when the board faces a decision defined as a reserved matter, the builder still has a decisive say on that decision.

Typical Board Reserved Matters:

1. Entering into contracts or commercial relationships with Related Parties
2. Determining compensation or remuneration of directors, administrators, or executives
3. Granting or revoking individual, joint, or general powers of attorney
4. Incurring debt, obtaining financing, or any ordinary banking operation exceeding €10,000 per year

Similarly, for matters that fall under the General Shareholders’ Meeting (rather than the board), shareholders can agree that certain decisions require 70% of votes—instead of the 50% simple majority.

Typical General Meeting Reserved Matters:

1. Modifying the structure of the company’s administrative body, including setting the number of board members
2. Approving annual accounts and profit distribution
3. Filing for bankruptcy, except when required by current legislation
4. Dissolution and liquidation of the company, except when required by current legislation

As you can see, in all cases reserved matters aim to protect the startup as a whole—they’re not established to benefit the builder, but to protect the startup and guarantee its continuity.

Transfer Instruments: The Real Value Add

If you ask entrepreneurs what they value most about being in a builder, they’ll list transfer instruments. This is where the builder’s value becomes tangible and immediate.

Regarding transfer instruments, it’s worth highlighting that the builder executes two types of transfer: from the builder to the startup, and from one startup to another startup. These flows of know-how and resources are the most important factor in the success of builder startups, which is why the venture building model activates various mechanisms to ensure they happen frequently and efficiently.

Money: Beyond Simple Investment

Yes, builders provide capital. But it’s how they provide it that matters.

Traditional investors write a check and disappear until the next milestone. Builder capital is iterative and responsive. Builders invest in tranches tied to specific progress markers, and are actively involved in deciding how that capital gets deployed.

Example: One of our startups needed to hire a developer. Instead of just saying “here’s $40K, hire someone,” we helped them:

• Write the job description
• Screen candidates
• Structure the compensation offer
• Onboard the new hire with our HR processes

The money was important, but the guidance on how to spend it wisely was more valuable.

Debt: The Emergency Lifeline

Financial loans are an extraordinary transfer instrument that helps startups overcome specific situations. Frequently, the builder lends money to startups to resolve seasonal liquidity problems or to enable the acquisition of a resource.

Debt is a transfer instrument applied in extraordinary circumstances and generally requires approval from the venture builder’s own board, since it’s often not a predictable expense. However, when executed, it enormously relieves the startup’s financial stress quickly and conveniently.

Another way builders can ease startup cash flow is by signing guarantees on startup bank loans—though again, this is an extraordinary measure.

Customers: The Warm Introduction Advantage

One of our logistics startups was struggling to get meetings with potential enterprise clients. Cold outreach was getting 2% response rates.

I sent three emails to contacts in my network: “We’re working with a team building [solution]. Based on what you’ve told me about [company]‘s challenges, this might be worth 15 minutes of your time. Can I introduce you?”

All three took the meeting. Two became paying customers.

Builder customer access isn’t just a bigger network: it’s warm, trust-based introductions. When I make an intro, I’m putting my reputation behind it. That cuts through the noise.

Reputation: The Abstract Advantage

Reputation transfer is an abstract transfer instrument that nonetheless generates a very real competitive advantage over companies starting from scratch.

In a venture builder, newly created startups can benefit from the builder’s reputation or the reputation of the builder’s partners. This reputation has great value in the startup’s early phases, when it lacks recognition and customers may distrust its performance.

When a customer or supplier knows that behind a new startup there’s a team of professionals with years of experience, confidence in the project increases. Thus, reputation transfer fills a gap that would otherwise be difficult to resolve.

Frequently, startups include the identities of the builder’s most prominent partners on their website. Similarly, startups may present themselves as a spin-off of one of the builder’s corporate partners. These are just two examples of how reputation transfer from builder to startup materializes—each builder finds its own ways to execute this transfer.

Processes: The Invisible Accelerator

Process transfer may be the transfer instrument least appreciated by entrepreneurs, yet it plays the most important role in the startup’s medium-term success.

Through this mechanism, the venture builder transmits processes to the startup. Defining processes is a task that steals a lot of time from any company’s founders, and negligent execution generates enormous inefficiencies and headaches. Therefore, the existence of established processes provides relief for entrepreneurs, who don’t have to face the work of experimenting, defining, and testing these processes.

Additionally, these processes have been designed by a functioning company that can anticipate organizational and technological aspects that entrepreneurs haven’t yet imagined. Thus, the entrepreneur benefits from momentum they don’t understand but from which they benefit enormously.

The design and implementation of standardized processes is a necessary virtue in builder management—so much so that it has its own chapter in this guide. Without standardization of aspects like folder organization or technology stack, it would be practically impossible for management to coordinate so many companies simultaneously, and it would hinder synergy between entrepreneurs from different startups.

Technology: Shared Infrastructure

One of the most underrated transfer instruments is shared technology infrastructure.

A builder might have:

• A standard authentication system (NextAuth configuration)
• Payment processing templates (Stripe integration)
• Email service setup (Resend templates)
• Analytics configuration (Google Analytics + Mixpanel)

Every new startup gets these as a starting package. Instead of spending two weeks setting up authentication from scratch, they copy the builder’s implementation and customize it in two days.

Over time, this compounds. The builder invests hundreds of hours into these shared tools. Each new startup gets that value immediately.

Talent: Access to Specialized Skills

Solo entrepreneurs hire slowly because finding good people is hard. Builder entrepreneurs hire faster because they can tap into the builder’s talent network.

Builders maintain relationships with:

• Freelance developers who’ve worked with multiple portfolio companies
• Designers who understand the builder’s aesthetic and processes
• Marketing specialists who know the builder’s industries
• Legal counsel familiar with startup structures

When a founder needs to hire, the builder can say: “Talk to Maria, she did great work for two of the other portfolio companies.” Instant qualified candidate.

Spontaneous transfers also happen: employees from one startup attract talent to the builder’s ecosystem, and other startups end up hiring them.

In some cases, venture builders focused on a specific technology may even organize specialized training for industry professionals. These trainings serve to attract talent to the ecosystem, and it’s common for professionals in training to end up placed in the builder’s own startups, either as interns or through employment contracts.

In short, a startup born within a venture builder benefits from the gravitational pull of specialized talent that the ecosystem attracts to itself, improving its chances of finding the right profiles.

Suppliers: Pre-Negotiated Relationships

Supplier transfer is a transfer instrument less appreciated by entrepreneurs, although it plays an important role in startup success from the start of operations.

Knowledge about suppliers is difficult to value but very key to any startup’s success and scalability. Generally, finding the right suppliers under the right conditions is the result of years of negotiation and comparing alternatives.

That’s why it’s very useful for a newly created company to work with suppliers already selected by the builder under already-negotiated conditions. Supplier transfer becomes a highly valued instrument that saves headaches and production failures that can end up being fatal.

Space: More Than Just a Desk

Space transfer is an essential transfer instrument in a builder’s activity. So much so that venture builder offices are generally the coworking space where all their companies start. While this is beneficial for startups, space also becomes one of the keys to the ecosystem’s overall success.

Space transfer doesn’t just save money and trouble in searching for an office—it enables enormous synergies, both from the builder to startups and from one startup to another. Sharing a space is a necessary condition for participating in spontaneous conversations that end up being key moments in a startup’s direction.

Additionally, sharing a space promotes the builder’s capacity for control and supervision, as well as its ability to transfer know-how, technology, and equipment. Finally, it contributes to reputation transfer, since offices are a visible element of any company’s image.

Motivation Instruments: Keeping Entrepreneurs Engaged

The builder-entrepreneur relationship is a marriage. Divorce is possible but painful. Motivation instruments are the couple’s therapy that prevents needing the divorce lawyer.

The venture builder has different motivation instruments to ensure the relationship between co-founders is stable and lasting, and so that individuals facing the hard challenge of entrepreneurship feel supported and have a psychological support system to help them stay focused.

In our experience, these motivation instruments end up being the most valued by entrepreneurs as the startup matures and they analyze their trajectory in retrospect—though they’re difficult to appreciate at the beginning given their intangible nature.

Community: The Anti-Loneliness Mechanism

Entrepreneurship is lonely. Most people don’t understand the stress of being responsible for a company’s survival.

Builder entrepreneurs have an automatic peer group: other founders facing similar challenges at similar stages.

We formalize this with:

• Monthly founder dinners: Informal, no agenda, just entrepreneurs sharing war stories
• Peer mentorship pairings: New founders matched with those 6-12 months ahead
• Shared Slack: Quick questions, celebrations, commiseration in real-time

This isn’t just emotional support; it’s practical. “How did you handle [specific situation]?” gets answered by someone who just dealt with it.

Ownership: Alignment Through Equity

Ownership is the most difficult motivation instrument to manage and the one that can generate the most friction during the startup creation process—yet it’s also the most unavoidable aspect of managing a venture builder as a company creator.

That’s why, far from becoming a taboo, ownership of the startup should be a topic that the builder and entrepreneurs discuss transparently from the start of the relationship.

We can say without fear of being wrong that the desire to own their own business is the main motivator of any entrepreneur. Therefore, ownership of company shares becomes an important goal for co-founders. However, the venture builder needs to maintain control over the startup to guarantee business continuity and must be prudent when granting political rights to entrepreneurs.

The entrepreneur holds minority shares, but those shares are meaningful. 30% of a valuable company can change your life. If the company exits for $5M, the entrepreneur makes $1.5M. At $10M, they make $3M.

The key is the upside is real and substantial. The entrepreneur isn’t working for a salary; they’re building equity wealth.

We also structure vesting (typically 4 years with 1-year cliff). This ensures long-term commitment and protects against early departures.

In our experience, we can affirm that situations where each entrepreneur owns less than 15% are undesirable, as they generate long-term frustration. External agents like investment funds or public institutions may consider that the entrepreneurs aren’t the real promoters and exclude the startup from support programs or investment rounds.

Salary: Sustainable Commitment

This one’s tricky. Pay too little, and entrepreneurs burn out or quit. Pay too much, and you drain the startup’s runway.

We use a phase-based salary model:

Phase 1 (Months 0-6, Discovery): $1,500-2,000/month

• Covers basic living expenses, not comfortable
• Entrepreneur is testing the idea, not fully committed yet

Phase 2 (Months 6-12, Validation): $2,500-3,500/month

• Product-market fit found, customers exist
• Entrepreneur is now fully committed

Phase 3 (Months 12-24, Scaling): $4,000-6,000/month

• Real traction, growing team
• Market-rate compensation

This isn’t a rigid formula; we adjust based on the entrepreneur’s financial situation, the company’s revenue, and the market. But the principle is: pay enough to keep them focused, not comfortable enough to lose urgency.

It’s worth noting the difference between what the builder offers to the CEO versus the CTO. From what we’ve seen, offering a salary at an early stage is more common with technical profiles, though it depends on the situation. At the same time, entrepreneurs who receive a salary from the beginning often get a smaller percentage of shares.

In any case, our advice is to clarify to entrepreneurs that if they’re looking for a job, being a startup founder isn’t a good option. Confusion about the nature of this relationship can cause conflicts. Entrepreneuring with a builder is an investment opportunity in a startup, where the entrepreneur invests with their work, just as the builder invests with their work and also with capital, and in many cases with technology and equipment.

Stability: The Unexpected Motivator

Stability is one of the least obvious motivation instruments for the builder itself, but surprisingly it’s one of the most valued by entrepreneurs in the first months of entrepreneurial activity.

In a study we conducted in Spain, we asked 164 entrepreneurs from different venture builders why they consider entrepreneuring alongside a builder to be an advantageous alternative.

Among these people, there were entrepreneurs whose venture builder hadn’t provided them with technological or financial support—and yet they valued their association with the venture builder positively.

These entrepreneurs explain that the psychological experience of “structure” and “stability” that a builder provides makes a huge difference compared to entrepreneuring solo. In the entrepreneurs’ words, the builder makes them “feel safer” or “not feel alone” when entrepreneuring.

When analyzing cases individually, we see that many of these people have had previous failure experiences and know how hard it is to move a company forward. That’s why the mere fact of having an experienced co-founder, even if they don’t contribute technology or money, is enormously beneficial.

In other words: simply sharing the experience with the builder’s management, or dividing responsibility for decisions with other people, plays a major role in the minds of many people who decide to entrepreneur. It reduces their sense of stress and maximizes the learning obtained. Therefore, we understand that stability is one of the motivation instruments that the builder should manage deliberately.

Outsourcing Instruments: Freeing Entrepreneurs to Build

The most under-appreciated value a builder provides is handling the tedious operational work that doesn’t require the entrepreneur’s unique skills.

Accounting: The Monthly Close We Handle

Every startup needs bookkeeping, expense tracking, financial statements, and tax preparation.

Most founders either:

1. Do it themselves (wasting 5-10 hours/month on work they’re not good at)
2. Hire someone expensive (burning $1,500+/month they don’t have)
3. Ignore it (creating a disaster at tax time)

The builder provides centralized accounting. The finance team:

• Processes all invoices and expenses
• Reconciles bank statements
• Generates monthly P&L and cash flow reports
• Handles tax filings

Cost to the startup: €0. They just send receipts and invoices, and the builder handles the rest.

This saves each startup 40+ hours annually and ensures their finances are clean.

Tax: Compliance Without Complexity

Closely related to accounting, tax management is another area where startups benefit enormously from builder outsourcing.

Early-stage startups face a maze of tax obligations: quarterly VAT returns, corporate tax estimates, payroll taxes, annual filings, and country-specific compliance requirements. Miss a deadline or make an error, and you face penalties that can drain precious runway.

The builder’s finance team handles all tax filings and ensures compliance across the portfolio. They also identify tax optimization opportunities—R&D tax credits, startup incentives, and regional benefits that individual founders often miss because they don’t know they exist.

Legal: The On-Call Counsel

Legal work for startups is bursty. You need a lawyer for:

• Company incorporation
• Shareholder agreements
• Customer contracts
• Intellectual property filings
• Regulatory compliance

But you don’t need a full-time lawyer. And paying lawyer rates ($200-400/hour) for routine contract reviews kills your budget.

Builders often have relationships with startup-focused law firms. These firms know the builder’s structure, understand its standard agreements, and bill at discounted rates. The builder passes this access to portfolio companies.

Result: Legal work that would cost a solo founder $5K-10K costs portfolio companies $2K-3K. And it’s done faster because the lawyers already know the builder’s playbook.

Grant Writing: The Found Money Machine

European startups have access to significant grant funding, but applying for grants is tedious, time-consuming, and requires specific expertise.

Writing grant documentation is a laborious task that requires, on one hand, knowledge about the business, and on the other, knowledge about the grant requirements and their technical and legal specifications.

That’s why it’s common for startups to outsource grant writing to external companies and consultancies specializing in grants. In the case of venture builders, the model offers management the opportunity to absorb this task and provide grant writing services to their startups in-house.

Since grants occur in open calls that repeat periodically, it’s likely that more than one company in a venture builder’s portfolio will apply for the same grant in the same or different calls. That’s why it’s a source of efficiency for the builder to get involved in grant writing—to avoid each entrepreneur individually learning the know-how related to the grant requirements. This way, the builder can recycle knowledge and documentation, generate efficiencies, and increase the chances of success in grant awards.

Additionally, the builder has deep knowledge of all startups as a co-founder, so it has first-hand access to business reality—unlike an external consultant—and can write a proposal faithful to reality without constantly consulting the entrepreneur.

A builder might employ someone whose job is grant research and application support. They:

• Identify relevant grants for each portfolio company
• Prepare application materials
• Manage submission processes
• Track compliance requirements

One of the startups in a builder’s portfolio received €60K in grant funding that they never would have pursued on their own because “it seemed too complicated.” The grant specialist handled 90% of the work.

That’s €60K of non-dilutive capital the startup got essentially for free.

How the Four Instruments Work Together

These aren’t isolated tools; they’re a system that reinforces itself.

Control instruments (board structure, majority shareholding, reserved matters) give the builder the authority to deploy transfer instruments (capital, debt, customers, reputation, processes, technology, suppliers, talent, space) effectively. If the builder were just an advisor with no governance rights, it couldn’t make the strategic calls needed to maximize resource deployment.

Transfer instruments provide the tangible value that justifies the builder’s majority ownership. The builder isn’t taking 60% of the company for nothing: it’s providing $100K+ in real resources and infrastructure.

Motivation instruments (community, ownership, salary, stability) keep entrepreneurs engaged and committed despite holding minority shares. They see the value the builder is providing and feel fairly compensated for their contribution.

Outsourcing instruments (accounting, tax, legal, grants) free up entrepreneurs to focus on the high-value work only they can do: talking to customers, building product, making strategic decisions.

Remove any one category, and the system breaks:

• No control = can’t deploy resources strategically
• No transfer = nothing to justify our ownership
• No motivation = entrepreneurs leave or check out
• No outsourcing = entrepreneurs drown in administrative work

All four instruments working together create a value proposition that solo entrepreneurship and traditional investment can’t match.

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When that entrepreneur asked me in February 2017 what made us different from an investor, I couldn’t articulate it clearly. Now I can:

“An investor gives you money and advice. A venture builder gives you control instruments that enable good governance, transfer instruments that accelerate your growth, motivation instruments that keep you committed, and outsourcing instruments that free you to focus on what matters. We’re not funding your startup: we’re co-building it with you.”

That’s the difference. That’s why entrepreneurs join builders despite giving up majority equity. And that’s why builders who master all four instruments create dramatically more valuable portfolios than those who only deploy capital.