Corporate venture building, operator-grade.
We build companies outside your walls. A dedicated company, a serial entrepreneur as CEO, a cap table where everyone has skin in the game. Eight weeks to know whether the market is real, six months to a first product with paying customers, then a company that runs on its own business plan. Not consulting. Not an innovation lab. A venture, built to stand on its own.
How a corporate venture gets built
Three phases, each with a hard gate. Most corporate ventures die in committee somewhere between the idea and the first customer. The method exists to make that impossible: every phase ends with a decision, and the people who make it are the ones who will have to live with it.
Venture Design
Is the market real, and can you take it? Studies, interviews with the key players in the target market worldwide, a hard read on customer needs and willingness to pay. Out: go/no-go, go-to-market conviction, the outline of the business plan and financing need, and the profile of the founding team.
Venture Build
Version one of the product or service. The founding team assembled and in the room. First customers signed. Run as a startup: weekly ship cadence, one accountable CEO, no steering committee between the team and the market.
Venture Scale
The company is incorporated. Founders, corporate and Honey Lab are on the cap table. Our job from here is to hit the business plan or beat it. At month 18, a formal checkpoint decides whether the second financing tranche is released.
The team we recruit are entrepreneurs, not project managers. That is the single most common failure point we see in corporate venturing, and the one we refuse to negotiate on.
The deal structure
The IP belongs to the venture
The new company owns what it builds. Not licensed from the group, not parked in a subsidiary that reports to a business unit. If the venture is to be financed, hired for, and eventually sold or listed, it has to own its own assets from day one.
The corporate holds the majority
Typically 60% corporate, 20% founding team, 20% Honey Lab. The group finances the venture, so it makes sense that it controls it. It also holds a preferential option to take full control, on conditions fixed at launch — not negotiated under pressure two years later, when the venture is either worth a lot or worth nothing.
The board is built to stay honest
Six seats: two from the corporate, two founders, one from Honey Lab, one external entrepreneur. The corporate cannot outvote the operators on its own. That one design choice is what keeps the venture from being quietly absorbed back into the mothership before it has had the chance to become anything.
What it costs
Between €5M and €15M per venture, all-in, over the life of the build. The first six to eight months — Venture Design and the early Build — run as operating expense on the corporate's side. After that, the money goes into the venture as equity, in two tranches. The second is released at the month-18 checkpoint, and only if the venture is tracking the plan.
We put the number here because almost nobody in this market does, and because it is the first question a serious innovation director asks. If the range is wrong for you, we would rather you know now.
When we say no
We turn down more than we take. We say no when:
- We can't form a conviction on product-market fit during Venture Design. Eight weeks is enough to know. If it isn't, the answer is no, not "let's build and see".
- There is no unfair advantage at the corporate — distribution, data, brand, regulatory position, installed base — that gives the venture a real edge to take the market. Without one, you are a startup with a slow shareholder.
- The group won't create a separate, independent company. A venture inside a business unit is an internal project. We don't run internal projects.
- There is no serial entrepreneur to lead it. Experienced executives are not founders. The job is different, and the first eighteen months prove it every time.
- The two-tranche financing isn't pre-validated at launch. A venture that has to re-pitch its own shareholder for survival money at month 12 is already dead — it just doesn't know it yet.
Beyond venture building
Growth-stage sparring for founders past Series A — GTM expansion, fundraising prep, senior hires, pricing. Two-hour conversations, not slides. And board seats in companies where the operator perspective adds disproportionate value. We're selective: capacity goes where our reps actually move the needle.
We don't do PowerPoint reports. Output is direction, decisions, and intros. Compensation is mostly cash for corporates, mostly equity for startups.
Who fits
- Large groups with a validated problem, an unfair advantage to exploit, and the willingness to build a company outside their walls to do it.
- Innovation and strategy directors who have run a well-funded programme for years and shipped zero companies — and want that to change.
- PE-backed scale-ups and Series A+ founders who need operator depth on the board to complement financial sponsors.
Bring us the problem, not the deck.
30-minute call to scope. We'll tell you fast whether corporate venture building is the right tool for it — or who else might be.
Book a callQuestions we get asked
What is corporate venture building?
Creating a new, independent company with a large group to attack a validated problem — with an external CEO, its own cap table and its own IP. The corporate brings the unfair advantage and the majority of the capital; the studio brings the method and the founding team. It is neither an internal innovation project nor a minority investment in someone else's startup.
How long does it take?
Eight weeks of Venture Design to validate or kill the opportunity. Six months of Venture Build to a first product with paying customers. The company is incorporated around month nine, and the second financing tranche is decided at month eighteen.
Who owns the IP?
The venture. Everything it builds belongs to the new company, not to the group and not to the studio. The group's protection is its majority stake and its option to take full control.
How is the cap table split?
Typically 60% corporate, 20% founding team, 20% Honey Lab. The corporate holds a preferential option to take full control on conditions fixed at launch.
What does it cost?
Between €5M and €15M per venture, all-in. Six to eight months of operating expense at the start, then equity injected into the venture in two tranches.
How is this different from a CVC fund or an innovation lab?
A CVC fund takes minority stakes in startups that already exist. An innovation lab runs projects inside the group, with group employees, on group P&L. Corporate venture building creates a company that did not exist, led by founders who are not employees, that the group controls but does not run.
What happens at month 18?
A formal checkpoint against the business plan. If the venture is on track, the second financing tranche is released. If it is not, everyone knows early enough to make a clean decision. Both tranches are agreed at launch, so the checkpoint is a review, not a renegotiation.
What is the track record?
Patrick Amiel has helped launch new ventures with BNP Paribas, PMU, Pernod Ricard, Crédit Agricole, Eurobank, EDF, RATP and Edenred through his previous studio. Honey Lab applies the same method, with the lessons from every one of those builds.