Scheduling for small foundries. Started as a spreadsheet the founder sold for £400 a month in term two.
£1.4mSeed
Venture School Labs / Programme
Masters inVenture Building
A twelve-month practitioner degree for people who start companies instead of writing about them. You arrive with a problem worth solving and leave with a funded venture, a board of operators and a method you can run again.
The premise
Business schools teach the case. We hand you the company.
Every term is measured by what exists at the end of it: interviews run, prototypes shipped, revenue collected, a cap table that stands up to diligence. Coursework is the by-product of building, not a substitute for it.
What changes
Case studiesYour own customers, on the phone, in week two
Group projectsA co-founder matched on evidence, not friendship
A dissertationA data room and a board that reads it
GraduationAn incorporated company and a first cheque
24Builders per cohort
18Ventures incorporated to date
£75kPre-seed per venture, no equity to us
71%Still trading at month 24
Curriculum
Four terms, one company
Each term ends at a gate. You present evidence to the studio board; the board decides whether the venture continues in its current form or pivots. Nobody fails a term — ventures do.
Term one / Sep–Dec
Problem custody
You do not pick an idea. You take custody of a problem and prove someone is already paying to avoid it.
- Field research method
- Demand testing
- Market structure
- Founder narrative
Term two / Jan–Mar
Product under load
Build the smallest thing that survives real use, then put it in front of paying users every fortnight.
- Prototype sprints
- Pricing experiments
- Technical architecture
- Service design
Term three / Apr–Jun
Company mechanics
Incorporation, cap table, hiring, unit economics — the machinery that turns a project into a business.
- Venture finance
- Legal and IP
- Unit economics
- Hiring the first five
Term four / Jul–Aug
Raise and defend
Assemble the data room, run the process, and defend your numbers to investors who write real cheques.
- Data room build
- Investor process
- Board practice
- Governance
Assessment
Weighting70% venture evidence30% written method
Gates4 board reviewsend of term
Contact time4 days per week on sitestudio hours
Credits180 credits, level 7transferable
Month 1–2
Immersion
You are placed in a sector for six weeks with a research budget and no product. Sixty customer conversations, logged and coded, before anyone is allowed to build.
Gate: evidence of a paid-for problemMonth 3–4
Team formation
Co-founders pair on the strength of complementary evidence. Equity splits are drafted with the studio's legal counsel, vesting from day one.
Gate: signed founder agreementMonth 5–7
Build and charge
Fortnightly releases to real users. The rule is simple: you may not present a metric that does not involve money changing hands.
Gate: first £1,000 of revenueMonth 8–10
Company build
Incorporate, open the bank account, set up payroll and governance. Your first hire is interviewed by a panel that includes two studio partners.
Gate: diligence-ready cap tableMonth 11–12
Raise
Six weeks of live investor process, ending at Demo Board in front of forty funds and angels who have backed studio ventures before.
Gate: term sheet or a written decision not to raiseWho teaches
Operators, not lecturers
Everyone who teaches on the programme has built and sold, or built and failed, at least once. Faculty stay attached to two ventures each for the full year — they carry the consequences with you.
Marguerite Osei
Studio directorFounded and sold a logistics platform; ran venture building for a European studio through 31 companies.
Tom Halvard
Company mechanicsThree-time operator, two exits, one insolvency he teaches from in detail.
Adaeze Nwosu
Product and engineeringBuilt the first version of a payments infrastructure company now processing £2bn a year.
Kenji Arata
Demand and designLed design at two consumer startups; runs the demand-testing method used in term one.
Studio board
Gates are judged by a rotating board of investors and founders from outside the school. They are paid for their time and asked to be blunt.
- Priya RamnathSeed investor
- Callum ReidNon-executive chair
- Hana LindqvistGrowth partner
- Femi AdeyemiSecond-time founder
Outcomes
Eighteen companies, and the four that closed
We publish the whole cohort, including the ventures that shut down. If a programme only shows you its winners, you are reading marketing rather than evidence.
Retrofit heat recovery for commercial kitchens, sold through equipment distributors.
£900kPre-seed
Rota and compliance tooling for independent domiciliary care providers.
£620kPre-seed
Surplus produce routed from growers to school caterers on fixed weekly contracts.
ProfitableNo raise
Matter intake for in-house teams. Shut down at month 14 — the market bought incumbents' bundles instead.
ClosedWound up, capital returned
Recycled acoustic panels for fit-out contractors, manufactured under licence in Yorkshire.
£2.1mSeries A
Figures are first external rounds closed within 18 months of graduation. Venture School Labs takes no equity in student companies.
Admissions
Twenty-four places
We read for evidence of action, not credentials. A first degree helps but is not required if you can show work you have shipped.
You have run something inside a company — a product, a region, a P&L — and you are done asking permission. You bring pattern recognition and want the missing 20%: raising, incorporating, owning the downside.
How we decide
Stage oneWritten application600 words, no CV
Stage twoProblem interview45 minutes
Stage threeStudio dayon site, paid travel
DecisionWithin 14 dayswritten feedback either way
Not for you if
- You want a part-time or fully remote option
- You are looking for a research degree or a route to a PhD
- You need the year to stay employed elsewhere
Fees and funding
What the year costs, in full
£28,000
Tuition for the full twelve months, paid in three instalments
£1,600 / month
Living stipend for every place, so the year does not depend on savings
- Studio desk and workshop access
- Incorporation and legal set-up
- £75k pre-seed on graduation
- Two mentors for the full year
- Demo Board investor process
- Alumni studio access for three years
Ways people pay for it
Merit bursaryFull tuition, 6 placesneeds-blind
Deferred tuitionPay from month 18no equity taken
Employer sponsorshipCorporate venture route4 places
Postgraduate loanLevel 7 eligibleUK applicants
Yes. It is a level 7 masters awarded by Venture School Labs, assessed on the venture you build rather than on written examinations. Your portfolio, board reviews and a final defence make up the assessment.
Cohort 25 · starts September
Start with the problem you cannot leave alone
Tell us what you are working on. We open written applications in October and hold thirty minute calls with everyone who registers before then.
Applications open6 Octoberwritten, 600 words
Applications close15 Januaryno late round
Studio daysFebruaryon site
Cohort starts7 September24 places
Register interest