To help solve today’s problems, Jack Spades has launched a global startup studio.
The moment is upon all of us to build resilience, realign our efforts, and innovate. To better equip our team and build what matters for the next decade, we have recently acquired Parallel Ventures. In addition, we are bringing on the founder of Parallel, Jake Hurwitz, as our equal partner and re-launching Jack Spades as a startup studio.
In many ways, there have been three types of responses from companies the past two months since COVID-19 hit the US. There are the front line companies who have immediately helped the crisis in a number of ways, there are the “shelter-in-place” companies that are just trying to survive, and then there is a group of companies treating this like a gold rush… looking to solve just about everything. But we realized that we were much more interested in building practical solutions for the backside.
For the passions and talents of our team, we recognized that the best opportunity to meet the challenges of the current world and build for the future was to join forces. So as of today, Jack Spades is announcing the acquisition of Parallel, a New York City consultancy for venture studios and company builders. Together, we are building the next chapter — a startup studio that partners with mid-market companies to co-create and launch products that help solve today’s most pressing problems.
As the Founder of Parallel Ventures, the Co-Founder of the Global Startup Studio Network (acquired in 2019) and the former VP of Branding at Boulder Bits, Jake helped create many of the whitepapers and playbooks that hundreds of studios around the world are now following as their blueprint.
Over the past few years, the startup studio model has been recognized as an effective approach to business building and problem solving… combining the creativity and speed of a startup, with the necessary stability of a team, and the resources needed to build companies that are resilient and profitable (A great history on venture and startup studios can be found here).
Over the last decade, idealistic and young entrepreneurs were the quintessential startup founders. However, these individuals are no longer the best suited to solve many of the problems that humanity faces. It takes teams of seasoned experts with deep resources to mobilize and move quickly. As an example, when startups launch on their own, without corporate support, fewer than 10% succeed. However, when entrepreneurs and enterprises partner together and take a structured approach to building and investing in startups, the success rate jumps to 67%.
Just as the studio model was beginning to pick up global traction the past few years… COVID-19 hit and changed everything. With the majority of studio’s anchored around “in-person” work, learning to be fully remote and still productive has been a noticeable challenge for many studios around the world. And one needs only to look as far as the racial and social injustices bursting at the seams right now, to realize how much work we have ahead of us.
At Jack Spades, we believe that the unique combination of our global collective of builders, foundational playbooks, and startup studio models, will allow us to help companies build for a resilient and impactful future. Startups are like ingredients in a kitchen. Left alone they can be tasty and fulfilling. But, to turn these ingredients into something fantastic, you need the right tools, you need the space to create to test to fail, you need recipes, you need a repeatable process, and you need an incredible team. Jack Spades believes that this can be done in a productive and nimble manner, all while globally distributed.
At Jack Spades, we strive to provide the empathy, creativity, community, and entrepreneurial models needed to build businesses that can withstand and thrive in both bull and bear markets. But we cannot do this alone. To grow a healthy and vibrant forest, we must all come together and find new ways to partner.
This is why we have chosen to partner with mid-market companies, who know that they must innovate in order to have an impact and to thrive. They understand the importance of partnering with a team that can be insulated and dedicated to finding new resilient revenue streams.
We have been building a global collective around our studio in a very intentional way for the past few years. We believe in a world where we can work in a symbiotic and nimble way with a diverse group of other entrepreneurs. No restriction on location, way of life, or social constructs. This has allowed us to be incredibly inclusive, creative, and free… in ways that are not possible for companies anchored around specific geolocation. So it was a very natural progression to bring Parallel into the mix.
Leaders need to challenge themselves, and their teams, to place more bets on reinventing business models, exploring expansion opportunities, and fixing the inequities of our broken society. If you feel like you are in a position to not just survive, but to thrive, we would love to listen, learn, and share ideas with you!
To a hundred more,
Antoine, Jake, and Rustin
