Mark McNally has seen the upside and downside of new company ventures. He has been involved in 14 startups, as a senior executive or CEO each one building on the lessons he learned from the one before. Barry O’Reilly describes him as a “radical thinker, venture innovator, founder and Chief Nobody at Nobody Studios.” Mark’s bold vision to create 100 compelling companies over the next 5 years was so intriguing to Barry that he jumped at the opportunity to join Mark on the boldest bet of their careers. In this week’s show, they discuss the vision for Nobody Studios, as well as their lessons learned and unlearned over the years as entrepreneurs. And why now is the moment for the missing piece of the venture ecosystem .
The Bold Vision For Venture
“...What we're about to do next is launch a venture studio together with an amazing collection of diverse innovators, entrepreneurs, and creators who want to change the way new companies are created, sourced, explored, and scaled to sustainable businesses,” Barry tells listeners. “But not only that, we're going to be the first company to make venture investing accessible to the masses by crowdfunding the company to enable anyone to own equity in the studio and every single company we create in the future forever.”
Missing out on making simultaneously exploring companies of the future frustrated Mark. “I decided I really wanted to create a vehicle that allowed people to be more involved and more aggressive in making bets on things that aligned with their vision of the future,” the result is Nobody Studios.
People First
Nobody Studios’ founding principle is people first. If you have ideas and talent, no matter where you are in the world, the company invites you to join them on their journey. “I'm a big believer that if we focus on building up people around us, then our journey will be just fine,” Mark remarks.
Making people part of something bigger is in the company’s DNA, he tells listeners. Transparency is another of their key tenets. “We're giving them [people who get involved] this kind of really open access to how this grows,” Mark says. Another powerful principle is learning from one another: “As much as we're mentoring people that recognize their gaps, we're also letting them mentor us.” To achieve their goal of building 100 companies in five years, Barry says that they have to build a system to get ideas to market as quickly as possible. He is excited about the unique incentive structure, where you’re rewarded for your contribution across the company’s portfolio.
Why Venture Capital Needs Venture Studios
Our purpose at Nobody Studios will be to de-risk pre-seed stage business ideas. We’ll do this by minimizing the time, speed, and capital involved in validating truly repeatable, scalable business models before significant venture investment.
Venture capital investors usually wish they could:
Stop an investment;
Split one company into multiple companies;
Merge several companies into one company;
Pause companies when the timing isn’t right;
Optimize talent by putting players in their best positions over time.
Making Wealth Creation Accessible To All
For Nobody Studios to accomplish the goal of 100 companies, we’ll need a tremendous amount of talent, capital, influence, and ideas.
There's a whole array of opportunities for you to get involved:
Becoming part of the effort in some capacity, whether part-time or freelance, joining Nobody Studios itself, or one of the companies that we create.
Investing. We're actually going to be the first venture company to offer equity in the studio through crowdfunding.
The potential upside is pretty fantastic for anyone involved, because the equity will be spread across the whole portfolio of businesses.
Meaning you wouldn’t be betting on just one company—you’ll have a stake in every company we create, forever!
Resources
NobodyStudios.com
Nobody Studios on LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook
The Future of Venture Company Creation with Mark McNally | Unlearn podcast - Listen or read transcript on Metacast
