How to De-Risk Early-Stage Startups
A lot of startup founders think capital is the biggest risk.
But if you’ve been in this game long enough, you know:
Money isn’t the bottleneck.
Capability is.
Raising a million dollars is great.
But knowing how to spend it well is what actually keeps the lights on.
That’s why we built Full Scale Ventures the way we did.
Not just as a checkbook.
Not just as passive investors.
But as a venture studio with shared talent and services baked in.
I’ve seen it firsthand: founders spinning their wheels because they’re trying to build an engineering team from scratch, hire a marketer, stand up sales, set up support—while also trying to validate a product.
That’s not startup hustle.
That’s a guaranteed path to burnout.
What if you didn’t have to start from zero?
What if you could plug into a team that already exists?
✅ A dev team that knows how to ship SaaS.
✅ A marketing team that knows how to position software.
✅ A product team that knows how to validate features before you build.
That’s the unfair advantage of a studio model.
And that’s why shared services de-risk startups in ways capital alone never could.
Why Founders Get Stuck (And How Shared Talent Solves It)
Founders come to us with the same pattern:
“I’ve got a great idea. But I don’t know how to build it.”
—or—
“I know how to build it. But I don’t know how to market it.”
Either way?
There’s a missing capability.
You can either try to find a co-founder.
Or hire expensive agency help.
Or burn through cash on fractional roles.
Or—
you join forces with a venture studio that’s already done it before.
At Full Scale Ventures, we bring:
✅ Engineering talent from day one
✅ Product leadership with a repeatable playbook
✅ Marketing resources that help launch from zero
All of it shared across multiple products, which lowers the burn rate while maintaining access to expertise.
Instead of hiring a designer for one startup, we have design capacity for five.
Instead of building a data pipeline for one app, we reuse proven infrastructure.
Every function you’d struggle to hire for as a solo founder?
Already here.
Already working.
That’s how we de-risk the early stage:
We remove the “how do I hire X” problem before it even starts.
Why This Works
I’ve bootstrapped companies.
I’ve raised venture capital.
And I’ve seen both succeed and fail.
What I’ve learned is simple:
👉 Startups fail because they run out of time or run out of clarity.
Shared services solve both.
They buy you time—because you don’t waste six months hiring and onboarding an engineering team.
They buy you clarity—because the people helping you build have done it before.
When Craig and I launched Full Scale Ventures, it wasn’t just to spin up more software.
It was to take the decades of experience across engineering, product, marketing, operations—and make it available to founders who shouldn’t have to learn every lesson the hard way.
We didn’t want to be a checkbook.
We wanted to be a co-builder.
And for founders who are tired of being left alone to figure it out?
That’s exactly the kind of partner they’re looking for.
🎧 If you’ve ever thought:
👉 “I can’t do this alone.”
👉 “I don’t want to burn through cash figuring it all out.”
You’re exactly who we built this for.
We go deeper into this on the latest Product Driven episode, where our Strategy officer, Craig Ferril, and I talk about why we designed Full Scale Ventures as a hands-on venture studio—and why shared talent is the unlock founders don’t realize they need.