Unlocking $1M: 3 Unconventional Tactics for Bootstrapping Startup Studios

The Secret Playbook Studios Should Steal From Creators

Bootstrapping a Startup Studio sounds incredibly hard, but I can tell you from experience that raising a fund for an emerging Studio is harder.

Investors want evidence of your ability to launch de-risked ventures.

They are already skeptical of the Studio model and on top of that, you don’t have any real proof that your Studio can actually do the thing it’s promising to do. You also haven’t been around long enough to earn credibility in the eyes of investors, which is fine for new startups that can raise a seed round on a pitch deck — but like I said, Studio investors need more convincing.

• Building these relationships takes time.
• Building ventures takes time.
• Building a team takes time.

And how are you to keep the lights on while all of these prerequisites are percolating?

How do you bootstrap a Venture Studio?

This is a topic I’ve thought a lot about in my work with emerging Studios.

I wrote about this a few weeks ago in an article where I detailed the common revenue generation strategies of Studios.

But, my research on the creator economy led me to think outside the box.

There are thousands of solopreneurs generating $1M in revenue annually.

• Justin Welsh makes $2M+ annually with courses
• Dan Koe makes $2M+ annually with coaching and courses
• Alex Garcia makes $1M+ annually with a newsletter
• Justin Rapoport makes $90k/ month with a single e-commerce product
• Alex Redfern makes $120k/ month with language tutoring

These are just a few of the many examples of single creators using leverage and personal branding to create Micro-empires. Studios can absolutely steal this playbook to bootstrap to $1M+ in revenue.

Creators understand the power of influence and authority.

As a Studio, if you’re going to take this on you need a few things:

• Brand awareness — gained by posting content and dominating a niche
• Growth levers — tactics used to gain massive attention quickly
• Products — something people can buy that generates cashflow

After studying dozens of creator businesses, here are the top 3 tactics Studios can steal to bootstrap to $1M+ in revenue.

Sponsorships

According to this Growth In Reverse profile on Alex Garcia, he makes $65-$75k per month from sponsorships alone.

What could your Studio do with an extra $50k per month?

How does he do it?

His newsletter has 200k+ subscribers and sponsors pay him for those eyeballs. He likely earns revenue from affiliate deals as well. Alex also launched a paid version of the newsletter and hosts a cohort based course for $297. Like all successful creators, he’s diversified his revenue streams- but the majority of revenue comes from sponsorships.

This works for podcasts too — the key isn’t the medium, it’s the audience.

As a Studio, you could launch a newsletter or podcast and grow it to a significant audience size, then let the sponsor dollars roll in.

Courses & Community

Justin Welsh focuses his attention on LinkedIn content and self-paced courses. As a single creator, he brings in over $2M per year.

His first 2 courses, Creator OS and LinkedIn OS sell for $97. His newest course, Creator MBA, sells for $897. Over 30,000 people have bought his courses and his content brings in new customers every single day.

Another example of this is Jay Clouse of Creator Science. He has a variety of courses ranging from $40 to $600. In addition, he hosts a community called “The Lab” which costs $2,000 annually.

In addition to self-paced courses, there are thousands of creators on Maven making 6-figures running cohort-based courses a few times a year.

This is tangible for Studios.

• What is your Studio best at (curriculum)?
• Who has the ability to pay a premium (target audience)?
• Who from your Studio can be the face of the course (host)?

If you can build multiple startups in parallel, you can build a course business.

Productized Service

Brett Williams has a background in design and decided to launch a productized service called Design Joy a few years ago. He now makes $1M+ as a solo-creator providing unlimited design services on a subscription model.

Your Studio is likely an expert in a particular domain, whether it’s an industry vertical (like FinTech) or a skill (like marketing). Think creatively about what service you can stand up that won’t draw too many resources from the Studio but can be sold as a subscription product.

Here are some ideas:

• Pitch deck design (done for you)
• Connect startups to investors and take a cut (affiliate)
• Refer inbound leads to an agency or dev shop and take a cut (affiliate)
• Validation as a Service (done for you)
• Niche SaaS tools like GrowLetter (done for you newsletter growth)

The key is to find a unique value prop that your Studio excels in and turn that into a productized service — the more niche the higher the returns.

I understand the allure of raising funds to support the operations of the Studio and capital injection into new ventures — but for most Studios just starting out, this is unrealistic. Finding some unique ways to monetize in the meantime is the fastest path toward viability.

Think outside the box. Look at what solopreneurs and creators are doing. Copy their playbooks. Build brand awareness along the way.