archimedes.studio

What We Do

We exist to enable ideas to be born, and prosper. Since our founding in 2005 to our most recent initiatives, we have striven to provide a platform where the best ideas and founders can come together and thrive.

archimedes.studio works with startup founders to help establish the foundations for significant business success and associated fund raises.

We work with carefully selected companies that are capable of growing a large business relatively quickly.

Our model is close to that of a typical venture fund in that we only work with a limited number of companies at any given time. We seek ownership in the company through an instrument called a triggered warrant. We have a page describing the instrument, but in short, it means we do not get to buy equity unless the company achieves certain milestones during our engagement. The milestones are the consequence of our work which includes the following:

Building a clear model of the unit economics of the business at scale. This is not a forecast or a plan, but a pro-forma view of the opportunity.
Building the narrative that supports the model – this can be an executive summary or a deck or both.
Teaching the founding team to tell the story enshrined within the model and the narrative

In order to be successful in this journey it has to be an ongoing commitment to developing the model and the narrative over successive rounds of funding. It involves clarity around the product, pricing, sales, go to market and much besides. The warrant is typically only triggered after two or more rounds when significant goals have been achieved.

Why we like this approach

We like the triggered warrant approach for several reasons. Firstly, it avoids being a “consultant” or paid contractor. We are only rewarded if the company is rewarded. Unlike many acceleration and incubation programs, there is no pay to play and we do not get guaranteed equity in return for a small check. Secondly, it fully aligns us with the founder, the founding team and the other investors.

What we believe

We believe that a successful startup has the following ingredients:

A strong founder or founding team with a unique insight and the passion to follow it.
A strong opportunity that has an inevitability about it.
A strong likelihood that the team and idea are the natural beneficiaries of the opportunity.
A large outcome if the team is successful

Even with all these attributes luck and timing play a major role in whether these elements result in actual success.

At the earliest stage in a company there are only ideas. Value is directly related to the strength of the idea, and how it is narrated. To develop that narrative it is necessary to be audacious, avoid all fear, and plan for success.

Our Philosophy at Archimedes was well stated by former President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt:

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

“Citizenship in a Republic,”
Speech at the Sorbonne, Paris, April 23, 1910