What Even Is a Product Studio?

Colin and Christian kick off the series by mapping the landscape: what a product/venture studio actually is, and how it differs from an agency, a VC fund, and an accelerator. They trace the model from Idealab in 1996 to Flagship Pioneering, Atomic, and Hexa, unpack why studio-backed startups reach Series A in 25 months versus 56, and explain the core idea behind everything that follows: the studio as an institutional co-founder whose unit of output is a company, not a deliverable.