Insights
A knowledge library for people building companies.
Venture building, strategy, product, growth and investment — organised around the seven stages we use to build companies, and written by the team doing the building.
Featured · Venture Building
What is a venture builder?
A venture builder creates companies. It is not an incubator, an accelerator or a fund — it is an operating model for turning opportunities into businesses, and understanding that difference matters before you choose who to build with.
Craig Peterson16 April 20246 min read
18 articles published, 123 planned across 11 topics and the seven stages of the Venture Builder Process.
By stage
The seven stages, as a knowledge framework
The same process we use to build companies organises what we publish. Start where your venture is.
01
Ideate
Find opportunities worth building a company around.
Explore02
Evaluate
Validate the opportunity before you build the business.
Explore03
Create
Turn a validated opportunity into a company.
Explore04
Incubate
Build something real and prove it works.
Explore05
Launch
Take the product to market and find repeatable demand.
Explore06
Accelerate
Build the engine that turns demand into growth.
Explore07
Scale
Build a durable company, not just a growing one.
ExploreBy topic
11 topics we write about
Venture Building
How companies are systematically created by venture builders, and how that model differs from incubators, accelerators and funds.
ExploreIdeation & Opportunity
Where credible venture opportunities come from, and how to separate an interesting idea from a buildable business.
ExploreStartup Strategy & Validation
Testing whether a market, a customer problem and a commercial model hold up before significant resources are committed.
ExploreProduct & Technology
Designing and building products and platforms that customers use and that can carry a business as it grows.
ExploreGo-to-Market
Getting a product into the market and finding repeatable demand for it.
ExploreGrowth & Scale
Turning early traction into a growth engine, then turning a growth engine into a durable company.
ExploreFunding & Investment
How ventures are funded stage by stage, and what investors are actually assessing at each point.
ExploreInvesting in Ventures
How investors evaluate, access and build a position in early-stage, venture-built companies — including the UK's SEIS and EIS schemes.
ExploreCorporate Venture Building
How established businesses create new ventures, products and services outside their existing operating model.
ExploreFounders & Teams
The people question — founding teams, early hires, leadership and how teams change as a company grows.
ExploreBuild Stories
First-hand accounts of ventures GCV Labs has created, co-founded and scaled.
ExploreFor investors
Investing in venture-built companies
A dedicated series for investors: what the venture builder model changes about early-stage risk, how SEIS and EIS work, how to assess a young company, and where GCV Invest fits alongside GCV Labs.
Investing
Building an early-stage investment portfolio
Position sizing, spread, pacing, follow-on capital and the role of SEIS and EIS in constructing an early-stage portfolio you can actually hold.
Craig Peterson1 April 20266 min read
Investing
Assessing risk in early-stage companies: an investor's checklist
The six-lens diligence framework we use when assessing an early-stage company, and the questions under each that reliably surface the real risk.
Craig Peterson25 March 20266 min read
Investing
How GCV Labs and GCV Invest work together
Build and fund are two distinct capabilities in the Growth Capital Ventures ecosystem. Here is where the boundary sits and why it exists.
Craig Peterson18 March 20265 min read
Investing
SEIS and EIS explained for early-stage investors
A plain-English guide to SEIS and EIS: the reliefs, the limits, the conditions, the risk-to-capital test, and the questions to ask before you rely on either.
Craig Peterson11 March 20267 min read
Investing
Why invest in venture-built companies?
What a venture-built company looks like from an investor's side of the table, and which early-stage risks the model removes — and which it does not.
Craig Peterson4 March 20267 min read
All articles
Latest from GCV Labs
Scale
Building enterprise value, not just revenue
The six components of enterprise value beyond revenue, and the decisions during Scale that make a company valuable rather than merely large.
Craig Peterson18 August 20265 min read
Read the articleGrowth
The metrics that matter: CAC, LTV and payback
How to calculate CAC, LTV and payback honestly, with a worked example and the ratios that actually drive decisions.
Craig Peterson14 July 20265 min read
Read the articleGo-to-market
What product-market fit actually looks like
Five observable signals of product-market fit, why revenue alone is not one of them, and what to do when you have some but not all.
Craig Peterson16 June 20265 min read
Read the articleProduct
How to build an MVP that actually proves something
Define the question first, scope to the evidence, and read the result honestly. How we approach MVPs in the Incubate stage.
Craig Peterson12 May 20265 min read
Read the articleFounders
Building the founding team before you build the product
The four capabilities a founding team needs, how to structure equity and roles honestly, and what to settle before the first hire.
Craig Peterson8 April 20265 min read
Read the articleInvesting
Building an early-stage investment portfolio
Position sizing, spread, pacing, follow-on capital and the role of SEIS and EIS in constructing an early-stage portfolio you can actually hold.
Craig Peterson1 April 20266 min read
Read the articleInvesting
Assessing risk in early-stage companies: an investor's checklist
The six-lens diligence framework we use when assessing an early-stage company, and the questions under each that reliably surface the real risk.
Craig Peterson25 March 20266 min read
Read the articleInvesting
How GCV Labs and GCV Invest work together
Build and fund are two distinct capabilities in the Growth Capital Ventures ecosystem. Here is where the boundary sits and why it exists.
Craig Peterson18 March 20265 min read
Read the articleInvesting
SEIS and EIS explained for early-stage investors
A plain-English guide to SEIS and EIS: the reliefs, the limits, the conditions, the risk-to-capital test, and the questions to ask before you rely on either.
Craig Peterson11 March 20267 min read
Read the articleInvesting
Why invest in venture-built companies?
What a venture-built company looks like from an investor's side of the table, and which early-stage risks the model removes — and which it does not.
Craig Peterson4 March 20267 min read
Read the articleStrategy
How to size a market: TAM, SAM and SOM without fooling yourself
What TAM, SAM and SOM actually mean, how to calculate them bottom-up, and a worked example you can copy.
Craig Peterson4 March 20265 min read
Read the articleIdeation
Where startup opportunities actually come from
The four sources credible venture opportunities come from, and how to tell an observation about a market from a business worth building.
Craig Peterson10 February 20266 min read
Read the articleInnovation
Corporate venture building that actually ships
Established businesses have the assets to create new ventures and the structures that most often prevent it. The fix is usually operating design, not ideas — and the goal is a launched company, not a workshop.
Craig Peterson7 October 20255 min read
Read the articleGrowth
Structuring a venture for scale
Scale is an outcome of structure. The decisions that determine whether a company can grow are usually taken long before growth begins — in how the commercial engine is designed, how performance is measured, and what the operating rhythm looks like.
Craig Peterson14 May 20255 min read
Read the articleStrategy
Validating an opportunity before you build
Evaluation is the cheapest stage of company creation and the one most often skipped. Here is what it should actually test — and why the decision to stop is one of the most valuable outcomes it can produce.
Craig Peterson22 January 20255 min read
Read the articleInvestment
Capital alone doesn't build great companies
Funding is a necessary input into company building. On its own it is rarely the constraint that decides whether a venture works — and treating it as the main event is one of the most common mistakes in early-stage company creation.
Craig Peterson3 September 20245 min read
Read the articleInvestment
Venture builder vs venture capital: what actually differs
Both models want valuable companies. They differ in when they engage, what they contribute and where the work sits — and confusing the two leads founders and corporates to expect the wrong things from each.
Craig Peterson11 June 20245 min read
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