Almost eight years ago Hamet Watt and Stacy Spikes launched MoviePass, the subscription-based cinema ticket service that won the minds and dollars of investors and made thousands of cinephiles an offer too good to be true for you to see all the cinema passes.
Watt who came to MoviePass As an entrepreneur in residence at True Ventures, he previously founded the brand and product placement startup NextMedium and spent some time as a board partner at Upfront Ventures. Now the serial entrepreneur and startup investor is combining his two career paths under the auspices of Share Ventures.
"I feel like I was brought here," says Watt. “I love solving problems with design and entrepreneurship. As an investor, I didn't quite scratch myself. "
With $ 10 million in funding from a number of investors including Upfront Ventures, Alpha Edison, the general partners and founders of True Ventures, Share Ventures, a Korean family office, is expected to start between two and four companies a year.
Watt says the new studio will focus on what he calls "human achievement". According to Watt, the companies will use a mix of technology and human interaction to develop fitness, nutrition and mental health services.
Share Ventures' initial focus will be on two main areas, the future of life and the future of work. In these two areas, according to Watt, the company will focus on developing companies that enable the development of individual goals, mental and physical improvements, and personal and professional growth. And
Photo credit: Share Ventures
For Watt, the studio model is the next iteration of startup investing. "We believe the studio will lead the way," he says.
Rather than investing in companies and management teams that are in unknown quantities, Watt anticipates that the studio will be able to start discrete businesses much faster, just as businesses are consuming new products and services today.
“We put tools together in a corporate stack,” says Watt. "These are tools developed by third parties and internal tool stacks."
Photo credit: Share Ventures
According to Watt, Share Ventures will act as a holding company with pooled equity that will be shared among the company's employees. "As we work on portfolio companies and build dedicated teams, there is a generous pool to nurture talent."
In some ways, the model isn't all that different from Bill Gross 'Idealab, the Pasadena, California-based incubator company just a few miles from Share Ventures' home base in Los Angeles. Another inspiration comes from @Ventures, the dot-com-era company that has built a number of different portfolio companies. "Our investors get founders who include all of the companies we're building," says Watt.
The company has ten employees who help build its first list of companies.
Watt started talking to investors about the idea in 2018 and spent most of 2019 growing his first companies.
"We carry out a lot of experiments, we generate a lot of ideas, ”says Watt. "The number of shots on goal we take before starting a business is significant. "
