ELEVATOR PITCH
Venture Atlas Labs is the first global, scalable firm designed to bridge funds, product teams, and the market by blending world-class consulting with agency execution to offer funds, entrepreneurs, and growth organizations a distinctly better option when entering and developing their market.
Team (L-R): Alan Hulme-Lowe, High Tech; Tanya Tarr, Negotiation; Michael Morton, Product Engineering; Felipe Vega, Finance; Elizabeth Jennings, Principal, Portfolio Services; Rafael Landestoy, Director of Partner Success; Jessica Kerr, Administration; Don Fowler, Director of Strategy.
Through partnering with venture capital, private equity firms, and international trade organizations, we leverage proprietary technologies, processes, and a global network of domain experts to bring successful companies in healthcare, life science, high tech, and social impact to new and emerging markets like no one else can.
Every business has a snippet of legacy copy that has persisted in their communications materials through evolution and growth.
Ours is this: We’re the first and only firm of our kind for a reason — what we do is damn hard.
Elizabeth Jennings Principal
OUR STORY
It was scribbled on an index card late one night after one too many espressos (for inspiration) — and boy, did we sweat over it. How audacious of us! What if, unbeknown to us, we weren’t the first and only? What if, God forbid, our families read that we used a swear word (sorry, Dad)?
But among every way we’ve ever described who we are and what we do, it cuts to the point: this is hard. Not very hard — damn hard. And it’s why we’re in it.
Fortunately, all of us have an appetite for persistence.
Both in our work and as a company, we’ve known that ease is — generally — a fickle flicker that burns out; we knew that to do something damn hard, we would have to move pieces and systems to work in new ways. Venture Atlas Labs was created out of necessity for just that: we continued to encounter the same problems time and time again. We saw the same recurring themes with early-stage startups as we did with skunkworks in Fortune 100 companies. Entrepreneurs both new and seasoned find the biggest risks to their businesses not at Idea or Product — but in realizing it in the marketplace.
It was also born out of unlikely confluence. To understand both the macro and micro forces at play, I first had to live internationally; work in healthcare and life science; work in small startups and in corporations, and engage trade organizations. I had to understand venture capital, different regulatory and insurance environments, manufacturing processes abroad, and — on more than three occasions — how to use an old-school phonebook to get in touch with the right person on a poor phone connection in a third language. Every single member of our team has had unlikely career trajectories that have given them a powerful set of skills.
We had to build a new model of consulting based on more action than talking, founded on a commitment to the long-term and executed on objective information–and we had to bridge funds with the markets themselves. We had to develop processes and methods to size risk factors to future markets based on trends analyses. We had to test dozens of software’s for utility and compliance — then learn how to deploy internationally across language and technical barriers. We had to live in the thick of it to navigate funding organizations, procurement, and customers in a way that was both dynamic and scalable for our clients.
Of course, there isn’t enough time in a lifetime to become experts in everything — and building and growing Venture Atlas Labs certainly hasn’t been a solo endeavor. Built as a fractional team of consultants worldwide, our success has been greatly enabled by the individuals what deep domain expertise who believe doing something damn hard was worth it. Headquartered in East Austin, this team has made possible what no one alone could have accomplished.
As a result, we do the hard work of optimizing commercial models in regulated industries to extend runway, increase likelihood (and timing) of return, and identify risks before they de-stabilize a new brand. We take mediocre data and extract actionable next-steps. We take copycat and competitor fears and build a real, objective plan of attack.
It’s all to support our community of innovators here in Austin and the remarkable impact of their companies — and we couldn’t be more proud.
