The power of having market-side insights on board from day one

How we embed growth in every business, even before the venture is created

Effective client acquisition and motivated team members are key drivers for the success of a business. In order to make such a success come more natural, we set up a Creation Board in the early ideation days of every new venture. The Creation Board welcomes a series of members who inject a broad variety of market-side insights into the strategy definition, solution design, and business modeling processes. After the establishment of the new legal entity, the Creation Board remains in close contact with the leadership team throughout the venture’s lifetime.

Creation Board key to success

We call our newly created ventures «greenfield ventures» to differentiate them from other startups. Whereas a typical startup gets its drive from one or more entrepreneurs, a greenfield venture starts from the market side. Getting market insights aboard is priority number one. Before we even think about business planning and pitching, we are looking for co-creators who understand the market side and the potential business models of an idea.

Co-creators can be potential clients, or subject matter experts with an eye on the market, or seniors from a different industry who could cross-fertilize and challenge an idea and bring in valuable insights.

The co-creators form the Creation Board of a company. ImpactBuilders assembles the Creation Board, and coaches them towards defining an offering or a solution that answers the market need. When the idea starts to crystallize, we help find the leadership team, attract funds, and even acquire early adopter clients.

Helping the venture leaders with insights and network contacts

In general, the co-creators are not going to run the business. That is the role of the leadership team. When a greenfield venture starts off, however, the co-creators are invited to stay around, and help the leaders with specific market- or network-related topics. The Creation Board are key advisors who help the new company take its first steps in new-venture-land.

We prefer co-creators who want to open up their address book for the greenfield venture. When they share the good news and the first results in their network, they provide a great boost to the venture and to the reach-out efforts of the leadership team. Since the network always wins, that is of great value for the growth of the new venture.

One step further – from the market to the society

In principle, every venture builder could create a greenfield venture, when starting off with a client-side creation board. At ImpactBuilders, we like to go one step further, and also try to introduce “society relevance” as a key strategic driver.

We have developed a methodology to stretch the strategic intent to deliver client value towards creating a positive impact on society. In each of the Creation Board meetings, and during the lifetime of a greenfield venture, we ensure both the board members and the leaders keep focused on the bigger purpose.

This is how we build prosperous ventures that are loved by clients, and that are relevant for society.

Do you want to be part of a Creation Board?

Want to know more about the Creation Board concept, or become a member in one of the Creation Boards?

Our Creation Board concept is quite recent. That’s why some of our greenfield ventures, are still on the look-out for members. Here is an overview of the first three ventures, which all happen to be in IT – but other projects are in the making in different fields.

• Flxion: software that makes it much more easy for leaders of mid-sized services businesses to design, run, and grow a self-steering organization. The MVP is ready, and we are now attracting a client leader to complete the leadership team. The software is in use for two years in all our own ventures. So, we did have market insights in the creation phase. But, now we need to better understand how to define the advisory and coaching services to help clients with the adoption of self-steering.

We are looking for 2-3 creation board members who are familiar with advisory services.

• Idlegcy: regulatory SaaS creating a dashboard for CEOs of large multi-national organizations to get a quick understanding off the company’s risk exposure in the field of personal data privacy, and a clear overview on the risk mitigation process. The first product sketches are ready, and the venture leader is aboard.Now we are looking to complement the first ideas with more solid market and tech insights.

We are looking for 2 CEO’s, 1 marketing manager, 1 HR manager, and 1 manager of a legal department of a large multinational who are aware of the increasing risk of being negligent with personal data across departments, and across the network of partners and suppliers.

• ImpactBuilders DevOps: creating a gig-platform for high-tech app and deep-tech software development projects, specifically attracting and motivating top technologists in difficult regions such as war zones and countries with a less constructive attitude versus human rights. This venture is unique in the sense that it allows the developers to co-own the company, and share in the profits.We are sketching the first ideas now, and are assembling a slightly bigger creation board.

We are looking for 3 people who are familiar with the buying of deep tech and high-tech software projects, and 3 experts in the field of software development project management, Devops, and software quality, as well as 3 country experts with close eyes on different regions

In the near future, we will have other greenfield ventures that will be looking for Creation Board members. One will be in software too, for freelancers and small knowledge worker firms. The two others will be in totally different fields. Just let us know, if you would like to be informed, when we have a new venture ready for boarding.