The Field's Best Operating Knowledge Is Trapped in Private Studios. Here Is How to Free It.
A standing invitation to contribute to the Venture Studio Forum.
Most of what studios know about building companies has never been written down. It lives in the head of an operator who figured out a kill criterion the hard way, in a financial model that took three funds to get right, in a governance fix that quietly saved a portfolio company. That knowledge rarely leaves the building. The next operator solving the same problem starts from zero.
That is the gap the Venture Studio Forum exists to close. VSF is a nonprofit trade association professionalizing venture creation, and everything it produces is shared freely with the field. But VSF does not manufacture knowledge. It collects, sharpens, and circulates the knowledge that practitioners already hold. The frameworks, benchmarks, and standards that make this field more legible all start with someone deciding their hard-won lesson is worth sharing.
If you are doing the work, you have something to contribute. Here are three ways to do it, ordered by the effort they ask of you.
Adapt something you have already written. A LinkedIn essay, an internal memo, a conference talk, a blog post that captured how your studio actually operates. The Venture Studio Perspective publishes biweekly to operators, investors, and ecosystem leaders across the field. If you have a piece that would serve them, send it. The editorial team reviews within a week and works the revisions with you, broadening a single-studio case into pattern language others can apply, or surfacing the reasoning underneath a tactical call. You own the analysis and the prose, published under your byline. The whole exchange runs 2 to 4 hours over a week or two.
We are looking for operating insight on funnel design, kill discipline, founder economics, and governance. We are looking for honest accounts of what did not work, which tend to be the highest-leverage pieces we run. We are looking for data, even small samples presented with their limits, and for synthesis of research that is currently scattered across a dozen sources. We are not looking for studio promotion, generic startup lessons, or reprints of work already published in full.
Share a resource you have already built. A deal-flow tracker, a portfolio reporting template, a venture-building playbook, an IC memo format, a diligence checklist. If it is useful inside your studio, it is probably useful to others. The VSF Library indexes these for the full membership. We do not edit your materials. You are attributed by name and logo. The only cost to you is the time it takes to package what already exists.
Lead a publication end to end. For contributors ready to drive a research report, a multi-studio case study, an operational toolkit, or a standards document, VSF runs a structured program. Contributing Authors produce focused thought leadership over a few weeks. VSF Fellows lead strategic projects over a few months, with the official Fellow title, a featured profile, and a pathway to other leadership roles in the organization.
A word on what you can expect in return, because contribution only works as an exchange. VSF applies editorial standards consistently and stands behind what it publishes. Contributors are always credited. Sponsors do not influence content, data contributors do not own the analysis, and conflicts are disclosed in the open. Research publishes under Creative Commons BY-NC, free for the field to use. And if your work is in review, you hear back within the window we commit to.
In return, VSF asks for original work rather than reprints, claims supported by evidence, conflicts disclosed in advance, genuine engagement with editorial feedback, and a willingness to share your published work with your own network.
This field professionalizes one contribution at a time. The benchmark that lets a first-time founder price equity correctly, the failure analysis that keeps a studio from repeating a known mistake, the standard that lets an LP compare two studios on the same terms, none of it exists until a practitioner decides to write it down.
If that practitioner is you, start here: https://venturestudioforum.org/contribute