Fellowship Spotlight: Wynne Studios
Bryan Lattimore is a unique example of someone using both his left and right brain to their fullest potential. This deeply creative, highly intellectual professional got his MBA from Wharton School and worked at McKinsey where he advised clients from around the world to help them solve their toughest M&A, marketing, sales, and organizational challenges.
His experience working for Laurene Powell Jobs as well as for Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, gave him the opportunity to advocate for, collaborate with, and invest in some of the leading creative minds in the world today.
Doing that work gave him some key insights. “What I noticed is that creative people are not usually business people,” Bryan explains, “If you know how to play the piano, you’re not typically a coder. It’s just different skillsets. What I’m seeing in the world today is that Voltron, or collaboration, is required in order to build and create value. So we’re building Wynne Studios to be that infrastructure for creatives and artists. We bring them the technology, the operational experience, the strategy to help them build companies.”
Pairing Venture Studio Model + Creators
A venture studio is an emerging asset class that combines company building with venture funding. Venture studios play the role of matchmaker, connecting business ideas to talent in order to execute those ideas. This model has higher than average success rates, higher internal rates of return (IRRs), and builds companies faster than non-studio startups.
Bryan was attracted to this model and started diving into the research. “Dollar Shave Club, Snowflake, and Hims & Hers all came out of venture studios,” Bryan illustrates, ”They all achieved billion dollar valuations in 5-6 years. Now, my model is to pair the venture studio model with high influence creators. Some examples there are Honest with Jessica Alba, Casamigos with Clooney, and Savage X Fenty with Rihanna. These were all co-founded by influential people and they all achieved billion dollar valuations in less than 3 years.”
This synergizing effect excites Bryan, “Clearly the insight here is that culture serves as a multiplier, speeds things up, and adds value.” Wynne Studios operates at the intersection of these two successful models in order to invest in, incubate, and build toward a more equitable, prosperous, and sustainable world.
The Wynne playbook is as follows:
Back strong teams and products and align them with creators
Support early stage creators with strategy, tech & operations
Collaborate with founders and brands to create new ventures
How the VCI Fellowship Helped Wynne
“VCI has been incredible for a couple of reasons,” Bryan says, “Number one, being in community with my other GPs and fund managers at similar stages. I feel like I’ve met some people who I will be in touch with for a long time. The second is knowing the capital world, the LP world. Knowing the names of family offices, knowing the names of big foundations and the individuals there. Through the educational content that was provided, it was an amazing format to ask questions and get to know people, and for people to get to know me.”
Apart from the peer-to-peer connections and insider tips and training, Bryan highly valued the opportunity to create relationships with LPs through the fellowship. “A cool highlight was I was on a Zoom and heard an LP speak about things that he was interested in and the process for due diligence,” Bryan recounts, “A few weeks later I went on vacation down to Miami, and I actually ran into this person at the same hotel. I knew the person’s name, I knew what their fund was all about, and it led to follow-up drinks on a rooftop in Miami where we were able to talk more in depth about Wynne Studios. After that, when that person came to Atlanta, we connected again and pushed that process forward. So VCI set up an experience where I met someone, got to know them a bit, and I was able to recognize that person’s face, connect in real life, and it’s lead to progress for our firm.”
Merging his profound creative talents with his powerful analytical skills, Bryan is establishing new and innovative avenues for investment. This fearless emerging manager is turning VC into an art form, and all of us at VC Include love watching this venture artist at work.
