IMI Venture Studio

The mandate

I built and lead an industrial venture-studio capability designed to create founder-led, externally investable businesses. The portfolio spans energy transition, industrial automation, critical infrastructure, smart buildings, and adjacent industrial markets.

The challenge was not simply generating ideas. It was creating an operating model that could combine startup speed with the governance, strategic alignment, and evidence standards of a listed industrial company.

A staged operating system

I established an end-to-end model covering opportunity discovery, focused customer validation, investment review, seed funding, external financing, and potential integration or exit. Each stage changes the question being asked and the evidence required:

• Discover: Is there a problem worth solving and a strategic reason to engage?
• Validate: Will customers adopt the solution, and can a credible founding team build it?
• Invest: Do the market case, economics, risks, and governance justify committing capital?
• Scale: Can the company win customers, attract external capital, and build independently?

The Studio has since launched three ventures, creating a repeatable path from industrial insight to an operating company.

Investment and governance

I lead the work that connects venture creation to capital allocation: commercial diligence, investment papers, financial models, valuation, term sheets, shareholder rights, and approval materials. I then remain involved through board-level oversight, portfolio reviews, and external financing.

That continuity matters. The original thesis, legal protections, operating milestones, and reporting model need to function as one system—not as separate workstreams handed from one team to another.

Building repeatable infrastructure

Alongside individual ventures, I created the infrastructure required to run a portfolio: quarterly executive reviews, performance and investment-return dashboards, investment procedures, term-sheet templates, and a network of venture builders, founders, investors, and industrial experts.

The result is a repeatable capability for reducing uncertainty in stages while preserving strategic options as each venture matures.