A venture-building residency for entrepreneurial people who want to discover, validate and build a company with Cloud Studios behind them. Bring an idea of your own, develop one with us, or run with an opportunity the studio has already found. Build a company, without having to do it alone.
It is how the studio partners with unusually entrepreneurial people before there is necessarily a company to join. Cloud Studios provides the financial base, the workspace, the tools, the sparring and selective capital. You provide founder-level ownership, speed and execution. The Residency is not designed to create long-term employees. It is designed to create founders: if the venture proves itself, it becomes an independent company, led by the person who built it, with both of us in the upside.
Because the financial risk of quitting everything on day one stops a lot of good founders before they start, and because exceptional builders usually need a real problem, a sparring partner and access to customers more than they need another traditional job.
Think like a founder from day one. Earn founder-level upside by creating founder-level value.
The Residency is intentionally small and selective. It is not an accelerator cohort, a course, an internship, or a corporate innovation programme.
Five phases over six months, front-loaded. Explore a painful problem, win real commitment inside the first month, build the smallest useful proof, prove it with real users, and take the spin-out decision by month six.
Choose a painful, reachable problem. Speak to target users immediately and name the riskiest commercial assumption before building anything.
Win commitment, not compliments: a paid pilot, a pre-order, a letter of intent, or a committed design partner.
Start the smallest useful proof as soon as the evidence is strong enough. Validating and building overlap. The goal is learning speed, not polish.
Deliver for real users, and turn early commitment into usage, revenue, retention and a path you can repeat.
The spin-out decision is taken by month six. If the opportunity and the founder have proven themselves, the independent company is formed and the resident moves into the Founder and CEO role.
Every phase ends in one of three legitimate outcomes. Killing a weak idea is not failure. Spending more time and money on a weak idea is.
No single metric decides it, because no single metric fits every business model. What is being looked for is demand that is real, repeatable and worth building a company around, in the hands of someone who clearly wants to lead it.
Cloud Studios carries the base, the infrastructure and the company-building. You carry the venture: the customers, the product, the evidence and the pace.
Autonomy, not isolation. You are expected to decide, to speak to users, and to move without waiting for permission on every detail. Cloud Studios acts as an active sparring partner and shareholder, not a manager handing out tickets. The test runs both ways: the studio is working out whether you can become a founder and CEO, and you are working out whether this is the right long-term partner to build with.
If the venture spins out, you lead it and you own a meaningful part of it. Founder upside should reflect founder contribution, so the split depends on where the opportunity came from, who creates the core value, and how much the studio puts in. Bringing your own idea and leading it to market earns the most.
Whatever the number is, it is agreed in writing in a short venture charter before serious build work begins, not negotiated once the venture has become valuable. Equity vests over time with sensible leaver provisions, and additional ownership can be earned through clearly defined milestones. The instrument itself (shares, options or virtual participation) is chosen per venture with legal and tax advice.
The studio is deliberately bootstrap-first. The default answer is not to spend money to discover whether an idea works, it is to win commitment from target users first. Operating spend is approved individually, and larger investment is considered only once the venture has earned it.
Every rung asks the customer for something that costs them: time, access, reputation or money. Build the lightest thing that can validate the commercial thesis, then add capital, team and infrastructure only when the evidence makes the next investment rational.
Paid and part-time, so you are not betting everything on day one. It runs for up to six months, with a validation gate at the end of week four, and the spin-out happens as soon as it is earned rather than when the calendar runs out.
Validation has to produce real commitment inside four weeks. The rest of the term is for building, proving and preparing the spin-out, not for extended discovery. By month six there are four honest outcomes:
There is no required founder archetype. A resident might be an engineer, a designer, a product manager, a commercial operator, a researcher or a student. The common denominator is mindset.
Ownership before certainty. Can you take responsibility before every answer is known, learn from real customers, and keep moving without lowering the standard?
The strongest residents combine urgency with judgment: they move quickly, but they never confuse activity with evidence.
Email hello@cloudstudios.online with two things: something you have built or plan to build, and a link to a short video, about two minutes of you saying what you would build here and why it has to be you. No CV. No form, no portal, no account.
The video is the filter. A CV proves you had jobs. Two minutes of you talking about what you want to build proves hunger, judgment, and whether you can hold an idea in your head. Applications are read personally by the founder, not by software. The Residency runs out of Berlin.
Employment, tax, IP and equity arrangements are agreed individually and reviewed properly. Nothing on this page is a binding employment, investment or equity offer.
Roles at the studio · More about the studio
Anyone entrepreneurial enough to want to lead a company. No degree is required and no CV is read. Engineers, designers, product people, commercial operators, researchers and students are all in scope, because the common denominator is mindset, not background.
No. You can bring your own idea, develop one together with Cloud Studios, or run with an opportunity the studio has already identified. What is being judged is whether you can take one of them all the way to real customers.
Yes. A resident is on a paid part-time base for the length of the residency, with workspace, tooling and studio support included, plus selective capital once the evidence justifies it. It is not an internship, not a course you pay for, and not an equity-for-work scheme.
If the venture spins out, you lead it and you hold a meaningful stake in it. How much depends on where the opportunity came from and who creates the core value. The target is agreed in writing in a short venture charter before serious build work begins, vests over time, and can grow through clearly defined milestones.
Up to six months, with a hard validation gate at the end of week four: real commitment from real users, not encouraging conversations. After that the time goes into building, proving and preparing the company, and the spin-out happens as soon as it is earned rather than when the calendar runs out.
Every phase can legitimately end in go, iterate or kill, and killing a weak idea early is treated as a good outcome. If the person is strong and the opportunity is wrong, the answer is usually a pivot rather than an ending.
From Berlin. Workspace and day-to-day access to the studio are part of what the Residency provides, and the sparring works best in the same room.
Very few. The Residency is deliberately small and selective and currently runs as a pilot. Applications are read personally by the founder, and a strong one is read the week it arrives.