A declared exception
Our preferred route is to build. Sometimes, we give direct help.
Volcano's model is to invest first in its own startups. But inside the house live all the capabilities needed to found and grow a company: strategy, communication, marketing, project management, R&D. If you would rather keep your idea or your problem and do it on your own, you can ask us for the exact service you are missing: we do not do it by default, we assess it case by case, as a conscious exception to the main model.
6 min read
Why this door exists
Because some problems do not fit into a startup.
Some of the clients we work with (large companies, often multinationals) have real problems, but they are not looking to take part in a new company: they want the solution, not the adventure of building it from scratch. They ask us for something specific and hard to find on the market: a long phase of analysing the problem and ideating solutions, with the same technical rigour we apply to our own ventures.
For those cases, we go on providing that service directly. It does not change Volcano's main model, which remains investing first and gaining only if the project gains: it is a conscious exception, because positive impact matters to us more than the exact form in which it is achieved.
What we can provide
Everything needed to found a company and make it grow.
The same disciplines with which we found and grow our startups, available separately or combined. These families are examples, not a closed catalogue: we cover the full cycle of a company, from its creation to its development, and the offering is composed to measure around your need, to the same standard we apply to our own.
Strategy
Positioning, business model, growth plan, structural decisions.
Communication
Identity, messaging, media relations, content that explains the difficult.
Marketing
From market analysis to acquisition: channels, campaigns, measurement.
Project management
Direction of complex projects: deadlines, suppliers, execution.
R&D
Problem analysis, ideation, prototypes, industrialisation: the historical core of the house.
And more
Innovation taxation, internationalisation, team building: ask us for what you are missing.
What this is not
The preferred route is still the other one.
This door does not replace Volcano's model, it complements it. We do not actively promote it or offer it as our main business: if you have a problem, an idea or a technology at an early stage, the preferred route is still building a startup, with Volcano investing first and gaining only if you gain. This door exists for already established companies, with their own structure and activity, that need Volcano's technical capability without entering into an equity relationship.
The technical capability
Thirty years of track record, then and now.
The same team that builds Volcano's startups has solved technical problems for large companies for three decades. In specific projects, its proposal was the one chosen over much larger competitors (Accenture, Google, ESRI, among others): not for size, but because it was tailor-made to the client's exact need. The public documentation of those cases is in Who we are. The clients we provide this service to today, and what we did for each, are in Clients.
The second door
And then there is the short route: starting from what we have already built.
Our internal projects do not only produce prototypes: they produce know-how, and know-how is not used up when the project that generated it ends. It is still there, matured and documented, ready to be used again.
Hence the second door, and it is the one most travelled. A startup, already existing or newly born, asks us to take to su market a variant, or only a part, of a technology we have already developed. We do not build from scratch: we customise on the base that already exists. The advantage is economic before it is technical, and it is the reason these deals close: doing that same development from nothing would have cost so much that the project would never have existed.
And it does not end there. Nothing prevents the startup, once the work is closed, from acquiring all the know-how and all the variants we have developed internally. We do not hold the asset hostage: if that company is better served owning it than renting it, it keeps it.
That is what we did with the two external startups that appear in clients. And it is also why the catalogue of internal projects is an asset and not a list of intentions: each of them matures knowledge that can then travel more than one market.
How you engage us
One need, one closed offer, your decision.
You tell us what you need and we prepare a tailored offer: price, deadlines and deliverables, in black and white. You decide. The intellectual property of the result is agreed in that same offer, according to what suits your case: it can be transferred entirely to your company, stay in the network with a licence of use for you, or a mixed formula.
How much it costs
The order of magnitude, before talking.
Before asking for an offer you can read what order of magnitude we are talking about: you choose the phase of the path you enter at and the phase you leave at, the project type and the grant funding you expect, and you read the R&D cost of the stretch, what remains at your expense and the deliverables it produces. And, alongside, the two ways to pay for it: as a service, with the cost at your expense, or inside Volcano, sharing the company and the grant funding.
«What we have to learn to do, we learn by doing.»
Have you got a problem that does not fit into a startup?
Write to us and we assess it case by case.
Notice. The content of this page is informational and does not constitute a public offer or a commitment to provide a service. Each collaboration is assessed case by case, after an initial contact.
John F. Kennedy, 1962