Not in the traditional sense. We use Deliberate Innovation (first developed at Flashpoint@GeorgiaTech) to uncover Authentic Demand. Instead of making funding choices among startups, we partner with founders and our own EIRs to build new businesses around these Authentic Demands. Sometimes our support also involves a capital investment. Our model is a hybrid between a highly collaborative early stage accelerator and a business creation studio.

Yes. Email us at hello@demanddiscoverygroup.com.

We follow a structured process of mapping and testing customer situations and immunities. This work is in service of uncovering hidden Authentic Demands. We then are able to build products and services that customers cannot NOT buy.

We work with experts in software and AI for healthcare, biotech, cybersecurity, and cloud infrastructure. We are less useful for ventures primarily defined by technology risk such as therapeutics.

DDG is the successor to Flashpoint@GeorgiaTech, which was incubated inside the university in 2011 and spun out in 2015. Flashpoint worked with about 300 innovators across 81 startups and teams from Fortune 500 companies. Leveraging DI, our startups collectively received over $500M in venture capital, most of it from first tier VCs. As of 2024, these businesses have generated seven liquidity events, $100M+ in annual revenue, and $2B+ in total market capitalization. Investors told us that our four-month DI program is more effective than a year of traditional startup development, and often enables startups to move fast enough to skip a round of funding.

DDG is a studio at the center of a community of practice around Deliberate Innovation. The studio builds companies guiding teams through a DI process to uncover authentic demand in promising areas. We partner experienced EIRs with experts in DI to conduct our uniquely effective primary customer research. Once Authentic Demand is deeply understood, we incorporate a new company and build product.

Generalists are welcome, but we are especially interested to work with domain experts in software and AI for healthcare, biotech, cybersecurity, and cloud infrastructure. If you’re a serial entrepreneur looking for your next opportunity, or an experienced professional who sees a gap in your market, we can work with you to build a company.

EIRs work with DI experts on project teams through a four-month sprint. Together, they interact with customers and stakeholders to uncover Authentic Demand. Our sprints are four months long and involve workshops, office hours, and hundreds of customer conversations. Several sprints are run in parallel, and EIRs may be involved with more than one project at a time. By the end of a sprint, if a team discovers an Authentic Demand and the opportunity fulfills other business criteria, we move to the next stage of our process and incorporate a new company. This stage takes 12-18 months and focuses on reducing risk around technology, team, market, and business model. At the end of this stage, DDG leads an investment in the company, and external investors can also participate. EIRs continue in a leadership or advisory role with the company, or they initiate a new sprint on a different topic.

EIRs earn equity in businesses they create, and also earn equity in DDG’s overall portfolio

While our primary focus is on building businesses with EIRs, DDG also works with independent startups in several ways. These range from access to learning resources to inclusion in DDG sprints alongside our studio companies to a deeper partnership. Contact us to discuss further.

Founders are important additions to our community of practice. We’ve found participants learn our methodology better when they are alongside others in a sprint.

If you have more demand than you can handle, we can’t help. But most startups don’t have this problem. Most startups build products to which customers are indifferent – they don’t know who their customers are. This is where we make a big difference.

We partner with experienced founders who are deeply curious about who their customers are, and realize this is an existential need. They have led or worked at startups before, and often have an exit. One founder we worked with said: “I’ve built enough successful companies and divisions of companies to know something. I learned to think and understand things in a new way. It’s changed how we’re building our current company and how I’ll build companies in the future.”. They are eager to understand the distortions in the lens through which they see themselves and their customers.

Founders join a sprint alongside our EIRs and other founders. They interact with customers and stakeholders to uncover Authentic Demand. Our sprints are four months long and involve workshops, office hours, and hundreds of customer conversations. Founders also gain access to our network of advisors and investors. DDG may also invest capital at the successful conclusion of a sprint on a case-by-case basis.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes. Email us at hello@demanddiscoverygroup.com.