Communities are social constructs that take several years, if not decades, to develop. So how do you build one from scratch in one year?
That was the dilemma Cauri Jaye, Rebecca McLauchlan and Ryan Prust faced when they founded rhubarb studios in January 2015. Their initial goal was simple: to help startups succeed by providing mentorship and a physical place to innovate and create.
Their first task was finding that collaborative space. Jaye was adamant about avoiding the spacial limitations of Santa Monica and Venice, envisioning a studio operating out of an entire building, with 90 percent of the space rented out to developing companies. After an exhaustive search, he struck a deal at the US Bank Tower in Downtown LA for an entire floor.
“We were literally three founders standing in a 10,000 square foot empty space with seven tables and an idea of building startups,” said Jaye, a former General Assembly teacher.
Ryan Prust, Rebecca McLauchlan, and Cauri Jaye of rhubarb studio.
Without advertising or outreach, they struggled to attract young companies to the space, and finally decided to take entrepreneurship into their own hands. They created and funded their first four companies.
They brought in developers, entrepreneurs and product specialists for each startup and let them operate independently. Eight weeks later, they started another four companies.
That batch of startups came from outside the studio and began paying a monthly fee to work out of the space.
“The coworking aspect is a side-effect of our business,” Jaye said. “Our business is building startups, but, to do that, you need a community of people and the best way to get a community is to offer them a place to be and the coworking simply grew out of that.”
Identifying as neither a coworking space nor an incubator, rhubarb operates as a venture studio. Its flagship three-month immersive coaching program, [build], was crafted to take startups from the conception stage to a series A. The studio has 150 members and 12 portfolio companies to-date.
Like many startups, some of rhubarb’s early residents didn’t succeed. But instead of fleeing the space altogether, Jaye watched many failed startup members team up to create new companies or shift to other teams within the studio.
“We don’t pay lip service to community. Everyone in here knows everybody else's name. It doesn’t matter if you’re on a totally different project with a totally different company, people just know each other and hang out with one another so there is a lot of cross pollination between the different companies.”
The “cross pollination” doesn’t stop at rhubarb’s door. The studio has been very active, not only in the downtown LA tech scene (where they are considered one of the earliest tech settlers), but also around the globe.
Rhubarb announced a $1 million round of funding in January 2016 and has partnerships with General Assembly, The City of Los Angeles, and Hacker Fund. The studio has also begun working with startups in San Diego and has ties to San Francisco, London, Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe.
Not bad for a one year old company.
“We were at that point where, up until late last year, we had to go out to search for startups and entrepreneurs. We've now reached a point where we don’t. They just come to us.”
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