For corporate innovation leaders
Startup velocity.
Your governance.
The trade every innovation leader fears: to move at startup pace, you surrender control — of the IP, the brand, the board's comfort. That trade is not actually required.
Entry Life runs venture builds, spin-outs and R&D prototypes as an external venture team — your IP, your brand, your governance intact, our build pace and venture judgement inside them. A studio, not an agency: we build it as if we had to live with it, because in an equity structure, we do.
Scope of venture builds
From mandate to shipped venture.
New-venture builds
A validated concept taken from mandate to working product — scoped, architected and shipped by one accountable team.
Spin-outs
A venture structured to stand alone: product, operating model and team designed for independence from day one.
R&D prototyping
Idea to proof-of-concept before serious budget commits — exploratory engineering with a kill-or-continue answer at the end.
Modernisation
Legacy platforms rebuilt with venture-grade architecture — without pausing the business that runs on them.
How control is kept
Your IP, your brand, your board. Contractually.
Ownership is settled in the contract, not negotiated at the end: the IP is yours, the brand decisions are yours, and reporting is structured so your board sees venture progress in language it already trusts.
On procurement: we're an NZ-registered company with named principals, standard contracting and clear IP terms. Where a requirement exceeds our current certifications, we'll say so — an honest no at procurement beats a discovered one at audit.
An agency
delivers your spec at your pace — including the spec's mistakes, discovered in production.
A consultancy
recommends the venture; someone else still has to build and run it.
An internal team
has the context but rarely the venture reflexes — or the licence to kill its own project.
A studio
brings venture judgement and build capability under your governance — and tells you when the venture shouldn't continue.
What an engagement looks like
From mandate to hand-over, in four moves.
1. Scope the mandate
The venture thesis, the kill criteria, the governance interface, in one document both sides sign.
2. Build at venture pace
The studio team runs the build; your people stay as close as your governance wants them.
3. Report in your language
Checkpoint reviews against the kill criteria, not decks about momentum.
4. Hand over or spin out
Into your organisation, or into a structured independent venture. Either way, documented.
The mandate is the start
Bring the venture mandate. We'll tell you what it takes to ship it.
A scoping conversation with a founding principal — what's buildable, what it costs to find out, and where the kill criteria should sit.