The work is unusually broad and unusually unglamorous.
In a given month you might be reading county filing rules for a US state, tightening the onboarding on a Norwegian consumer app, and arguing about whether a trading strategy actually cleared its statistical bar. Very little of that looks impressive on a slide. All of it is the job.
Who tends to do well
You finish things
The hard part of a venture studio is not ideas. It is the last twenty percent, repeatedly, across several products. People who enjoy starting and dislike finishing have a rough time here.
You go and learn the domain
Our property tax work required reading actual statutes. Our trading work required understanding what a backtest does not tell you. Nobody here gets to build in a space they have not bothered to understand.
You can hold more than one thing
You will not work on a single product for three years. That suits some people enormously and makes others miserable, and it is worth being honest with yourself about which one you are.
You would rather be told than be right
Most of what we try does not work first time. That is only useful if people say so early, plainly, without it being a whole thing.
If that sounds right
Write to us properly
Not a cover letter. Tell us about something you built and what went wrong with it. If there is a venture on our list you have opinions about, lead with those. We read everything that is clearly written by a person, and we are based in Oslo, so say where you are.
catherine@arclabs.no