Invest

A machine,
not a vision deck.

A studio with engineering discipline where it counts: conviction earned before capital, clean cap tables, and a Swiss, EU-compliant foundation.

Request the Studio Letter How the model works
For investors, in 90 seconds
01Living Scale Up is a Swiss AI venture studio testing one falsifiable claim: that a company can be proven before it is built, and then run by an elite CEO with an agentic core underneath. Venture 01, BuddyLeader, is live in a Swiss pilot.
02The studio launched in July 2026. It is early, and it says so. What you will find here is not a track record — it is a structure you can verify, principles you can hold us to, and a published schedule of what gets disclosed as it becomes real.
03We publish counter-evidence against our own model, label every borrowed figure with its publisher and vintage, and keep a public corrections record.
04We do not publish the method — the validation ratios, the cohort construction, the build timelines. That is the studio's own. Everything else, you can check.
05The next step is the Studio Letter: one dated page on where the studio actually stands. Qualified and professional investors only — no US persons, no EEA or UK retail.
The structure

One studio.
Direct ownership. Nothing pooled.

Living Scale Up is a venture studio, not a fund. We build companies on our own balance sheet and hold founding equity in each one. There is no pooled vehicle: we do not operate, manage or market a fund or collective investment scheme, and we are not supervised by FINMA. Invited investors co-invest directly into an individual venture at launch — one company, one cap table, one decision at a time. You see the venture, the evidence and the terms before you commit, and you hold shares in that company, not units in a structure. That is the model.

01 · THE STUDIO

Equity at the source

The studio holds founding positions in the ventures it builds — earned by building, not bought at a markup. It funds Design and Prove itself, and operates the shared rails each venture inherits. Studio-level capital is not open to outside investors.

02 · CO-INVESTMENT

Direct, by invitation

Invited partners invest directly into an individual venture at launch — after conviction is earned, before scale. Each investment is made on terms agreed with that venture, not through any vehicle managed by Living Scale Up. We do not operate or market a fund.

03 · THE DISCIPLINE

Most losses are taken before you arrive

Most concepts die in Design, against a synthetic cohort, before a venture entity exists and before any co-investor is invited — that is where the studio spends its failure budget. It does not remove yours: early-stage equity carries full risk, and total loss of capital is a realistic outcome.

Alignment

Rules that adapt
like the companies
we build.

Most firms fix their rules in a deck before they have lived a single deal, then renegotiate them in corners. We do the opposite, and we apply our own thesis to ourselves: the rulebook is versioned, dated, and revised in public as evidence arrives. AI is rewriting how companies are built faster than any static rulebook survives — a studio that hard-codes its economics in month two is either guessing or bluffing. What we commit to now are the principles that will not move. The numbers arrive as they are earned, on the schedule below.

INVESTOR RULEBOOKv1.0
ISSUEDAUGUST 2026
PRINCIPLES5 · FIXED
ECONOMICSON MILESTONE
CHANGESDATED · LOGGED
TERMS TO INVESTORIN FULL, BEFORE
The principles — fixed from day zero
P1Founder-first, protected. The operating CEO of every venture holds a meaningful founding stake with published vesting, protected from day zero — it cannot be repriced or clawed back outside its own terms. A living company needs a founder in command, not a custodian of someone else's cap table.
P2The studio earns only what its equity earns. No management fees. No fees to co-investors. No fees charged to ventures. The studio's return comes from one place: its founding equity performing. Our incentives and yours point at the same exit — structurally, not rhetorically.
P3IP travels with the venture. Venture-specific intellectual property — product, brand, data, customer relationships — belongs with the venture as it matures into its own entity. The shared studio rails it runs on are licensed to it royalty-free and permanently, including after the studio exits its position. During Prove, a concept lives on the studio's balance sheet, where kills are cheap and clean; that is a stage, not a destination.
P4Clean at Series A. Cap tables are engineered to be fundable by the best next investor. The studio does not hold a control block past Series A, and no term exists that a lead investor would have to unwind. Studios that keep control past Series A do not get Series A term sheets. We know this.
P5Terms before commitment — always. Every number an invited investor needs — the studio's stake, the CEO's stake, the instrument, the round — is disclosed in that venture's evidence file before any decision is asked of anyone. We publish principles to the world and full terms to the counterparty. Nobody commits to a number they have not seen.
The disclosure ladder — numbers arrive when they are real

We publish rules once we have lived them, not before. Each milestone below adds a permanent, dated section to this page. Hold us to the sequence: a milestone reached without its disclosure is a miss, and we log misses the same way we log corrections.

NOWLaunch. The structure, the five principles, the evidence base with its counter-evidence, the Studio Letter, and the corrections discipline. What you are reading.
NEXTFirst venture incorporates. The ownership architecture, v1 — the actual studio and CEO split, vesting, IP assignment and board terms of a real cap table, published as the reference template for every venture after it.
THENFirst pilot reports. The first calibration entries — what the synthetic cohort predicted, what the real market did, and the error between them. Predictions are sealed before observation, and misses stay on the page. You diligence our accuracy, never our recipe.
THENFirst full quarter of funnel history. The kill count — concepts entered, killed, advanced, live — as dated counts, updated quarterly from then on. The discipline is already running; the record publishes once there is a quarter of it to show.
THENFirst co-invested launch. The co-investment mechanics as actually executed — instrument, entry point, and how the evidence file worked — so the second investor sees exactly what the first one saw.
The performance case

Studio-born
compounds faster.

Benchmark data on the venture-studio model versus traditional venture baselines. It is the standard we hold ourselves to — and we label every industry figure with its source and vintage rather than repeating it as our own. Strongest evidence first: the LP-verified figure leads, the self-reported one follows, and the number that cuts against the model stays on the page. See the facts page for the full set with denominators.

METRICSTUDIO-BORNTRADITIONAL
Net IRR — LP-verified
VAULT FUND, 202360%33%
Internal rate of return
SELF-REPORTED, 14 STUDIOS53%21.3%
Reach Series A72%42%
Months to Series A2556
Exit rate — counter-evidence
3,452 PITCHBOOK DEALS, 202424%38%
Sources, in row order. Net IRR: Vault Fund, "Company Creator Insights" (2023), LP-verified — the most defensible pro-studio datapoint, and the reason we lead with it. IRR, Series A reach and time to Series A: Global Startup Studio Network / Enhance Ventures, "Disrupting the Venture Landscape" — a sample of fourteen studios, self-reported and never independently replicated; that report circulates with two publication years (2020 and 2022) and we have not resolved which is correct, so we assert neither. Exit rate: Big Venture Studio Research (2024, 3,452 PitchBook deals) — counter-evidence we publish because it is true. All industry-reported, not audited, and not Living Scale Up results. Living Scale Up's own record is one venture live in a Swiss pilot, with no exits and no IRR; it fills in on the disclosure ladder above and not before. Updated August 2026.
Before you write to us — check our character

Read us the way
you would diligence us.

THE CORRECTIONS RECORD

What we removed, and when

"$3.48M revenue per employee — removed. The figure is not in that paper." Every correction is dated and kept. Six widely-circulated numbers were declined in public on 3 August 2026 rather than quietly omitted. The record.

COUNTER-EVIDENCE

The case against our own model

The Big Venture Studio Research (2024, 3,452 PitchBook deals) reports a venture-studio exit rate of 24% against 38% for traditional VC. We publish it beside our own benchmark table. The structural objection, answered.

DISCLOSURES §7

A portfolio is a selected sample

"Ventures that failed, were discontinued or were written off are not necessarily shown on marketing pages. A studio's public portfolio is inherently selected. We say so because it is true." Read them.

The next step

Request the
Studio Letter.

One page. Dated. Where the studio actually stands — structure, pilot status, what has been killed so far, and what we have got wrong. Written by the founder and read by a human, not a sequence. As the disclosure ladder fills, the Letter fills with it; ask for the quarterly edition and you watch the rulebook mature in real time. If a quarter is bad, the Letter will say so, because a letter that only reports good quarters is a newsletter, and we do not write newsletters.

IN ITStanding and stage of proof · the claim under test · structure and the economics policy · BuddyLeader's pilot status · what has been killed and why it died · calibration status · a verbatim entry from the corrections record · the next proof gate and its date.
WHY WE ASKThe eligibility questions come from our disclosures, section 8, not from a lawyer hiding them in a footnote. The Letter goes only to professional and qualified investors, and only to people who asked for it themselves.
WHAT WE KEEPNothing. The request becomes one email to the studio and is not stored, logged or added to any list you did not ask for. No cookies, no analytics, no third party anywhere in the path — the form posts to this site's own domain and nowhere else.
STUDIO LETTER · REQUEST

What should we send you?

Eligibility — required by our disclosures

If you cannot confirm both, we cannot send you the Letter. Section 8 explains why — it is a limit on what this website may lawfully put in front of you, not a judgement about you.

This form is not an offer, a solicitation, or investment advice. Your details are used solely to send what you asked for, are never shared or sold, and are not stored beyond the email it generates. Privacy notice · Disclosures

Questions, answered

The five a partner asks first.

Is Living Scale Up a fund?

No. Living Scale Up is a venture studio, not a fund. There is no pooled investment vehicle. The studio holds founding equity in the ventures it builds; invited qualified investors co-invest directly into an individual venture, on terms agreed with that venture. Living Scale Up is not authorised or supervised by FINMA.

How does co-investment with Living Scale Up work?

By invitation, one venture at a time. Qualified investors request the Studio Letter and confirm their eligibility; invited investors then invest directly into a specific venture at its launch, with that venture's terms disclosed in full before any commitment. Nothing on this website is an offer or solicitation.

Why does Living Scale Up not publish equity bands or ticket sizes?

The studio launched in July 2026 and publishes rules only once it has lived them. Its rulebook is versioned and dated: the alignment principles are public now, and the economics follow at the milestones listed on this page. Invited investors always see full terms before committing.

What is the status of BuddyLeader?

BuddyLeader, an AI chief of staff for the leaders of small trade businesses, is Living Scale Up's first venture. It is live in a Swiss pilot, hosted in Switzerland and nLPD-compliant. Its founder and CEO is Jonas Cosendai. It is not raising publicly.

Who may engage with Living Scale Up as an investor?

Qualified and professional investors only. Nothing on this website is an offer of securities in the United States or to any US person, or an offer or promotion to retail or non-qualified investors in the EEA or the United Kingdom. See Disclosures, section 8.

What you can expect

Clear, upfront.

01Cap tables engineered for Series A, with founder and studio terms disclosed in full to the investor being asked to decide.
02Swiss jurisdiction, and venture inference designed for Swiss-hosted infrastructure — regulatory risk addressed at design time rather than retrofitted.
03EU AI Act transparency obligations addressed from the start, not retrofitted under pressure — see our AI Disclosure.
04A hands-on relationship, not a quarterly update — co-building, not just capital.
Disclosure. Nothing on this page is an offer or solicitation to buy or sell any security, or investment advice. Living Scale Up is not authorised or supervised by FINMA, and does not operate or market a fund or collective investment scheme. Living Scale Up, or an entity under common ownership with it, holds, or expects to hold, equity in the ventures described here and therefore has a direct financial interest in them. Early-stage equity is illiquid and total loss of capital is a realistic outcome. No return is promised, targeted or guaranteed. This page is directed at qualified and professional investors only: nothing here is an offer of securities in the United States or to any US person, or an offer or promotion to retail or non-qualified investors in the EEA or the United Kingdom. Investor rulebook v1.0, August 2026 — changes to this page are dated and logged. Full terms: Disclosures.

Watch it mature.

Request the Studio Letter See the facts