Our Philosophy

Project Voyager is the culmination of nearly two decades of experience in both software development and entrepreneurship. Our team has built companies nearly every way imaginable: from "lifestyle" consulting businesses to venture-backed, hockey-stick-growth startups and almost everything in between. Project Voyager distills that knowledge and experience into a focused, repeatable, sustainable startup studio that can reliably create new, profitable businesses, year after year.

Our studio model differs from the traditional startup accelerator model in several key ways:

  1. Team Formation: We have a dedicated in-house team of experts in various fields: product development, software engineering, marketing, talent recruiting, design, and finance. These professionals collaborate to build and scale new ventures. In contrast, accelerators provide advice, mentorship and resources to pre-existing teams.

  2. Funding: We invest our own capital to fund and grow the ventures we help create. Some companies might also seek external funding as needed, but the initial investment comes from Voyager itself. Accelerators, on the other hand, often provide seed funding in exchange for equity but rely on external investors for follow-on funding rounds, and often they measure success by tracking follow-on funding.

  3. Iterative Development: We follow a systematic approach to building businesses, iterating through prototypes and validating assumptions with real customers. This process helps us reduce risk and create sustainable businesses with a higher likelihood of success. Accelerators often have a more compressed timeline, with a focus on rapid growth and scaling, and much higher associated failure rates.

  4. Long-term Commitment: We are deeply involved in the growth and success of our ventures. We maintain a long-term relationship with the businesses we create, providing ongoing support, resources, and guidance. Accelerators usually have a time-limited program (often 3-6 months) and may continue to provide support after the program, but their involvement is generally not as hands-on.

  5. Portfolio Approach: Our focus is on creating a diversified portfolio of businesses, spreading risk across multiple ventures but working individually and intensively with one business at a time, 3-4 times per year. This increases the likelihood of achieving our modest 2-3x return on investment goal. Accelerators work with multiple startups in a cohort, but they typically invest smaller amounts in a larger number of ventures, resulting in a more diluted portfolio.

Our concept contrasts with the traditional accelerator model, which focuses on rapid growth and scaling for externally developed ideas and teams within a limited timeframe. Project Voyager instead aims to achieve modest but reliable market-beating returns by creating sustainable businesses and creating jobs, preserving founder equity, assembling expert teams, providing in-house funding, iteratively developing businesses, maintaining long-term commitment, and focusing on a diversified portfolio.