Create new markets, profitably
Venture building when real profits matter
Market creation is business at its best, but if you’re building to hold and not just exit, the stats are brutal:
less than 1% of ventures reach sustained profitability, burning through cash in the process
The Market Creators Lab (MCL) is a membership-based organization founded in 2024 to progress a new science of market creation and to advance FIT Startup—a discipline that solves the unique profitability and cashflow challenges of building enduring, market-creating ventures. Ones that are “built to hold”, architected for real profits through cash flows, not via an exit.
Featured Lab Activities
Revolutionizing Practice
FIT Startup is a systems engineering-based venture building discipline developed over two decades of applied research led by Cornell University. Treating profitability as an engineering requirement, FIT Startup enables a step-change in a venture’s chance of reaching sustained profits, while minimizing the time and money required.
In the Market Creators Lab, researchers and practitioners advance the practice and application of FIT Startup for a range of domains and use cases.
Improving Venture Evaluation
FIT Startup’s first principles-based approach to architecting ventures also improves outcomes for investors and corporate development teams looking for more financial rigor and science in evaluating ventures.
Working in partnership with investors like the MIT Alumni Angel network, the MCL’s Due Diligence initiative is advancing profitability-focused venture selection and due diligence tools by leveraging FIT Startup, market creation research and the MCL community itself.
Learning from Live Ventures
The MCL’s Venture Training Studio host cohorts of Entrepreneurs-in-Residency (EIRs) who follow a 16-week process architecting ventures using FIT Startup.
Throughout the process, the MCL community can track cohort progress, and learn from what and how the EIRs build in each sprint, with periodic opportunities for live engagement between the the cohort and community as well.
These ventures provide live case studies for development of new tools and methodologies.
Founding Partners
The MCL is a collaboration between:
Half-Solved
VENTURE Engineering & Design
Experts in market creation, Half-Solved uses Integrative Venture Engineering to build market creating ventures and help others do the same.
Cornell University
Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise
A center for applied research, learning and practice, around developing market-based solutions to social and environmental challenges.
International Council on Systems Engineering
Integrative VEnture Engineering Working GrouP
Advancing and disseminating the theory and practice of applying systems engineering to new venture creation.