Model

Fund-created

A fund creates a brand and holds a minority position.

Platform build

A fund creates a holding company and appoints a chief executive. Growth comes from acquisition.

Brand house

An operating company creates brands and keeps most of the equity. It earns revenue, not carry.

Venture studio

The firm creates companies, supplies its own staff and takes founder equity.

Talent incubator

The firm creates a brand with a public person and shares the equity.

Closed program

The incubator has stopped or is winding down. This records a status, not a model.

Evidence

Confirmed

A document or first-party statement shows the firm created the brand.

Reported

Press or a legal entity name indicates it.

Unconfirmed

The pattern fits but no source states it. Treat as a lead.

The PitchBook screen covered deals from 18 Aug 2021 to 18 Aug 2026. Rows added from press research carry no date bound and some are older, so the two records do not cover the same period.

Two limits sit on any fund-against-studio comparison. First, the model labels are ours, and the boundary is soft: PitchBook calls Science Inc an incubator and investment firm, AlleyCorp a studio and an early-stage venture capital firm, and types Prehype as Venture Capital plus Accelerator. Placing their exits outside the fund column is a judgement. Second, the search was not symmetric — fund builds before 2021 were not searched, so the recency of the fund builds reflects the screen window rather than when funds began. This data cannot settle which model works better.

42 of 50 rows have no recorded first-financing date and 43 have no recorded investor count. Brand houses own their brands outright, so those brands never raise and no financing exists to record. Any screen built on financing data undercounts this model.

PitchBook cannot identify an incubation. Last Financing Deal Type is a stage field, not an origin field, and it labels a fund build "Early Stage VC" or "Seed Round" and never "Accelerator/Incubator".