COBUILD VENTURE STUDIO

A venture studio for domain experts

You bring the expertise and the market.
We build the product.

CoBuild Venture Studio partners with operators who know an industry from the inside and have an AI product idea that industry needs. We do the development legwork, from first build through testing, documentation, and launch, as sweat equity. In return we hold partial ownership in the company we build together and receive a monthly residual from its revenue.

Bring us your idea See how the deal works
0Upfront development fee
4Parts to every deal, agreed in writing
1Build at a time per founder, with stage gates

The model

A venture studio, structured as a build partnership

A venture studio is a company that builds companies. CoBuild works as an institutional co-founder: we supply the product build and technology leadership, the founder supplies the domain expertise and the route to market. Every engagement runs on the same four deal terms, written into a studio agreement before build work starts.

01

We do the build legwork

Development, testing, documentation, and the overhead work that turns a proven workflow into a working product. The build is our investment, contributed as sweat equity, with no upfront development fee.

02

The founder covers running costs

The founder covers agreed overhead and operating costs for the product, such as cloud and AI usage, hosting, domains, and tool subscriptions. These are listed per deal in the agreement.

03

We hold partial ownership

CoBuild retains an ownership percentage in each product company. That ownership also applies to our share if the company is later sold to a larger buyer.

04

We receive a monthly residual

CoBuild receives a share of the product's monthly revenue while the agreement runs, plus a defined buyout path so the founder can purchase our position over time on a formula agreed at the start.

Separate by design. Each venture is its own company with its own accounts, books, data, and customers. Ventures share no customer data with each other, and intellectual property ownership is documented before the build begins.

How it works

Five stages, with a decision point at each gate

Either side can stop at a gate. The terms for stopping, including what happens to the work completed, are agreed before the build starts.

  1. 1

    Screening

    We score the idea and the founder against the fit criteria below. Distribution carries the most weight: a strong idea with a weak route to market does not pass.

  2. 2

    Validation sprint

    A short, scoped working period where we run the founder's real workflow on real cases, confirm the output quality, and test the concept with buyers from the founder's network.

  3. 3

    Build

    The company is formed, accounts are set up separately, and we build the product: software, documentation, help content, and security scope set for the data the product handles.

  4. 4

    Launch to the founder's network

    First customers come through the founder's own network and channels. The founder leads selling and onboarding. We support demos, product training, and the launch materials.

  5. 5

    Operate, grow, and choose the long path

    Monthly billing starts, the residual runs, and we provide ongoing technology leadership: roadmap, releases, vendor choices, and security reviews. The founder can grow the company, buy out our position on the agreed formula, raise outside seed capital with our support, or sell.

Who it fits

What we look for in a founder and an idea

The idea is one part of the review. The founder's ability to reach buyers carries equal or greater weight, because the studio's return only arrives when the product sells.

In the founder

  • A network of buyers they can name: current clients, past clients, associations, referral partners, and peer groups
  • A concrete plan to put the product in front of that network in the first 90 days after launch
  • A marketing and growth plan in their own words, with channels they already use
  • Willingness to act as the first salesperson: demos, pilot closes, and onboarding
  • Time committed in writing during the build and launch, plus a contribution toward running costs
  • A workflow they already perform today, manually or with early AI tools, that they can show us live

In the product idea

  • A specific problem inside one trade, profession, or business function
  • Pain with a cost attached today: hours consumed, errors made, or revenue missed
  • A workflow that repeats weekly or monthly for every customer, which supports recurring billing
  • A proprietary asset inside the workflow: rules, formats, templates, and judgment built over years of practice
  • AI fit with output a human can verify line by line
  • The same core process serving many customers, with differences handled as configuration
  • Unit economics that work at a price buyers in that industry already pay for comparable tools

Proof before build. Before a full build commitment, we ask for three things: buyer conversations from the founder's network that we can sit in on, design partners willing to sign a pilot agreement, and a live demonstration of the current workflow, end to end.

Ventures

Companies built under this model

Products built and operated by the studio team. Each one started as a workflow inside a working business.

Live product

Tradecall Pro

An AI front office platform for trade businesses. Tradecall Pro answers calls around the clock, books jobs to the calendar, and handles estimating, invoicing, scheduling, service plans, reviews, and customer follow-up, so the owner can stay on the tools.

tradecallpro.co

Live product

Voxigo

Self-service professional phone recordings for businesses. A customer writes a script, chooses a voice and music, previews the result, and downloads production-ready voicemail, auto-attendant, on-hold, and IVR recordings in minutes.

voxigo.io

In development

Bookiz

A bookkeeping platform for CPA firms, built around a proven internal AI workflow. Bookiz processes bank and credit card statements and sales records into a balance sheet, profit and loss statement, bank reconciliation, and detailed journal ledger, in the formats firms already use.

Website coming soon

About the studio

Built by an operator, for operators

CoBuild Venture Studio was founded by Chris McGlasson. Chris built and sold LANPRO Systems, an IT services firm that served more than 350 enterprise clients, and he now works as a fractional CIO through ClearStack Advisory for business-to-business companies in the $10–30M revenue range.

The studio applies the same discipline to each venture: a documented build process, security scope set for the data involved, product documentation written as features ship, and technology decisions reviewed at an executive level. The studio takes on a small number of builds so each venture gets direct attention from the founder.

The short version

  • Founder of ClearStack Advisory (fractional CIO)
  • Built and sold LANPRO Systems, 350+ enterprise clients
  • Builder of Tradecall Pro and Voxigo
  • Focus: AI products for defined industries, sold through the founder's own network

Start a conversation

Tell us about the idea and the market behind it

Give us the workflow, the buyers, and the network you would sell it through. We review every submission against the fit criteria on this page and reply with a direct assessment, including when the fit is wrong.

Idea discussions start under a mutual non-disclosure agreement when either side asks for one.