Is a startup studio a good fit for my startup or should I go the VC route?

I answer community questions about startup studios.

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

I’m Dianna, startup studio enthusiast, and I love helping people learn about the studio ecosystem. I often get questions from founders and emerging studios and answer them pretty thoroughly.

I started thinking others might benefit from my insights and opinions. So, I’m sharing the questions and my answers here.

If you want to ask a question about studios, connect with me on LinkedIn and tell me how I can help- I’m an open book!

The Question:

Basically, my tech startup has gone from MVP last Summer to having 10+ customers and 50K ARR in the last year on a bootstrapped budget. We’ve been approached by a VC Studio who wants to help us target the Forbes1000 market, with which they have connections. However, we don’t need help in building the tool — we just need connections and funding. Which makes it seem like maybe a VC Studio isn’t a good fit?

We’re currently raising our pre-seed round of $500k and are thinking of proposing that they instead just contribute to that.

Basically, is there any precedent for this? If a VC studio comes across a startup with a product that excites…