Building the Next Unicorn: Interview with SKL.vc, Startups of the Year 2024 Nominee

Hey Hackers,

SKL.vc has been nominated in HackerNoon's annual Startups of The Year awards in Venture Capital, Investing, and Entrepreneurship under Business.

Read more about us below to understand why we deserve your vote.

Meet SKL.vc

‘SKL.vc is where data-driven insights meet visionary startups’. ‘We’re building the B2C startups that define tomorrow’. This is how we usually describe ourselves, but what does it actually mean?

Many people assume we’re a venture fund, given the “VC” in our name. However, the truth is we’re neither a classic VC fund nor a traditional venture capital investor. Instead, SKL.vc is a venture builder, which means we launch startups from the idea stage and invest in ourselves. So, rather than just providing funding to external teams, we integrate them into our structure and work together on developing ideas from the inside out.

But wait — doesn’t that sound like a classic venture studio model? Not exactly either. The difference between SKL.vc and a venture studio is that we are fully involved in all internal processes, from product design to marketing and financing, while a classic venture studio typically just “helps.”

At SKL.vc, the startup journey lasts around 8 months — much shorter than if you launch a startup independently. Although each founder’s path is unique, all startups pass through several key milestones: identifying an idea, validating a hypothesis, creating a prototype, building an MVP, completing the product, and launching the company. We take all the entrepreneurial risks and cover all expenses, so hey, good news, no worries about the money!

Once a startup achieves a stable unit economy, growth metrics, and revenue targets, we spin off the company.

How SKL.vc achieved product-market fit

It’s simple: we believe that every startup deserves a chance to succeed. We know that thousands of amazing ideas never see the light because people are too afraid to leave their secure 9-to-5, risk it all — and possibly lose it all in the process.

Imagine saying goodbye to a high salary, especially if you hold a senior position like CTO or department head at a corporation. Or consider trying again if you’ve already experienced the heartbreak of a failed startup. We believe that a bit of support can empower those people to bring to life the ideas they’ve set aside for quite some time. If their idea still resonates and they have the energy to try, we’re here for them.

Here’s how the process is: if we see unicorn potential in the idea, we’ll offer a contract with a salary of up to $200k per month. Yes, you read that right — an entrepreneur's salary! Plus, you'll receive equity, and we’ll cover all expenses. In return, if the project is still just an idea or a prototype we’ll take a 95% share of your future company.

95% may seem ridiculously high — trust us, we’ve heard it many times before. But we trade it for a completely risk-free environment to test ideas, access to all resources, and a competitive salary, freeing founders from any financial worries.

Does this resonate with the audience? We’ll let the numbers speak here. Each year, we have an incoming deal flow of 1000+ startups wanting to partner with us.

When selecting startups, we evaluate these 3 aspects:

• The founder’s background, especially prior success in launching products.
• How well the idea aligns with our target industries.
• The startup’s stage, to ensure that we can still drive the most significant impact.

In the end, we launch around 5-7 startups a year, allowing us to concentrate our support and resources.

The evolution of SKL.vc

SKL.vc was founded in 2019 by serial entrepreneur and investor Artem Sokolov.

Since then, we've always been passionate about B2C projects, even though this might seem a bit weird in today’s market landscape, where most investors prioritize B2B ideas. For us, though, B2C projects are just too exciting! They have the potential to impact thousands or even millions of lives worldwide.

Imagine when someone asks, “What do you do?” and you get to say, “We’re building this app, maybe you’ve heard of it.” Seeing their faces light up when they recognize it is a reminder of why we choose the consumer market, with all its unpredictability.

So, it’s always been about B2C. But what did evolve over time are key domains that we’re most passionate about. Right now we see the future in creative economy, entertainment, digital avatars, HealthTech, FinTech and some other areas. Who knows — maybe we’ll add something new and exciting to this list soon.

Milestones and achievements

On our journey, we’ve also come to realize the importance of a strong startup community. With thousands of requests that we get from talented founders, we decided to create events like our B2C Launch Camp to foster and strengthen the community around SKL.vc.

Launch Camp is a unique opportunity to test ideas in a risk-free environment. Participants join with early-stage concepts, and over a 21-day program, they develop them and bring them to life with support from industry leaders. Top participants get the chance to access up to $15 million in funding, job offers, and stock options.

458 people from 279 teams took part in our last Camp in July–August 2024. By the way, the applications for the new Launch Camp are now open, you can apply until November 13 here!

Lessons learned

One of the main challenges we constantly face is the widespread romanticized idea of being a startup founder. People follow successful entrepreneurs in the news and on social media, thinking that all their ideas are worth millions and that success is just one email away.

The reality, however, is that success in tech entrepreneurship is a lottery. There’s only a fraction of a percent chance that your idea will become a unicorn, half a percent that it will grow into a mid-sized business, and a 3–10% chance it will become a small business. For most, it’s just a waste of time and money.

The problem is that the likelihood of a project succeeding is very low. To be successful, you need to make many attempts, but life is limited — in reality, each of us has only 2–3 tries. Yet, this is the only way to break through. That’s why there are still so many dreamers (sorry, founders) with bright-eyed ambition and people writing “IT entrepreneur” in their Tinder profiles.

At SKL.vc we seek individuals for whom starting a business is a deep-seated passion. Those who understand that the probability of failure is far greater than the chance of success. But who’s still bold enough to try. VC is either for people with a high risk tolerance or people with great ambitions. It’s only for the brave.

What Startups of The Year means to us

We’re a startup that is building and scaling other startups — and we’re ambitious. That doesn’t need much explanation, right? Our goal is simple: we just want to build the next generation of B2C unicorns.

Startups of the Year is an amazing opportunity for us to share our story. It’s also a chance to engage with HackerNoon’s global community of over 45,000 writers, founders, makers, thinkers and technologists, plus more than 4 million readers. We believe some of them have the potential to become the next unicorn founders. Could that be you?

Conclusion

SKL.vc helps people who can’t afford the typical startup founder's journey — spending years testing hypotheses, negotiating with investors, and draining their personal savings. We make innovation accessible to all by giving people the chance to bring their ideas to life, even when they wouldn’t dare to do so on their own.

By sharing our story, we hope to inspire those who have been sitting on their startup projects for too long to finally take action. After reading this interview, maybe you’ll decide it’s time and be brave enough to take the first step.