// A venture formation network

Find the wedge.
Build the proof.
Share the upside.

First Wedge turns real problems into narrow wedges, ships prototypes, runs pilots, captures evidence, and decides — scale, spin out, or stop. One platform. Three connected arms.

// Three connected arms
Studio

Forms and ships AI-native companies. From wedge to spinout with capital, operators, and a working thesis on day one.

Build with Studio
Enterprise

Runs internal AI pilots for teams inside real companies. Private workspace, evidence-first, scale or spinout at the end.

Bring us a problem
Guild

The network of builders, operators, designers, domain experts, local partners, legal, finance and fundraising who staff every wedge.

Join the Guild
// How the upside is shared

Most networks promise upside. We keep the ledger that makes it settleable.

Contribution is recorded, reviewed, and versioned as work happens — so when a wedge becomes a company, the question of who built it is already answered in writing.

01

Work is recorded as it happens

Every contribution — engineering, domain insight, customer access, GTM — is logged against a project, reviewed by an operator, and approved or rejected. Nothing is reconstructed from memory at the end.

02

Evidence decides, not enthusiasm

Interviews, prototype usage, pilot metrics, failed assumptions and risk findings are captured against the wedge they test, and reviewed together before the decision is signed.

03

Participation is versioned and human-approved

Ownership participation records are drafted from the approved contribution ledger, versioned, and signed off by a human. No automatic allocation. These are operating records, not legal instruments.

04

Every project ends in a named decision

Scale, spin out, continue, pause, or kill — recorded with the evidence reviewed, the owner, and the rationale. A wedge that fails still produces a playbook.

Ownership participation records are operating records that support later legal and economic agreements. They are not themselves legally binding ownership agreements.

// First Wedge OS

The method runs on software we own.

Every wedge, project, sprint, pilot, evidence item, contribution and decision lives in one system with row-level access control and an immutable audit log. Enterprise data is private by default. Investors and evaluators receive scoped, revocable access to individual projects — never the portfolio.

The result is that formation gets cheaper each time we run it. The tenth wedge inherits the playbooks, the contributor network, and the operating record of the first nine.

Wedge
One problem, one user, one workflow, one falsifiable AI hypothesis.
Sprint
Ten business days. Eight phases. Five gates that pass or fail.
Evidence
Interviews, prototype usage, pilot metrics, failed assumptions.
Ledger
Reviewed contributions, versioned participation records.
Decision
Scale, spin out, continue, pause, or kill — signed, with rationale.
Playbook
What worked, abstracted for the next wedge.
// Current work
Selected active projects across Studio, Enterprise, and Guild.
Studio
Project Vesper
Autonomous reconciliation for mid-market logistics.
Phase: Signal
Enterprise
Northwind Pilot
AI-assisted freight invoice matching inside a mid-market forwarder.
Phase: Pilot
Guild
Local Partner Rollup
Standing up regional partners across three markets.
Phase: Framing
// The First Wedge Method
  1. Step 01
    Framing
  2. Step 02
    Sprint
  3. Step 03
    Pilot
  4. Step 04
    Signal
  5. Step 05
    Decision
  6. Step 06
    Scale · Spinout · Stop
Studio

Build a company with us

Bring a narrow wedge, a real problem, or a working prototype.

Apply to Studio
Enterprise

Run an internal AI pilot

Six weeks. Named workflow. Kill criteria and success metric agreed up front.

Start a pilot
Guild

Contribute to a wedge

Builders, operators, domain experts, local partners, GTM, legal, finance.

Join the Guild