ABOUT US
“A problem well-stated is a problem half-solved, while a problem not well stated is unsolvable”
The biggest opportunities for profit growth and social impact come from imagining and creating new markets. But less than 1% of market creating ventures achieve sustained profits. Through two decades of working with more than 40 corporate and startup ventures, we’ve unearthed the underlying problem, and designed a new innovation discipline that solves it.
25
Years developing IVE
40+
New ventures supported
$15M
Pre-seed capital
deployed
$200M
Investment guided
Built by Practitioners. Grounded in Research. Driven by Results.
Erik Simanis, PhD
Founder and Chief Methodology Officer
Erik has spent his career working at the intersection of market creation and research. He has guided over forty new corporate ventures and startups, in industries from financial services to FMCG. Drawing on this experience, Erik founded the practice of Integrative Venture Engineering, a novel market creation methodology that reduces the time, risk and cost to build a profitable new market venture. He holds a PhD in Strategy from Cornell, and has been published in leading journals including Harvard Business Review and Sloan Management Review.
Patrick Donohue
Chief Executive Officer
Patrick is a seasoned innovation leader with 20+ years of experience in product, business, and engineering roles at Facebook, Automattic, Rockwell and mission-driven startups. As a 0-to-1 venture leader, he has created multi-million dollar revenue impact, led corporate innovation and research efforts, and was the co-founder of the Hoop Fund and head of product for eParachute, driving impact across a range of industries. Patrick has a Computer Science degree from Stanford University and an MBA from UNC-Chapel Hill, where he and Erik first worked together.
From Research to Real-World Impact
1950s
Systems engineering was taught as a discipline for the first time at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
1990
The International Council on Systems Engineering was founded to foster the understanding and practice of systems engineering across different domains.
2000s
Model-Based Systems Engineering was developed to accelerate systems engineering and better handle complexity.
Meanwhile, Erik and Patrick were working to develop an entrepreneurship methodology as part of a learning lab based at UNC Kenan-Flagler and Cornell SC Johnson business schools, focused on design thinking and co-creation, working in-field with corporates.
2010s
A key learning emerged from multiple failed ventures in the learning lab: the business concept had to be designed taking into account all key drivers of profitability, not just customer wants and needs. In our work with corporates, we began applying systems engineering to venture creation.
2016
An early form of our systems engineering-based methodology, integrative venture engineering (IVE), started being used to power multiple corporate new venture incubators, including Pearson, BMW UK, Barclays, and Mars.
2017
Our team developed an at-scale operational and financial modelling technique, allowing us to simulate and evaluate the path to profitability of a venture’s underlying architecture and test configurations that improved a venture’s robustness.
2018
On behalf of the International Finance Corporation, we trained early-stage ventures in off-grid solar to apply our modelling technique. We also used IVE to audit pre-revenue and early-stage startups in biofuel/clean cooking, kite-generated energy, and mental health-tech.
2024
Half-Solved formed as the application engine for IVE, working directly with innovators and investors.
Market Creators Lab was launched in partnership with Cornell University and the International Council on Systems Engineering.
Want to join us?
We’re always looking for smart, curious people who are ready to rethink how innovation works. Whether your experience lies in building, investing, engineering, or research, if your views around venturing align with ours, we want to hear from you.