At Neon Venture Studio, we’ve designed a structured yet flexible system for allocating talent across our ventures. From the first lines of code to the moment a startup is ready to raise its pre-seed round, team allocation is key to making our model work. In this article, we’ll walk you through how we assign team members to ventures, the role of our core teams, and how everything evolves from studio to spinout.

Our team structure

Neon operates through three primary layers of talent:

1. Neon NYC Core Team – Strategists, marketers, investor relations experts, and operational leaders based in New York. This team plays a hands-on role in venture validation, fundraising readiness, and growth strategy.

2. Neon Istanbul Core Team – A powerhouse of engineers, designers, and product managers who specialize in building MVPs with speed and precision. They are responsible for bringing early-stage products to life.

3. Studio Teams – These are cross-functional squads temporarily assembled to work on a specific idea during its MVP and validation phase. A studio team includes a product manager, designer, and developer(s) supported by our in-house tools and studio playbooks.

From studio to spinout

When a venture idea is selected for development, it’s first assigned a full studio team to rapidly build and test an MVP. Once it reaches traction milestones (user growth, retention, monetization), it is considered "validated."

At this point, a founder who has graduated from the Neon Founder Academy is matched with the venture. This founder steps in to take ownership of the company. The existing studio team members (developer, designer, and product manager) are then transitioned into full-time roles within the newly formed spinout.

Ongoing support

Even after team members shift into the spinout, they continue to receive strategic, operational, and marketing support from both our NYC and Istanbul core teams. These teams act as extended partners, providing everything from GTM guidance to investor introductions.

Conclusion

Team allocation at Neon isn’t just about staffing projects—it’s about building high-functioning, founder-led companies. Each startup is supported by a dedicated team from day one, but also gains access to an 80+ person ecosystem that scales with them until they’re ready to operate independently.