When you're evaluating a venture studio, you will talk to the partners, see the portfolio deck, and probably speak with one or two founders the studio introduces you to. Those conversations are real. They're also curated. The founder the studio puts in front of you is almost certainly one of their better-performing relationships.
The reference check that actually matters is the one you conduct yourself — with founders the studio didn't hand-pick for you, including founders whose companies struggled or ended, and founders who are now a few years removed from the relationship and can speak without worrying about it.
This is not about assuming bad faith. It's about applying the same diligence to a studio that a studio applies to you. They are evaluating your domain knowledge, your customer relationships, and your ability to execute. You should be evaluating their track record as a co-builder, their behavior when things go wrong, and whether the equity they take is worth what they deliver.
How to get to the right conversations
The studio's website and deck will show you their best portfolio companies. That's expected. What you want is the full picture.
Ask the studio directly for a complete list of portfolio companies — not just the highlighted ones. Any serious studio should provide this. If they're reluctant, that itself is data. With the full list, you can find founders through LinkedIn and reach out independently, without the studio as an intermediary. Those conversations are worth more than the ones the studio arranges.
Specifically seek out companies that didn't make it. Failed companies aren't necessarily a sign of a bad studio — most early-stage companies fail regardless of how good the support is. What you're looking for is how the studio behaved during and after the failure. Did they treat the founder fairly? Were the equity and IP terms enforced in a way that felt reasonable? Did the studio give honest feedback about what wasn't working, or did they let things drift?
The specific questions that reveal how a studio operates
Generic questions get generic answers. "How was your experience" produces "it was great, really supportive" almost every time. The conversations that give you real information are built around specific scenarios:
"Tell me about a time when you and the studio disagreed about product direction. What happened?" This reveals whether the studio respects founder autonomy or treats the company as a studio asset to be managed.
"Describe a moment when you needed something from the studio — engineering time, a key introduction, capital — and it was slower or harder than you expected. How did that get resolved?" This reveals whether the studio's operational support scales with the company's needs or whether the pitch overpromises the delivery.
"If you were doing it again, what would you negotiate differently in the terms?" This gets at the equity split, decision rights, and IP ownership in a way that the official documentation doesn't capture. The answer is usually very honest because the question is framed as advice rather than criticism.
"Did you ever feel like the studio's interests in another portfolio company influenced how they prioritized yours?" This one is uncomfortable to ask, but important. Studios that run multiple companies simultaneously face real resource conflicts. How those conflicts get resolved — and whether founders feel it was handled fairly — matters a lot.
What to do with the IP and equity structure
Beyond the reference conversations, have a lawyer review the full operating agreement before you sign anything. Studios vary significantly in how they handle IP ownership, equity vesting schedules, decision rights on future fundraising, and what happens to the company if the founder exits or the studio shuts down.
The term sheet from a studio is not a standard document. It reflects how that specific studio views its relationship with founders — whether they see themselves as a co-owner or a co-builder. Those are different orientations with different implications for how the relationship works under pressure.
Specific things to understand clearly before signing: who controls the board, what happens to the IP if the relationship ends, what triggers a forced sale or dissolution, and whether the studio has pro-rata rights on future rounds that would affect your ability to bring in new investors. These are not adversarial questions — a good studio will have clear, reasonable answers to all of them. If the answers are vague, that's a problem.
What good actually looks like
The reference check is not designed to find reasons to walk away. It's designed to verify what the studio is telling you about how they work. When the references and the pitch match — when the founders you found independently describe the same studio behavior as the ones the studio introduced you to — that's a strong signal.
What good looks like in a studio reference: founders who say the studio was an honest co-builder who delivered on the specific things they promised, who treated them fairly when things were hard, and who gave them real operating support rather than just check-writing plus advice. The absence of any difficult moments is not a good sign — it usually means the relationship hasn't been tested yet, or the founder isn't being honest.
The best studios actively encourage founders to do thorough due diligence on them. They offer to connect you with their whole portfolio, including companies that struggled. They want you to understand the trade-off clearly, because a founder who signs without understanding the relationship tends to have a harder time than one who went in with clear eyes.
At Alder, we operate this way. We'll give you the full portfolio list and encourage you to reach out to anyone on it. The relationship works best when you've done the work to understand what you're getting into — including the parts that require real honesty from both sides.