HCE Studio Whitepaper
Exploring the purpose of a Human-Centric Engineering Venture Studio
1 Our vision and mission
Technology is evolving at a rapid pace.
The world of work is changing at a rapid pace.
People and organisations are struggling to keep up the pace.
Nobody knows what the future will look and feel like, but everybody knows that change is coming. What should one do about it? You could try to fight against it. You could try to ignore it and go along with whatever happens. Or you could try to embrace it and direct it towards a positive outcome.
We believe in this third approach.
We want to combine our knowledge of cutting edge technology with our experience of building teams and products, with our human-centric philosophy. We want to demonstrate that it’s not all doom and gloom. That humans can work with AI to create great value in a fulfilling way. That there is a better way of working, of running teams and businesses, that is both human-centric and AI powered.
This whitepaper outlines our vision, our plan, and our reasoning.
2 Assessing and addressing the contextual environment
To truly visualise where we want to go, and how we want to get there, we must first understand where we are, and the environment in which we currently operate.
2.1 The alarming rate of change of the digital revolution
The world is changing at an unprecedented rate. We are crossing a threshold where the paradigms of the industrial age are crumbling, making way for the ascendancy of the digital age. Many of the assumptions of industrial economics, society, geopolitics, and organisational structures no longer make sense in the age of AI and Bitcoin/Blockchain.
This is creating an environment of uncertainty, which is being felt across all areas of society. We are seeing ever-increasing disenchantment and distrust in the prevailing systems and models. The global economy and monetary system is struggling, the wealth gap is increasing, and people everywhere are feeling the pain. And these same people no longer trust the governments, banking institutions, and global corporations to address this in anything other than a self-serving fashion.
In short:
- People do not feel valued, heard, or connected
- Our current establishment and systems are failing
- Change is happening all around us, faster than ever
On the other hand, the technologies coming out of the digital revolution - most recently and impactfully AI - theoretically enable us to create significantly more value at a significantly faster pace.
2.2 Working is not working
Our current ways of working, structuring businesses, and running teams are remnants of the Industrial Revolution. We still treat people like replaceable cogs in a big machine. The first “computers” were people, working in factory-like conditions, taking inputs and computing outputs. Although this has changed, present-day work still likes to put people into neat little boxes with predefined labels. Easy to understand. Repeatable. Copyable. Inputs and outputs. Machines.
It is a system that de-humanises humans.
This might be successful at driving revenue, but it’s no secret that this isn’t working on a more human level. Job satisfaction is extremely low. Wealth and power distribution curves are more like cliffs than curves.
People are becoming increasingly aware that job security is a myth. Unfortunately, there is no clear and compelling alternative. Working is not working, but it’s the best we’ve got.
2.3 The AI-driven world: a possible, and worrying future
It’s worth taking a moment to consider a tangible yet worrying future scenario, especially given a prevalent worry that “AI is going to take our jobs”.
The combination of AI and robotics has the potential to completely destroy the current economic models. As AI gets better - and we get better at using it - it will become more cost-effective for cognitive work than humans. The same goes for robotics and physical labour. Emad Mostaque (see Raoul Pal and Emad Mostaque podcast) postulates that the technology will be capable of this within three years (although that doesn’t mean that change will happen immediately overnight).
But, when that capability is realised, our economic model breaks. Traditionally, governments reduce interest rates so that companies can borrow money cheaply to hire more people to increase productivity. These people then earn and spend money. But what happens when it makes more sense for a business to buy AI capacity instead of human capacity? The AI does not go shopping. It does not spend money. It just creates value. The economic model breaks, and nobody knows what happens next.
Will this definitely happen? We don’t know. What sort of timeframe are we looking at? Again we don’t know.
Should we keep this possibility in mind as we attempt to plan for the future? Yes, we should.
3 Features for success
Our vision is to create an agency or studio that capitalises on the current rate of technological change, can thrive in a post-AI world, and serves as a model for a better way of doing things.
We aim to create something that exists and is credible in our current world and also operates as a bridge to the future. It is also fundamental to us that it is founded on a more human-centric operating model than we’re used to seeing. It should be better for everybody involved: more functional, more efficient, more equitable, more meaningful, more fun!
3.1 The MIND framework
In his book The Last Economy, Emad Mostaque offers his MIND framework for measuring more holistic success. This brings in some of the more human-factors that are missing from today’s economy, which is largely focused on shareholder value, individual gain, and GDP.
Source: The Last Economy; Emad Mostaque
MIND:
- Material Capital: usable, tangible assets
- Intelligence Capital: knowledge, skills, wisdom, creativity, problem solving
- Network Capital: connections, trust, relationships, communication
- Diversity Capital: variety of approaches, perspectives, possibilities
This provides a useful framework that aligns with our thinking, and can be applied to businesses, governments, communities, individuals and so on. We can use this framework to define and organise the features for success for both the entity and the contributors.
3.2 Success for the entity
The studio itself needs to be credible and operational in the current world whilst acting as a bridge to the new world. There is as little point in trying to live in a future that doesn’t exist as there is in anchoring ourselves to a dying system.
Material
The studio should:
- Generate revenue and profits in order to sustain itself
- Create assets for itself and collaborators
- Create digital assets as a hedge against the economic model breaking
Intelligence
The studio should:
- Maintain expertise and experience across all functions required to build, launch, and run ventures
- Actively grow the collective intelligence through documenting and sharing knowledge, experiences, and learnings
- Continue to embrace modern technologies and approaches, improving skills and relevancy
Network
The studio should:
- Build a high-trust, open communication network between all participants
- Be selective with new participants, being mindful of the necessity to maintain high trust
- Be open and transparent in rewarding individuals for participation and contribution
Diversity
The studio should:
- Be adaptable and resilient to changing markets and technologies
- Have ventures in a diverse range of sectors to spread risk
3.3 Success for individuals
Traditionally, contributors get paid once to create value-generating assets for a few founders or execs. Our intention is to be human-centric, fair, and to do things differently. Again, accommodating the realities of the current world whilst looking towards and preparing for the future.
When we speak of “individuals” here, we speak of founders, contributors, and participants in the network. And we aim to have an intentional positive impact across all areas of the MIND framework for each person.
Material
Individuals should:
- Receive income for contributions
- Receive assets based on contribution (these may be digital assets or fractional ownership)
Intelligence
Individuals should:
- Contribute their expertise
- Be able to learn from others
- Be encouraged to bring new ideas
- Gain experience from their ownership and governance responsibilities
Network
Individuals should:
- Be able to establish a solid network of trusted collaborators
Diversity
Individuals should:
- Be able to develop a portfolio of income sources, spreading risk
4 A Human-Centric Engineering Venture Studio
We are establishing a new type of venture studio, a Human-Centric Engineering Venture Studio.
4.1 What is the HCE Venture Studio?
The Venture Studio would act as an innovation hub for identifying, prototyping, and launching digital-age ventures. Its goal is to harness AI and automation to reduce the time, cost, and friction between idea and market. Rather than focusing on a single product, the studio functions as a venture creation engine, continuously generating, testing, and deploying new business ideas. Each project contributes to the studio’s experience, knowledge, and IP collateral while also having the potential to become a standalone entity.
There are two key concepts behind the studio.
- Entrepreneurship itself is being redefined. Just as small creative teams transformed the media landscape by producing and distributing digital content at scale via platforms such as YouTube, small entrepreneurial teams are beginning to use AI to build, launch, and scale ventures with similar frequency and distribution reach.
- The Industrial Age model of owners and workers is falling apart. If you look at this from both an ideological point of view (the imbalanced wealth and power distribution curves) and a practical point of view (AI and automation replacing many human worker tasks), it’s clear that change is both a good idea and inevitable.
HCE Venture Studio offers a new approach to creating and launching businesses. A network of builders, strategists, marketers, etc., will swarm around chosen ideas to rapidly develop, test, and launch new businesses. The goal of this studio is to develop a portfolio of profitable businesses, each owned by those who create, run, and maintain them.
This is becoming possible, as in this new high-tech AI world of ours. Small and nimble teams equipped with advanced tools can achieve what once required entire corporations. Tokenisation and decentralised finance (DeFi) can complement this process, allowing new forms of participation, investment, and value exchange.
4.2 From concept to profit, the journey of an idea
The premise is that ideas and opportunities are identified internally, differentiating this from a startup accelerator or incubator.
- Idea generation
Anybody in the studio can start by spotting an opportunity or coming up with an idea for a possible venture or project - Create proposal
Whoever had the idea works with an AI agent to flesh it out, creating a proposal for the team - Assess proposals
The wider team discusses each proposal, runs Q&A sessions: investigating, challenging, and clarifying - Vote on proposals
The team ranks or votes on proposals to be a part of the next batch or sprint - Form swarms
An ad-hoc autonomous team self-selects and swarms around each project - Build and launch
The project team builds and launches the solution - Promote
A period of time is allocated to promoting, selling, and attempting to generate revenue - Review
Each venture is periodically reviewed to decide whether the studio should actively develop it, maintain it, or shut it down
4.3 Operational model: How it could work (future state)
Note: as we’re attempting to do things differently, we will undoubtedly have technical, practical, and bureaucratic obstacles to navigate. Our vision must exist in the real world, and so the implementation may differ from what we suggest here. The important point is remaining focused on finding a way to make the vision a reality.
The traditional model would be for a small number of founders to hire a multidisciplinary team of people to build the projects. The profits of the operations or sale of projects would largely be kept by the founders. We are suggesting a more sustainable and equitable approach.
4.3.1 Key components
Below are the key components we need to consider to discuss the operational model.
HCE Entity
A legal entity, likely consisting of only the founders. In the early days, this entity will create the first ventures and start to establish the processes and protocols for the studio. This is required - in today’s world at least. Over time, various operational governance and development responsibilities will transition to the HCE Network.
HCE Network
The network of people in the ecosystem who have worked on HCE or contributed to one or more ventures. This includes the HCE Entity founders. People in the network can suggest ideas and are expected to participate in governance responsibilities.
Membership of the network itself is tokenised, much like a DAO. Each member’s share of tokens will be based on their level of contribution and engagement.
HCE Treasury
The central treasury for the Venture Studio, which may contain cash, assets, and digital assets.
Contributors
Each venture or project will consist of one or more contributors from the network. Most ventures will form a temporary multidisciplinary team consisting of several contributors. E.g. designer, developer, strategist, marketer.
Venture Founders
Each venture may have one or more founders, or ‘founders-in-residence’, responsible for the vision and driving the project forward. Anybody in the HCE Network could be the founder of a venture. They should not be confused with the founders of the HCE Entity.
4.3.2 Shared ownership and revenue model
For the sake of argument, we’ll assume that ownership is handled through tokenisation, and that there will be two types of ownership: with and without governance rights.
If an idea is approved to develop, the HCE Treasury funds the venture, paying the contributors for their efforts.
As part of the proposal, shared ownership ratios are agreed. For successful ventures, these will be managed by a smart contract. The ratios are typically split across four main buckets, as shown in the following image.
Only Venture Founders and Contributors share the governance rights for the venture, along with their share of the profits.
A share of the profit-only tokens goes to the HCE Treasury to help fund new ventures, and another share goes to the HCE Network. Neither the treasury nor the wider network gets governance rights and responsibilities.
Why the network gets a share of the venture tokens
A venture studio backs many horses, accepting that only a few will win. By giving a small share of the value of each venture to the network, the value of being a member in the network increases with every successful venture, helping to keep the network intact, engaged, and motivated to keep contributing to ventures.
But this doesn’t mean that people can sit back and idly profit from the work and success of others. As mentioned in 4.3.1 Key components, the network itself is tokenised. With smart contracts, each individual’s share of the network tokens decreases over time. The only way to maintain or grow your share of the network is by contribution to the studio, the network, or the ventures.
5 Assessing the Venture Studio through the features for success
The proposed Venture Studio must work for both the entity itself and all of the individuals who are a part of the ecosystem. In this section, we assess the proposal against the MIND framework criteria established in 3 Features for success.
5.1 Assessment: The entity
Material capital
Criteria: the studio should… | Response |
|---|---|
Generate revenue and profits in order to sustain itself | Yes. The studio receives a revenue/profit share from each venture. Naturally, to be sustainable, this model requires that a certain percentage of the ventures operate as successful/profitable businesses. |
Create assets for itself and collaborators | Yes. The studio treasury and the contributors receive assets in the form of fractional ownership of the ventures created. |
Create digital assets as a hedge against the economic model breaking or shifting | Yes. The fractional ownership assets will be created and distributed as on-chain tokens, managed by smart contracts. |
Intelligence capital
Criteria: the studio should… | Response |
|---|---|
Maintain expertise and experience across all functions required to build, launch, and run ventures | Yes. The studio will build a multidisciplinary network, which is able to expand to bring in new skills and expertise as needed. |
Actively grow the collective intelligence through documenting and sharing knowledge, experiences, and learnings | Yes. The studio aims to build a diverse portfolio of ventures, and will run regular reviews and retrospectives that everyone in the network is invited to. Uses AI agents to summarise and identify patterns. |
Continue to embrace modern technologies and approaches, improving skills and relevancy | Yes. Each venture is a unique, distinct project, with no studio-mandated tech stack. We operate an environment of continuous improvement in our internal practices and platforms. |
Network capital
Criteria: the studio should… | Response |
|---|---|
Build a high-trust, open communication network between all participants | Yes. The network will be non-hierarchical, with all key decisions and data points available for all to see. The rules of the network are intended to align the long-term incentives of the network with the long-term incentives of contributors. |
Be selective with new participants, being mindful of the necessity to maintain high trust | Yes. The network is invite-only, intentionally grown when needed to add new expertise or experience, connections or capacity. |
Be open and transparent in rewarding individuals for participation and contribution | Yes. Reward and governance mechanisms will be shared with the network and - where applicable - coded into smart contracts. These will take into account different types of contribution, such as financial, time, and expertise. |
Diversity capital
Criteria: the studio should… | Response |
|---|---|
Be adaptable and resilient to changing markets and technologies | Yes. By leveraging AI to move quickly and launching several ventures every year the studio can adapt and make the best of external changes. The same mindset can be applied to pivoting and adapting any ventures already created. |
Have ventures in a diverse range of sectors to spread risk | Yes. Part of the decision-making criteria for new ventures will include sectors and markets. The studio will strike a balance between leveraging markets we are already in, and diversifying into new markets and sectors. This should expand over time. |
5.2 Assessment: Individuals
Material capital
Criteria: individuals should… | Response |
|---|---|
Receive income for contributions | Yes. The HCE Treasury funds the creation of ventures, ensuring that those involved receive some income. Contributors do not work for free on the promise of potential future equity. |
Receive assets based on contribution | Yes. A proportion of ownership (in terms of assets and governance) for each venture are distributed according to contribution. Contributions to the studio and network itself can also result in being allocated assets. |
Intelligence capital
Criteria: individuals should… | Response |
|---|---|
Contribute their expertise | Yes. The teams for each venture self-select based on their expertise, interest, and capacity. Individuals will also be encouraged to share their expertise, experience, and latest learnings with others in the network. |
Be able to learn from others | Yes. Each venture team will work closely together, learning from the experiences of each other. All ventures have an open review and retrospective, enabling everybody to learn from each project. Active sharing across the network is organised, including establishing Communities of Practice where there is sufficient depth. |
Be encouraged to bring new ideas | Yes. Anybody can bring ideas for new ventures, how to approach a problem in a specific venture, or improvements for the operation of the studio and network. |
Gain experience from their ownership and governance responsibilities | Yes. Responsibilities and accountabilities of co-owning a venture will be new to many. This mesh approach will provide valuable experience and insight into how others operate. |
Network capital
Criteria: individuals should… | Response |
|---|---|
Be able to establish a solid network of trusted collaborators | Yes. In addition to building working relationships with various individuals through venture teams, events and workshops will be run by the studio to encourage wider and deeper connections. |
Diversity capital
Criteria: individuals should… | Response |
|---|---|
Be able to develop a portfolio of income sources, spreading risk | Yes. By contributing to multiple projects over time, an individual can hope to develop multiple sources of income from successful ventures. |
6 How we will get there
This document describes a future state of the type of Venture Studio we wish to develop and why. We are not yet there. But we do have a plan.
Human-Centric Engineering has recently pivoted to become a boutique digital agency on the back of some successful projects. We specialise in turning half-formed ideas and conceptual visions into reality. We do it quickly, and we do it well. We blend the speed and power of AI tooling with the quality and craftsmanship that come from our many decades as developers, managers, and delivery leaders.
The path to success will not be a straight path. Options and solutions will emerge as we progress. But, the following phases outline the five key objectives on our path.
6.1 Phase I: Validate the studio hypothesis
The first phase has two key objectives: to validate both the technical viability and commercial viability of a modern, nimble digital venture studio. Both objectives must be met in order to move onto the next phase.
This phase started in Q4 2025 and aims to complete during Q1 2026. This phase may be funded either by HCE client work, investment, or a combination of the two.
A secondary outcome of this phase is to build credibility and external confidence in the studio, generating interest in either becoming a part of the network or contributing through investment.
Objective 1: Prove the technical viability
The aim is to validate the assertion that AI tooling is able to give us the speed we are seeking, whilst producing production-ready code. We are not interested in producing vibe-coded demos and vapourware.
HCE will approach this by developing a small number of sample ventures from an internal list of ideas, demonstrating the current capabilities and forecasting future possibilities. Each venture will be production-ready.
Objective 2: Prove commercial viability
The aim is to validate that some of the ventures can generate revenue and profit, and attract paying customers. Building a product is only one part of launching a venture.
HCE will approach this by leveraging AI to develop marketing and sales strategies for each venture built during this phase. Not all ventures will be successful; this is expected as part of a diverse venture studio model.
6.2 Phase II: Build the studio
Once the core premise is validated, Phase II will focus on building out everything needed for the studio to deliver the vision. There are three key objectives in this phase, establishing the core operational flows, the shared ownership model, and the network of contributors.
These objectives are not sequential, and so will largely be worked on in parallel. This phase will likely be funded by a combination of revenue from ventures, investment, and grants.
Throughout this phase, the studio will also continue to choose, build, and launch new ventures.
Objective 3: Define business operations and flow
The aim is to define and refine the practicalities of how the business operates, and how the venture-creation process flows. How we propose and select ideas, how we leverage AI across all parts of the flow, and how we select teams.
HCE will approach this by codifying the learnings from Phase I, yet remain open to adaptation through regular retrospectives and continual improvement. We will build an internal platform to manage the flow and process as it scales.
Objective 4: Develop the tokenisation/shared ownership model
The aim is to develop a tokenised shared ownership model that can be applied to all ventures developed and released through the studio. And also to the studio itself. In addition to the mechanics and technology, we will need to address legal and regulatory considerations. We will invite expert guidance on these issues from domain expert contributors.
HCE will approach this by developing a tokenomics and governance model based on commitment and participation. This will be coded into smart contracts that can be easily adjusted and released for each venture. We will add the configuration and management of these processes to the internal platform.
Objective 5: Establish the core network
The aim is to build and nurture the human network that will be foundational to the success of the studio. The network should contain experts, contributors, and connectors across multiple disciplines and domains. They should feel like part of a community, and be able and willing to actively participate in creating and running ventures and/or the studio.
HCE will approach this by continuing to engage more people who are both excited by the vision and can meaningfully contribute to the network, studio, and ventures. We will develop a network hub and community, build structure, host events, and encourage a mesh of relationships to flourish.
6.3 Phase III: release the platform to empower others
We anticipate gradually and intentionally expanding the studio network to add both depth and breadth. We also expect to discover a natural and optimal size, beyond which the cohesiveness of the network seems to weaken. But this is not the end.
Returning to our original vision, we want to show - by example - that there is a better way to run modern organisations. We want the studio to be that example. To be a blueprint.
To that end, we see the potential to release the internal platform and/or the shared-ownership model so that others can build their own ventures on top of what we have created. So that others can build their own networks and modern, human-centric ventures, at the speed of AI.