Growth Compounds

work in progress

• Hardware has had a bad rep for a long time – perhaps because we approached it wrong? What if you don't need to build an electric bike company (..more on that next time), but find other edges and layers of the atom ecosystem? So examples we picked – Starship Technologies, Aerones, AISPECO, Trace.Space, Entangl, AM Craft, LABA7, Direct Machining Control, CGTrader, Sentante – rethink business model or heavily specialize:
  • Turning product into a service
  • Extreme specialization, high barrier niche
  • Rethinking overall process with software and AI – or marketplace
• Regtech. Complok has raised EUR 50K in a convertible loan from Tenity. Mindaugas Petronis started FindRisk, AI-powered self-service SaaS to enhance risk control and meet regulatory standards. Axiology hardly under regtech tag (DLT trading and settlement system for regulated tokenised securities), but making good progress nonetheless. Keep an eye on Amlyze, Micapass, Esgrid, Inspectle.
• House of Brands – comes from Tomas' LinkedIn – but there is no better way to describe Tesonet portfolio. It's not your average vc fund with a bunch of SaaS. They've got some unicorns in the making (CAST AI, but also watch Hostinger and Oxylabs), a couple of basketball clubs, cannabinoid and medical mushroom companies, a bank, longevity brands, games marketplace, some SaaS, some edtech, and of course – a bar (Sparta). Looking ahead into the desperate election season, Teso should consider a political party, too?
  • A new addition there is Smartproxy, which rapidly grew as a separate entity (130 people, EUR 7m rev in 2022). Building an attractive offering/product, scaling, and then multiplying it with brands – is there a pattern? Note that FT1000 showed Oxylabs EUR 60m in revenue, and there are more products from LT – Honeygain, Proxy-cheap, Proximy, MarsProxies, not sure if they are frenemies?