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by Slow Ventures
Slow Ventures is an early-stage focused Venture Capital firm based out of San Francisco, Boston, and New York. We are generalists and invest in early stage teams and ideas ranging from Social Networking to Consumer Brands to SaaS, and Crypto. We believe - and have seen proven time and again - that great things frequently take time to inflect, and believe that our number-one job is to back great founders on their journey. This is our occasional newsletter. You can sign up if you want ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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The Dawn of The GBO

The time has come for GBOs to take the front stage, and we couldn't resist sharing our thinking through a few slides. Check our deck to follow along, and keep scrolling to get a preview of how we got here.   

Software, not B2B SaaS, will eat the world

  • There won’t be infinite scaled software companies
  • The unsold/unexploited opportunities are that way for a reason; they have problems that don’t necessarily get solved by “better products”
  • These are distribution problems that need to be solved by a totally different GTM and capital structure than a traditional/pure play vSaaS
  • Industries will be transformed by software via new players competing on the basis of proprietary technology/IP 

For many founders building vertical-specific software, combining with a incumbent to compete is the best way to capture value from their innovation/product.

How We Got Here 

  • Horizontal application software was a greenfield. Now it’s not.
  • Big outcomes in vertical software generated massive interest in penetrating the unsold markets and niches with “better” products, which would naturally win out over legacy systems, pen and paper, consultants, etc. 
  • Software for industry became obvious; the bar to better was just so low.
  • But even when they work, software companies don’t capture enough of the value they create and it’s hard to sell.
  • Vertical SaaS can’t be the only option to modernize industry.

“Better Products” Won’t Work In Bad Categories

  • Demand: Structural adoption problems (principal vs agent), low margins and low investment appetite, too much customer concentration to get early wins, etc. all make it too hard to acquire customers and grow
  • Supply: Niche markets too small to support funding, low barriers to entry and overcompetition, too few customers to monetize efficiently, etc. make it too hard to build a venture-backed business

But Software Is Important For Industry/Can Still Transform It

  • There’s massive untapped opportunities not orchestrated or optimized by software (and/or powered by modern robotics/hardware)
  • Industries running on 25+ year old legacy systems
  • Untold hours of rote manual work that can be automated away
  • Resulting in hundreds of billions of potential profit across the economy with no path to realize it

No more easy wins: the runway for vSaaS has shortened. Further progress will require new GTMs and capital structures

Introducing Growth Buyouts (GBOs)

  • Software company buys an operating company to compete directly in the market on the basis of proprietary technology and systems
  • Modernizes the company and transforms the economics through software
  • Becomes the best buyer in the category because it can underwrite the biggest, most consistent improves post-acquisition
  • Repeats the process through low throughput, large scale M&A

Intrigued? Dive into our deck to get a GBO case study, a side-by-side comparison between GBOs and its alternatives (vSaaS, rollups, franchises), along with the ideal recipe for GBOs, why you think we're wrong, and more.

Special thanks to Matthew Granade, Coyne Lloyd, Conor Witt, and Jai Malik for their feedback.