The 4th Generation of the Industrial Revolution has arrived, now too must come the companies!
Doubletap Ventures is a select entry entrepreneur society and the angel community of Silicon Valley startup founders and CEOs. My partner Jon Gillon and I saw a huge hole in the market where many early stage founders were raising millions of dollars in funding, graduating the best incubators and accelerators in the world and then being left to their own merits with no real support network to run their soon to be empires. This is how DoubleTap Ventures was born. We decided to bring all of the CEOs together to create a nurturing environment where founders could speak openly about their diminishing run rate, war stories, lack of sleep, and logistical nightmares they were experiencing on a daily basis but more importantly we wanted them to share their unfair advantages and networks with each other. We have founders in every vertical from fintech, ecommerce, fashion, AI to crypto currency. We have over 120 members and over $750 Million in combined funding and some of the world’s sharpest future industry leaders.
At DoubleTap Ventures, we are huge advocates of the conglomerate, or otherwise known as a ‘group’, or ‘family of companies’. However, technology conglomerates have a particularly unique upside to the structure; the self-replicating nature of conglomerates will eventually exponentially pay off for the business and their respective personnel. Human capital is the lifeblood of any business and the inevitable growth of the workforce should encourage the expansion of business. Thus have no fear about the people who want to rise to the top, identify opportunities that interest them and prepare them for a journey to create that business for themselves and for you. Businesses should adopt a mindset of encouraging intrapreneurship with a focus on incorporating the next generation of technologies into the company’s operations.
The beauty of the various disruptive technologies is the mass effect of AR/VR, AI/ML, and block-chain, to name a few. The possibilities are abundant and the only vehicles able to take them through the course is a conglomerate. Entrepreneurs have created a plethora of startups hacking various aspects of these disruptive technologies all inevitably requiring an acquisition to create mass effect. And there is no better use for a conglomerate than to scale a ‘great idea’, which turned into a compelling business.
General Electric, if you call it a technology company, did this many many years ago. Alphabet (GOOGLE) has reinvented it. Due to the unique architecture they are now more effective than most technology companies of its size. Elon Musk, is in the process of implementing this on a massive scale; beginning with the merger of Solar City and Tesla. Soon SpaceX will likely follow in some fashion, followed swiftly by Hyperloop. In my opinion Musk will be known as the Rockefeller of our time (hats off!).
Technology and innovation, moving at the rapid pace that it is, causes corporations to disrupt themselves or ‘restructure’, (perhaps destructing…think Hewlett-Packard), shifting to adapt to the current landscape as they wish to incorporate the bleeding edge into their core business has most ‘old-school’ executives making every effort to protect their personal and corporate interests. Unfortunately, Wall Street doesn’t have the palate to allow for multi-quarter restructuring unless they are extraordinarily profitable. However; the incorporation And that’s the beauty, the mass effect of AR/VR, AI/ML, and block-chain, have created a plethora of startups hacking various aspects of these disruptive technologies all inevitably requiring an acquisition to create mass effect.
Revolutionizing corporate structure in this fashion of a hybrid conglomerate / ‘family of companies’ model, I believe will become a very appealing strategy to companies of all varieties. It’s obvious benefits empower employees to grow and ascend through the corporate ladder, acquire new businesses, which fit into the eco-system, deploy corporate capital efficiently and internally, etc. But the real power is the structure allows the company to create innovation and effectively disrupt itself. Alphabet calls it, X. X, the moonshots division is tasked with creating innovation at 10X or more! Nothing less. Technology companies, particularly will be wanting to expand their presence and market share into new markets, Comcast will undoubtedly leverage it’s new assets to create VR/AR businesses. As will most media and news companies, this expansion will require better corporate strategy, empowering of brilliant minds to take ownership, etc.
If you are a founder who has raised at least $1 million in funding and would be interested in joining DoubleTap Ventures. Please don’t hesitate to reach us at dane@doubletap.ventures with your pitch deck and website.
Dane Matheson
VP of Global Business Development at Sourcebits & Co-Founder of DoubleTap Ventures