An update to our portfolio slide. Compared to 6 months ago, quite some changes and additions. On the Genzai side Verdify is gaining quite some traction and moving to the right side of the chart. For AgroWizard and InnerBuddies 2022 is about market introduction and building up the revenues and sales pipeline so for both start-ups a very important year (going from the Build phase to the Pilots/Market Validation phase is usually the most difficult phase in the life of a start-up).
At Genzai we have a large number of start-ups which are currently in the Build phase. I hope most of them will be able to move into the commercial traction phase later in 2022.
The biggest developments in the last 6 months have been at our fintech company Boosting Alpha where we have made quite some investments into the DeFi space. FXDX (a start-up from Singapore/India/Dubai/Silicon Valley) should go live in May 2022 with their product on the Algorand chain (including the launch of the FXDX coin). Mycelium is likely to move from Build to Market Introduction somewhere during the Summer 2022 period.
With 14 start-ups in total it becomes quite a task to manage all of this. From our side we are mostly involved in the ICT/AI developments for the start-ups in the Build and Pilots/Validation phase so that is where I spent most of my time. Once they arrive in the Growth/Profitability phase, the start-up teams are big and strong enough themselves so I need to spent less time on those myself (although software developers from our side keep being involved).
With experience in 14 start-ups it also brings lots of learnings. Since all of these start-ups are either Deeptech (hardware/software) or A.I.-driven, most of the critical risk is in Tech and Sales. When they are in the Build phase, I try to focus on reducing the Tech risk as fast as possible. Given my own background in AI/ICT I usually am able to quickly identify where most risk lies on the Technology side so we want to tackle those risks very early on in the Build phase. For the customer pilots/market validation phase the biggest risk factor is obviously in the Sales & Marketing capability (and usually some spill-off risk from Tech remaining). When they are in the Growth phase, the risk is usually limited to the Sales & Marketing capability. Part of this whole phasing is therefore making sure that the capabilities in the start-up teams are expanding from Content/Tech into Sales/Marketing.
In parallel lots of these start-ups need to collect financing during their lifecycle until they become profitable and can fund the further development from their P&L. But that is not always the case, some of these start-ups are being done together with bigger companies (then funding is less of an issue) and some of them have moved through these phases without external funding.
#ai #technology #genzai #boostingalpha #startups
