TLDR version:
Consider Amazon Web Services. The vast majority of Unicorns today are built on top of the AWS platform or one of their competitors. So, does that diminish the IP of any of these companies given that Amazon holds the IP rights to AWS itself? Absolutely not.
What it does is allow them to free up their resources – time & money – to focus them on their unique competitive advantages, as opposed to spending them on the Cloud Hosting & DevOps fundamentals and "re-inventing the wheel". In fact, if you try to fund-raise for a startup that does not leverage such cloud platforms today, you will be met with a lot of skepticism & criticism for being inefficient with your resources from knowledgeable investors.
Same with ScaleGrowth – we are just like AWS, we simply sit a bit "higher up the tech stack" on top of them. You still generate your IP by building your unique solution out of the "LEGO blocks" that our platform provides you. Your deep understanding of your customers, the ways you combine said "LEGO blocks" to meet their needs, and the resulting business logic & end-to-end solutions is the truly valuable IP and Competitive Moat for your company. Not the platforms & tools you use to create them.
Background
Consider the evolution of technology platforms:
- 20 years ago, only companies with extremely deep pockets could afford to have a website – it was out of reach for everyone else.
- You needed to purchase enterprise grade servers, rent a space where your server rack operates, hire an army of Sys-Admins and Backend Operations engineers.
- Then, there was the advent of tools that democratized access to website-building
- V1: MySpace – V2: Wordpress – V3: the likes of Wix, SquareSpace, and WebFlow we have today
- People went “Wow, I can now have a website too, don’t need the tech know-how or lots of $$!”
- 10 years ago, only companies with extremely deep pockets could afford to sell things online – it was out of reach for everyone else.
- You needed to build a custom eCommerce engine, from the ground up including Shopping Cart, Shipping, and SKU management, then setup payment processing and pass PCI Compliance and so on.
- Then, there was the advent of tools that democratized access to eCommerce
- V1: misc Shopping Cart solutions – V2: Stripe – V3: the likes of Shopify
- People went “Wow, I can now have eCommerce, don’t need the tech know-how or lots of $$!”
- Until recently, only companies with extremely deep pockets could afford to create custom end-user apps or marketplaces with a ML / AI Recommendations engine
- First, you need to hire a serious engineering team to build a proper marketplace – easily an 8-figure outlay – coupled with a world-class data science team creating a Search & Recommendation Engine for it – an additional 8-figure outlay, likely in perpetuity.
- Enter ScaleGrowth :)
At ScaleGrowth, our mission is to democratize access to technology for enabling entrepreneurs like yourself to create Unicorns. And we believe that you don't have to be a world-class developer yourself or luck out with having a Serge Brin or a Max Levchin as your college roommate to do this.
Time and time again, we meet amazing entrepreneurs who are absolutely brilliant. They have the vision, they have the passion, they have the drive, guts, hustle, you name it. But they are not hardcore coders.
And their only choice has been to (1) roll the dice on bringing on a technical co-founder, often giving them up to 50% of their equity and then hoping & praying they turn out to be actually good enough in practice (easy at first, extremely rare at scale). Then (2) hire a major tech team to do a massive custom build. And it doesn't matter if you try to do it in-house or out-source to agencies – either way, you are looking at tens of millions of dollars.
Don't take our word for it – just go read the IPO prospectus for your favorite Marketplace Unicorn and look for the section around the total cost of the technical team, both cash & equity.
Speaking as an ex-CTO taking such Unicorns through IPOs, the fully-loaded cost of those engineering teams is simply staggering. And here is the kicker – out of that massive outlay, 70-80% does not go towards your competitive advantage or unique IP. No, an enormous portion of it goes towards things like building the Profile view for your users, and all the myriad day-to-day user journeys that are required a-la "Forgot my password" flows, implementing direct messaging & emails at scale – and so on and so forth... From the investor / IP point of view, these are mundane. But you can't operate without having them function super well.
What a waste, right? There must be a better way – and now, there is: it's called ScaleGrowth!
Now, think about the above from the perspective of a typical investor. Do they want you to be spending the lion's share of their money building the standard table-stakes marketplace infrastructure and operations?
Or would they prefer for you to spend that money on the actual aspects of your business logic or value proposition that's unique to you – building up a Competitive Moat and playing to your strengths to conquer your market?
By using ScaleGrowth, just like by using AWS, you are being smart with your investor's money – leveraging the best of existing tools out there, and focusing your finite resources on the "build" portion of "buy vs build" that truly matters to make your company win.
