This is a follow-up to my post here. The following is an imagining if I was given the keys to the kingdom and could do anything I wanted.
The Path to Self-Disruption
Let's be clear about what we're going to do: we're not just going to disrupt ourselves – we're going to use our existing strengths to accelerate that disruption. The traditional approach of creating AI add-ons as separate product lines misses the larger opportunity. Instead, we're going to use AI pods as our trojan horse for complete market transformation.
We're already creating AI pods like Sadie, which appears to be just a new product line for AI-powered phone concierge services. But we're thinking about it wrong. Sadie shouldn't just be an add-on for phone AI – it should be the catalyst that devours and replaces all our booking systems with a superior, AI-first platform. Every AI pod we create starts as a complementary offering, but that's just the entry point. Their real mission is to become the core system that eventually replaces the legacy software they were built to enhance.
The execution is critical. We use these AI solutions to generate immediate revenue from our existing customer base, funding our own disruption. We reinvest this revenue to accelerate development of V3 solutions, not through incremental improvements or by modernizing V1 products to V2, but by leveraging AI capabilities to leap directly to V3.
This leap would have been impossible months ago, but AI tools have dramatically changed the equation. What once required years and massive teams can now be accomplished in months with small, focused pods. Each AI pod isn't just building features – it's laying the groundwork for replacing entire systems. Rather than asking V1 teams to modernize to V3, we're building new teams unencumbered by legacy thinking who can envision and execute V3 solutions from scratch.
Scaling Across the Portfolio
Once we prove this model works, we replicate it aggressively across our entire portfolio. This isn't a gentle transition – it's a systematic consumption of our own businesses. Each success becomes a blueprint for the next transformation, with every lesson learned accelerating our execution.
The playbook becomes razor-sharp:
- Deploy small, elite teams of 2-4 people for each business
- Skip any notion of incremental improvement
- Move straight to V3, leveraging everything we've learned
- Use the existing business as a launchpad, not a constraint
- Let the new solution eat the old one alive
This is where our portfolio breadth becomes a force multiplier. Each transformation teaches us something new. Each success gives us more resources to fuel the next one. We're not just building better solutions – we're building a transformation machine that gets faster and more efficient with every iteration.
Resource Reallocation: Funding Our Future
The funding strategy for this transformation is decisive and immediate: we stop investing in traditional R&D across our portfolio companies. This isn't a gradual wind-down – it's a sharp pivot of resources toward our new direction. Every dollar currently spent on maintaining and incrementally improving V1 products becomes fuel for our V3 transformation.
The timeline is aggressive but achievable:
Phase 1 (First 3 months):
- Redirect R&D budgets from legacy improvement to our first V3 transformation
- Prove we can build and deploy a V3 solution that generates revenue
- Document every step, every lesson, every acceleration technique
Phase 2 (Months 3-6):
- Scale successful techniques across second and third target businesses
- Refine our transformation playbook based on real-world execution
- Demonstrate repeatable success within the 3-6 month window
Phase 3 (Month 6+):
- Roll out portfolio-wide transformation
- Deploy elite teams systematically across businesses
- Accelerate each subsequent transformation using accumulated knowledge
Expanding Our Hunt: From Self-Disruption to Market Domination
Once we've proven our transformation model, we turn our gaze outward. But we're not just looking at competitors – we're looking at a menu. Constellation, Banyan, and every other vertical market software acquirer become our hunting ground. Their portfolios aren't just market opportunities; they're feasts waiting to be devoured.
The strategy is ruthlessly simple: we pick apart their businesses piece by piece, market by market, customer by customer. While they're still operating in the old world of slow software development and traditional acquisition playbooks, we move with predatory speed.
These traditional acquirers won't just be slow to respond – they'll be structurally incapable of matching our pace. While they're still debating how to modernize their legacy systems, we'll have already built and deployed superior solutions. While they're running traditional due diligence processes, we'll have already captured their market share.
Aligning Incentives: Making Builders into Owners
Let's be brutally honest: the people capable of executing this transformation are the same people capable of doing it without us. As AI tools become more powerful and our distribution advantages erode, we face a stark reality: our best talent could easily become our strongest competitors.
The solution isn't just about competitive compensation – it's about making our builders true partners in the destruction and recreation of our businesses. Here's how we structure it:
For Each Transformation Team:
- Direct equity stake in the new V3 business they create
- Aggressive revenue share from the transformation period
- Exponential upside based on speed and market capture
- Additional stake in each subsequent business they help transform
- Clear path to building their own portfolio of transformed businesses within our ecosystem
This isn't about being generous – it's about being smart. The people who can execute this vision need to feel like owners, not employees. They need to see a path to building serious wealth within our structure that's more compelling than going it alone.
Valsoft X: Reimagining the Startup Accelerator
What we're building here isn't just a new version of Valsoft – it's an entirely new model that makes YC and traditional accelerators look like primitive betting operations. We're not making risky bets on unproven startups. We're not hoping for one unicorn to emerge from a hundred failures. We're creating something far more powerful: a systematic company-building engine with guaranteed markets and proven revenue streams.
Think about our advantages:
- We're not starting from zero – we have established businesses with real customers
- We're not guessing about product-market fit – we already understand our verticals deeply
- We're not limited to local markets – we have global reach and understanding
- We're not hoping for revenue – we're transforming existing revenue streams
- We're not praying for exits – we're building sustainable, growing businesses
This is the future of Valsoft: a hybrid between a startup accelerator and a market incumbent, but with none of the weaknesses of either. We combine the speed and innovation of startups with the market presence and resources of established players. Every transformation we execute isn't just about updating a single business – it's about creating a template for capturing entire global markets.
The Valsoft of tomorrow won't look anything like the Valsoft that got us here. We're not just adapting our existing business; we're using it as rocket fuel to build something entirely new. While others are placing bets, we're executing certainties. While they're hoping for success, we're manufacturing it.
The future isn't waiting. Neither are we. We're building it, owning it, and leaving others to wonder what happened.