Who we work with / Professional investors
We invest in the companies we create.
Startup Bakery is first of all an investor: co-founder and first shareholder of every vertical AI‑native company it creates, from the initial capital to the exit towards an industrial partner. We build companies that become the primary source of operational data in a domain.
Models become commodities. Vertical data does not.
We are living through a moment in which AI models are becoming commodities. The real scarcity, in the coming years, will be in data: not generic data, but vertical, structured data, produced by real operators in specific contexts. Whoever controls this data controls the operational decisions of that industry.
That is why we create full-stack AI companies that operate directly inside their customers' processes. They don't just digitise existing processes: they use AI agents to remove entire operational layers and take the vertical to a level of operational efficiency that was out of reach before. They become an integral part of their customers' daily operations, and they speak both the language of innovation and the language of the income statement. The way we build this technology and data infrastructure is the same for every company we generate.
Every company we create is the digital diary of a real context.
Veterly records the interactions between veterinarians and pet owners. Condeo those between building administrators and residents. Sencare those between caregivers and families. ESGmax those between companies and sustainability stakeholders. Kontai those between companies and recurring service suppliers.
They are applications that, by operating inside the processes, generate and structure data over time, building information archives that incumbents cannot produce internally. It is the reason we choose vertical niches rather than horizontal markets. You can find them all in the portfolio.
Incumbents are not looking for software. They are looking for data flows.
Edison is in Condeo's cap table. The Consis Group has joined Sencare, which today draws the interest of other industrial partners. Veterly has opened an exit path with an international partner.
The pattern is clear: we create assets that incumbents recognise as strategic, because they are data flows they cannot build on their own. That is why we involve industrial partners from the earliest stages and open the cap table to them before the acquisition, when it makes sense for the company. It is our contribution to open innovation, and it is the reason every company is born already designed to be integrated as a business unit.
Our approach
We face the risk first. We prepare the exit along the way.
01
We go through the riskiest phases ourselves.
Most startups fail in the early phases, when the idea meets the market for the first time. We go through those phases with our own capital, inside the discipline of the Business Recipe: at every stage gate we decide, data in hand, whether to move forward, pivot or stop. Projects that don’t hold up stop there, at the studio’s expense. By the time a company stands in front of an investor, the validation risk has already been absorbed.
02
We invest only in what we build.
We are not a showcase for startups born elsewhere and we do not select external initiatives: we are serial co-founders and we put capital into every company we create, from day one. Our economic model is based on exits. We win and lose all together.
03
We build the demand for the asset, not just the asset.
We choose niches also in light of their potential industrial acquirers. This way the demand for the asset is built along the journey, not sought at the end.
04
We repeat the journey, company after company.
We do not optimise for creating unicorns, but for generating repeatable industrial exits, consistent with the European economic fabric. Every spin-up makes the next one more efficient, because it reuses the same methodology and the same infrastructure. Many of the companies we generate, moreover, operate in industries with concrete social relevance, from animal care to home assistance to corporate sustainability.
Early exits instead of unicorns. Why.
Two ways of doing innovation, two different kinds of mathematics.
| Finance-driven innovation (power law) | Industry-driven innovation (quality over quantity) |
|---|---|
| According to the Startup Genome Report, only one startup in a million becomes a unicorn. In the most generous estimates, one in ten thousand. | A far higher share of SaaS companies reaches product-market fit, between 20% and 25%, and becomes a credible target for M&A operations. |
| Globally, only 5% of VC funds return at least 3x to their limited partners, while half return less than 1x. | Performance does not depend on a single exceptional event, but on a few industrial exits across a portfolio of initiatives built with the same discipline. |
| Unicorns are exposed to market volatility, and exiting a unicorn requires on average a discount between 30% and 51% on the secondary market. | Building the company from scratch and taking it to product-market fit with contained investment reduces exposure to volatility: the journey holds up even against a sharp correction in valuations. |
The instruments
The Labs: the portfolio in corporate form.
To support several spin-ups in parallel we created dedicated investment vehicles, the Labs: special-purpose companies that hold stakes in several companies at once, supporting their funding and the formation of their teams. For this strategic role they acquire significant stakes in the initiatives they bring to life.
A Lab applies in corporate form the principle that governs the whole model: risk is managed on the portfolio, not on the single bet. Several initiatives, the same stage gate discipline, a single instrument.
The model is best told in person.
Talk to us, explore the portfolio, or join the Bakers Club.
This page is for information purposes only and does not constitute an offer or an invitation to invest.