The great affairs of the world start small. So the wise soul, by never dealing with great things, gets great things done.
Lao Tzu
Yves is a collaboration between designer and writer Diego Segura and financier ▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮▮ and aims to be a buyout and transformation firm with both financial acumen and creative instinct.
Background
In our buyouts, we intend to bring a product-focused and design-led lens to transforming a software company. That means heavily influencing a product roadmap, extremely lucid and clear go-to-market strategy and communications, and intelligent repositioning of a company to be the most valuable version of itself.
Yves was born from the product and brand design work of Family Office. The best way to understand design transformation work is to see it:
Criteria:
We’re in search of a software business where the key transformation is product-focused, and specifically for businesses in the B2B space.
Sector agnostic, but with product roadmap opportunity.
We are not investing in an industry-specific thesis. Our form of transforming companies starts at the product roadmap. If the business would benefit from new features and overhauled user experience, it’s a fit for us.
Primarily a software business.
Since our primary transformations will be in the form of product roadmaps and interface design, software should be the crux of the company we invest in.
Check size under $15MM.
This, for now, is deal-dependent.
No CPG, fashion, or D2C companies.
Despite, or perhaps because of, our work reviving some iconic brands at Family Office.
In sum, if a software business would benefit from obsessively product-oriented owners, that’s a company we’re interested in investing in.
Common questions:
Why only B2B? Why not consumer brands?
There are very few B2B software businesses who care about design or have an instinct for design-led innovation. On the other hand, there isn’t a consumer business in the world who doesn’t think they have an advantage by way of design and product. (Most of them, even, are wrong.) We want to take our skillset where it is rare and highest impact.
So you want to buy companies to rebrand them?
No. We will transform product first, foremost, and always. Our work in brand and communications design has always been only one small part of helping a software company evolve. Great products plus great clarity equal success. But neither can be compromised on. Rebrands merely give the company credit for smart product decisions.
Are you a holding company?
No. We plan to buy, transform, and subsequently sell the businesses. We want to return money to our investors in a timely manner with simple, straightforward realization milestones.
Why not invest like a VC?
Roadmap control. Our primary value add will be deciding where to evolve a software offering, and executing on that with the best craftspeople in the industry. We have seen far too often founders who are incredible experts in their industries who fall short of the instincts for creating lucid and focused software. We intend to be a counterbalance so that management teams and us as investors can win together.
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