Cleo Capital Thesis: Decentralized Enterprise

Cleo Capital is a thesis-driven fund, focused on 3 key areas: The Future of Income, Complicated Consumer, and Decentralized Enterprise. We primarily lead rounds at Pre-Seed, working with amazing founders from day zero. This article is part of a series explaining our thesis areas and the specific markets we are interested in.

We aim to streamline decentralization in all its forms.

McKinsey notes that the debate between centralization and decentralization in enterprise is an old one that goes back decades. While centralization has become the norm in many industries today, bringing the advantages of a clear chain of command and a focused and unified vision, it has also led to issues like stifled innovation, constrained productivity, and poor service. We believe a decentralized enterprise — in all its forms — is the future of business.

Enterprises are embracing multiple forms of decentralization

Decentralization is not a destination, it’s a journey, according to Forbes. Both centralization and decentralization exist on a spectrum of sorts, and different aspects of an enterprise can exist with qualities of either business model. Common areas of decentralization include:

Distributed workforces

It is becoming increasingly common for teams to be distributed over many physical locations. This can include multiple offices in different cities or countries or individuals working from their own home office locations. Post-pandemic, 80% of full-time workers expect to work from home at least 3 times per week.

In addition to not working in the same place, many employees do not work at the same times as their colleagues. This asynchronous schedule is new in many environments and requires considerable coordination and communication between team members.

Whatever the setup, not having all employees in one physical location brings with it new challenges and requirements. One of the key necessities in this kind of decentralized environment are communication tools that make it seem like you are actually in the same room working with your colleagues. In fact, almost 20% of remote employees note that loneliness is one of their biggest challenges. As a result, communication is not only required for productivity — but it is a necessity for the mental health of corporate employees.

Monarch is a real-time workflow platform that enables teams to build a collaborative workspace where they can actually manipulate the screens together from their own locations. It’s like employees are sitting together at the same computer, but have their own functionality and control. This is the kind of platform remote teams and decentralized hubs need in order to be productive.

Solutions that cross enterprise boundaries

In the B2B space, it is not uncommon for multiple enterprises to work together on different parts of a large project. For example, a company that removes waste from a landfill needs to coordinate with the construction company, the payroll company, and the waste management company. A ticketing and tracking system that all the enterprises can use together eliminates miscommunication, project derailment, and record-keeping hurdles. Everything can be easily tracked for each party, ensuring compliance requirements are met.

While enterprises can increase productivity by collaborating across boundaries, they may also run into security issues as a result of sharing platforms with multiple organizations. CMS Wire notes that organizations need tools that give employees access to data without compromising security or clogging up the workflow.

Democratizing data not only within an enterprise, but across multiple enterprises, increases productivity for all businesses involved. Providing real-time visibility and access into key information necessary to complete their part of the project gives businesses more control.

We seek to streamline decentralization in every way

Enabling decentralization can take many different paths. We want to ease and streamline the process of decentralization in all its forms by equipping entrepreneurs with the tools and platforms they need.

Decentralized workforces require new approaches to recruiting and hiring, such as Flockjay. Using this platform, newcomers to tech sales can take courses from anywhere, build their skills, and network with sales leaders from large tech enterprises. At the end of the 10-week program, graduates are well-equipped to land an entry-level sales position and build their careers.

Taking a completely different approach to decentralization, Hyperledger is an open-source project for those who are developing enterprise-grade blockchain solutions. It enables multi-enterprise, permissioned applications that facilitate transactions and information exchange while ensuring trust and security.

Another way to support decentralized enterprises is through hardware, as does Groq. Their highly efficient chip enables AI algorithms to run with high performance and reduced energy consumption, allowing machine learning algorithms to run in a wide variety of environments.

Cleo Capital: Request for startups

We are looking for apps, platforms, and tools that support the decentralized enterprise in its many forms. From remote work to cross-enterprise applications, we want to provide multiple ways for organizations to decentralize in order to reach their business goals. We are looking for:

• Inter-enterprise applications: Can your product streamline data sharing among multiple enterprises across supply chains, consortia, or other multi-party use cases?
• Cross-functional collaboration tools: We are looking for platforms that make communication and collaboration easier for team members in different physical locations or those who work asynchronously.
• Distributed hiring platforms: We are looking for products that help companies source, recruit, and hire geographically distributed talent.
• Democratized development: We are interested in low-code and other approaches that enable enterprise application design and development by a broader group of employees.
• B2B marketplaces: Can your platform help move business-to-business transactions online, allowing buyers and sellers to more easily connect?

Join us in decentralizing the enterprise. Get in touch at cleocap.com.