For fragmented, tech-averse industries, GC funds startups to first build an AI automation platform. Then, instead of a difficult sales process, the startup acquires traditional service businesses, implementing its own AI to dramatically boost their margins, providing immediate distribution and data.

Bending Spoons' M&A strategy came from realizing that creating a startup from scratch (zero-to-one) is heavily luck-dependent. In contrast, scaling an existing business (one-to-N) relies on functional skills like engineering and marketing that can be systematically mastered and applied across acquisitions.

A new startup strategy involves acquiring traditional businesses and dramatically increasing their margins by integrating AI. This approach requires a unique blend of M&A, operational change management, and AI expertise, differing from typical venture-backed company creation.

When building an AI-enabled service for a mature market like accounting, customer demand is a given. The core business risk shifts entirely from sales and marketing to engineering. The key question becomes: can you automate enough of the manual service delivery to achieve venture-scale gross margins?

A powerful go-to-market strategy is for an AI company to buy a legacy business (e.g., a debt collector) with existing clients but declining revenue. This allows the startup to bypass the difficult early sales process, immediately deploy and refine its AI, and use the acquired firm's client roster as a launchpad.

Rather than building all its AI capabilities from scratch, Vantaca acquired a small Y Combinator company. This "acqui-hire" quickly integrated an AI agent across its platform, transforming the product and customer experience. This agent now automates tasks from billing to homeowner support calls, becoming a core part of their offering.

Begin by offering AI consulting or services. This provides immediate cash flow and deep customer insights with a 70-80% margin. Use this experience to document workflows and then productize the solution into a scalable software product with ~95% margins.

The founder of Medvy built a massive telehealth business by using a "telehealth in a box" platform for doctors, pharmacies, and compliance. This allowed him to focus exclusively on AI-driven branding and marketing to acquire customers at scale.

Huge opportunities exist in managing tedious back-office functions for niche industries. Daydream Dental took over the complex, lossy process of insurance claim filing for dentists, promising to collect 15-20% more revenue than an in-house team could.