Taking a look at three of the direct investments we’ve made at Axial, they offer very different solutions to entirely different markets – but where they show similarities is in their ability to scale. By adopting a tech-enabled delivery model each of these businesses runs a fluid user experience that drastically lowers barriers to rapid and far reaching expansion. That’s something we like, and is fundamental to our investment rationale.
If we take a look at each of those three companies we can begin to see how it’s increasingly possible to create a scalable delivery model in almost any industry.
RXLive is a MedTech in the digital pharmacy sector, and our investment into the company was part of enhancing its automation capabilities as the company rode the growth curve. Whilst automating operations is typically a good step toward improving efficiency, it doesn’t in itself facilitate scalability – and it was the underpinning architecture that the founder created at the very beginning that has allowed the business to scale so rapidly.
Creating a business model around a national digital pharmacy license was the primary platform, operationally speaking, that brought down borders for RXLive. Implementing a great UX and logistics function was fundamental to truly leveraging that ‘borderless’ business model, but it was the fore-thought that the founder had in implementing a primarily non-physical methodology for serving clients that opened his store-front to a customer base in the millions.
Outside of the UK, our investment in the blockchain based gun licensing platform ARMM was grounded on a similar ethos of putting the objective of increased safety directly into the hands of an entire nation – not just those people within physical reach of the company’s offices. For transparency and accountability of gun ownership to have significant impact, the user base must be as extensive as possible. And when it’s something as important as gun safety the mechanism for capturing and managing the details of firearm ownership must be as infallible as possible – and this is where deploying record keeping functionality over the blockchain can give all users instant and equivalent access to ARMM’s gun license ledger no matter which state or city they live in. Putting this broad thinking into action allowed ARRM to successfully IPO in the US this year.
Aspiring musicians have trailblazed a shift to digital, and even virtual spheres, across much of the sector in the recent decade. We invested into Shodement when their service offering was predominantly a centralised curation and PR solution for artists from anywhere in the world where those artists lacked the capital and capability to coordinate these functions. That founding ethos has allowed Shodement to bring together artists from multiple continents, and more recently to underpin their core offering with a fintech-for-artists service in order to release royalty payments to even the most fledgling artists. This is a huge shift in the music ecosystem when those royalties would otherwise be locked up in the corporate mechanics that tend not to favour small, independent artists. Again, it’s the accessible, digital delivery model that the founder employed from the outset that has allowed the business to reach audiences as far as Latin America and Africa
Ultimately it’s less about the sector when we look at the viability of an investment proposition, and it’s more about putting innovation and accessibility into action in whichever industry you’ve chosen to make a difference.
