The Shaper Mission.

There's never been a better time to capture emerging opportunities, especially in areas where execution is key. Industry shifts like AI are creating unsolved whitespace, offering significant potential for those who can act swiftly. With a growing pool of talented engineers and entrepreneurs focusing on early-stage companies, the market is primed for innovation.

Many of the world's most pressing problems — healthcare, education, energy, and safety — can be addressed through startups. Technology is central to these solutions, and capitalism's positive feedback loops offer the potential for exponential impact.

Now is a prime time to build middleware businesses — platforms that connect an organization's data and applications for seamless interoperability.

Middleware thrives when data is highly valuable, data is highly fragmented, and applications using data are highly fragmented. With AI accelerating all three conditions, the demand for middleware is greater than ever. Nearly every industry will see a $1B+ middleware company emerge this decade — some much larger.

The playbook developed by Travis leading LiveRamp and founding Datavant has proven scalable across industries. Both companies tackle data fragmentation through middleware, with LiveRamp addressing marketing and Datavant solving healthcare's challenges. Key takeaways include mastering talent and culture from day one, building a reputation for trust, and relentlessly focusing on customer satisfaction and network effects.

At Shaper, we're focused on leveraging this playbook to build multiple ventures simultaneously, empowering exceptional founder-CEOs to drive success while building a lean, scalable company-building engine.