The team owns the product
Roadmap, release, support escalations and economics sit with the same few people. No separate growth function to negotiate with, and no handover between the person who decided and the person who builds.
Approach
An operating company that happens to own things.
Savvant is not a fund and does not behave like one. We use our own capital, we hold without a horizon, and the people making decisions about a product are the people building it.
01 The model
Permanent capital changes every decision downstream of it.
Most owners of software companies are renting them. A fund raised in one year has to return capital by another, and everything in between (the hiring plan, the pricing, the willingness to spend two years on a rewrite) bends around that date.
We removed the date. Savvant is funded from our own balance sheet, which means the only question we ever have to answer about a product is whether it is getting better. Nothing we own is for sale, and nothing we own carries debt.
The practical consequence is patience where it is expensive. Hustly pays out in cash rather than in points, which forfeits the money every other rewards app makes on balances that are never redeemed. Kader keeps its roster small and turns down briefs that do not fit, which forfeits the fee. Both are decisions only an owner without a clock can afford to make.
What we are not
We are not a private equity firm: no leverage, no cost-cutting playbook, no plan to flip. We are not a venture fund: we would buy control, not minority stakes. We are not a studio: we keep what we start.
Who you actually deal with
The people who own Savvant. There is no investment committee between the first conversation and an offer, no broker in the middle and no fund whose consent we need, because the money is ours. That is the whole reason we can answer in weeks rather than quarters, and it is worth more to a seller than a long list of previous closes.
Nothing we own is for sale. Nothing we own carries debt.
02 How we run products
One team per product, and the team decides.
A small company means there is nowhere for a decision to hide. That is the main advantage we have and we would like to keep it for as long as possible.
Almost no hierarchy
One conversation between an engineer and the person who signs off capital. Seniority buys harder problems, not authority over other people.
Written decisions
Anything consequential is argued in writing before it is decided. Slower on the day, faster over a year, and it works across time zones.
People move between products
Whoever a product needs, it gets. Nobody is permanently assigned to one codebase, which is only possible while the portfolio is small, so we are using it while it lasts.
Ship over strategy
The number we watch per product is how much reached users this quarter. A plan that produces no releases is not a plan.
Constraints that do not move
No selling user data, no dark patterns, no paid tier that unlocks something deliberately withheld. These are set at the holding level so a product team never has to win the argument twice.
03 Acquisition criteria
What makes us pick up the phone.
Guidelines, not gates. If you match most of them we will move quickly; if you match none, we will tell you that instead of taking three meetings to get there.
Software Sector
Consumer apps, prosumer tools and B2B software. Not agencies, not marketplaces whose real business is logistics, and nothing whose margin sits in hardware.
Required
Real customers Traction
People pay for it, or so many people use it that they obviously would. We are comfortable with flat growth and uncomfortable with no usage.
Required
€1M – €20M revenue Size
Our usual range. Below it we will still look if the product is unusually good; well above it we would need a partner, and we would say so rather than waste your quarter.
Typical
Full ownership Structure
We buy 100%, in cash, without earn-outs that keep you tied to a number for three years. Rolling equity into Savvant is possible if you want it.
Preferred
Mobile and web Platform
We know iOS and Android properly, because that is what we have shipped. Web products are interesting; anything whose value is in a hardware supply chain is not.
Preferred
Founder ready to hand over People
You can stay or you can leave. What we need is honesty about which one, early, so we can staff for it.
Either way
04 What we refuse
A short list, held to strictly.
Owning something permanently means living with every shortcut you took. These are the ones we decided not to take.
01
No harvesting
We will not buy a product in order to strip it: stop the work, cut it to the bone and let it coast. If that is the only case for an acquisition, we pass.
02
No selling user data
Not to advertisers, not to data brokers, not as an anonymised aggregate with a clever name. It applies across everything we own, to app data and to what a client tells us in a meeting alike.
03
No lock-in
Your data exports and cancelling takes one click. Nothing we own keeps a customer by making leaving difficult.
04
No debt on the products
Acquisitions would be funded from cash. Nothing we own is carrying leverage that could force a decision we disagree with.
If this sounds like the right home for your company
Four steps, and you will get a real answer either way. You get the full attention of the people who own the company, and a straight answer about anything we are not willing to promise.