Groundwork is a sector-focused operating holdco built around a single belief — that digital service businesses are critical infrastructure for entrepreneurial ecosystems around the world, and that AI plus deep operating experience can solve the problems that have kept them stuck.
Start a conversation ↗Most holdcos chase scale. We chase a category.
Groundwork is not a venture studio. Not a consulting firm. Not a fund. We have a thesis — that digital service businesses are critical to economic development, genuinely hard to run, and largely ignored by traditional capital — and we build and operate companies directly into that gap.
Where private equity does this at scale for mature industries, we do it lean and early for a category that hasn't had a real institutional partner until now.
Agencies, consultancies, studios, and service firms help other businesses go to market, build brands, scale operations, and access knowledge they couldn't otherwise reach. Research on knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) in regional economies shows their relevance is potentially highest in peripheral and non-metro markets — where they become the de facto innovation infrastructure for local SMBs in the absence of R&D departments or research universities. Yet they remain chronically underinvested and underleveraged, expected to figure out their own growth while doing everyone else's.
The talent bottlenecks are real. Sales, ops, delivery, and business development all compete for the same founder's attention. Most owners are excellent at their craft and overwhelmed by everything else. The result isn't failure — it's attrition. Founders leave not because they couldn't build something good, but because it became too hard to stay. That's a solvable problem, and solving it has outsized consequences for the ecosystems these businesses serve.
The combination of deep operating experience and modern AI infrastructure can eliminate the friction that has historically made these businesses so hard to scale. Sales systems that run without the founder in every call. Ops that compound without proportional headcount. Delivery infrastructure that holds quality at volume. These aren't theoretical — they're deployable now. That's where we build and invest.
Groundwork builds and operates companies that sit at that intersection — and takes equity stakes in digital service businesses where we can deploy our infrastructure, experience, and capital as an operating partner.
Purpose-built businesses that solve specific, painful problems for digital service business owners. Each runs independently. Each is a direct expression of the thesis. Founders plug in — we run the thing.
For existing and new agencies where the fit is right, we come in as an equity-holding operating partner — bringing AI infrastructure, sales systems, and hands-on experience to build something bigger together. We're long on your business. We win when you win.
We build the companies that prove it.
We work with a small number of digital service businesses at a time — intentionally. If you're running an agency or digital service firm and you're ready for a partner who brings real infrastructure and real skin in the game, we want to hear from you.
Groundwork is based in the US and works with digital service businesses globally.