The Kopper Thesis

Deep industry knowledge is the most powerful founder advantage in the age of AI.

AI has made building software faster and cheaper than ever. For the first time, anyone with deep industry knowledge can bring their product to the world.

The Manifesto

The best vertical software gets built by the people closest to the problem. Not because outsiders lack intelligence or drive. Because twenty years of lived experience creates a depth of understanding that no amount of research can replicate. The foreman. The estimator. The operator who has watched the same broken process repeat for two decades and already knows exactly what the fix looks like. That person has always had the best ideas. Now, for the first time, they have the tools to build them.

AI has brought the cost of building software to an all-time low. The long tail of workflows, industries, and niches that were once too narrow or too expensive to build for are now wide open. An industry expert with the right tools and the right support behind them is simply hard to compete with. They understand the workflow at a depth no outsider can reach. Their peers trust them before they have a product. And they can now build.

The most interesting opportunities in software right now are not in the obvious places. They are in the industries where the people closest to the work have been quietly solving problems for years and have never had the infrastructure to turn those solutions into companies.

A Million Problems. All Waiting to Be Built.

Kopper is a startup studio built around that advantage. We recruit domain experts, co-create the idea alongside them, provide initial funding, and build the company from the ground up. You bring what no one else has: the workflow knowledge, the credibility, the network, and the product intuition that takes outsiders years to develop. We bring the management experience, the AI-powered infrastructure, the capital, and the team.

This is not a consulting arrangement or an accelerator program. It is a genuine co-founder partnership. We work inside every company we build from day one, and we are not done until the business is real.

The best software companies of the next decade will come from people who spent their careers inside the industries they are transforming. Let's go build them together.

You Bring

20 or more years inside a specific industry
Workflow knowledge no outsider can replicate
Peer credibility and trust that opens doors instantly
Built-in distribution through your network
Product intuition that takes outsiders years to develop

Kopper Brings

Initial funding so you never need outside capital to get started
15+ years in tech, scaled companies to $20M+ ARR, and multiple successful exits
Professional CTO, Product, and Design to co-develop your product
GTM strategy and revenue playbooks built from scaling vertical SaaS
Hands-on startup operators who work inside the business with you
An AI operational stack that powers your back office, ops, and growth from day one
A network of proven CEOs, operators, and investors when the time is right

How We Work Together

Track 01

CEO in Training

You have the leadership instinct and you want to run the company. Kopper is your operational co-founder. We validate, build, and scale the business alongside you. You own the vision and build your own team as the company grows. Longer build, higher upside.

Track 02

Product Lead and Advisor

You stay in your lane. Workflow design, customer relationships, product feedback, peer network. A professional CEO runs the day to day. You hold meaningful equity and do the work you are actually best at. Faster to execute, more operationally reliable.

About

Brendon Sedo

Brendon got his start managing a windshield repair business in university. He was close to the problem, built custom software to run the operation, and realized the same tools were missing for contractors everywhere. That software became Joist, which grew to become the largest software platform for contractors before being acquired by EverCommerce (Nasdaq: EVCM).

Brendon started Kopper to do it again. Not just once, but many times. To find the people who know an industry better than anyone else, and give them everything they need to build the software company only they could build.

Applications Open

Apply to Build

Tell us who you are, what you have been building, and what problem you cannot stop thinking about.