As I prepared for York IE’s 2023 kickoff meeting earlier this month, I decided to go look at the original messaging and positioning frameworks that we put together when we founded the company back in 2019:
Vision: To reshape the way startups are built, scaled and monetized. Exponential impact for entrepreneurs, operators and investors.
Mission: To build a meaningful hybrid advising/investment/operating firm entrepreneurs, operators and investors love to work with that drives jobs, generational wealth and long-game impact.
Everything we said we wanted to do then, we’re still doing now. We’ve continued to hone our advisory modules, our support for portfolio companies and our differentiated model for investment partners. And this year is all about executing on an evolved business model tied to our original vision.
To do that, we’re making it easier to understand who we help and how we do it.
For example, our advisory practice brings our operational expertise to companies both inside and outside our portfolio. We launched it two and a half years ago, but still to this day, the typical perception is that we only support our investments.
And in 2021, we took Fuel — the research and data platform that we built our investment and advisory businesses on — and released it to the public. We marketed and sold it as a separate product, but in reality it’s a self-service version of our advisory offering.
So this year we’re really streamlining and simplifying our corporate messaging and aligning our business model to support it:
York IE® is a vertically integrated strategic growth and investment firm for technology companies. The company supports ambitious entrepreneurs, operators and investors on their quest to build startups, innovate at scale and disrupt markets. York IE leverages its proprietary data and automation technology and deep operational expertise to provide Advisory as a Service and to selectively invest in early-stage B2B SaaS. Fuel® Your Strategic Growth at York IE.
A significant change I want to highlight is that we now say we’re “for technology companies.” Why? Because every company should be thinking like a tech company and working towards becoming a tech company.
Tech companies create platform-led, deeply integrated and infinitely scalable approaches to solving business challenges. This is not only good for customers, but it can be a massive differentiator for companies.
And that includes York IE. You may have noticed that we’ve renamed our advisory practice to Advisory as a Service. As I mentioned, the hands-on help we provide to our clients has always been tech-enabled by Fuel, and it’s fundamentally a recurring revenue, high-margin business model. Now, it’s clear as day. We are SaaS experts, and we’re SaaS-ifying advisory.
Sustained execution against our evolved business model and our new messaging will take York IE to new heights in 2023. And we’re here to help your company do the same!