What is Zolidar building for EO?

In a previous blog post, we covered why we are building Zolidar. This post covers our roadmap and the features that we launched today.

The Zolidar Roadmap: Solving the "whole problem"

The impossible is just a matter of perspective. By Captain Picard in Star Trek

Our vision for "building the easy button for employee ownership" has multiple epochs that align with the approach of a compound company described in Compound Startups: Parker Conrad on Building Beyond Focus. This approach advocates building multiple products that are deeply integrated and seamlessly interoperable to unlock unique product capabilities. The approach is harder to execute, requires solving the "whole problem", and if successful, results in a bigger and more ambitious company.

The first of our epochs is focused on scaling employee-ownership at small and medium businesses and becoming a deeply integrated system of record for employee-ownership. Getting even this first epoch right will make Zolidar a very successful company. Moreover, in doing so, Zolidar will accrue non-trivial value to the employee-ownership ecosystem, spawn creation and growth of many adjacent players, and even open up additional opportunities for Zolidar itself. The ultimate outcome will be a larger EO ecosystem, greater wealth equity, and a more resilient US economy.

We are not religious about a specific EO structure. We are spiritual about EO, where the structure is just a means to an end of driving wealth equity. We expect owners and employees to self-select the structure that works best for their situation. Zolidar's role is to first help them understand the implications of each option and then help them adopt their chosen option.

We are building product primitives that help our key constituents do the "jobs to be done" along their EO journey, a framework explained in Uncovering Customer Jobs to Be Done. The below image shows the stages a business goes through along its EO journey.

Our product primitives start with a focus on the business owner, and gradually cover the experts that support them, the capital allocators that back them, the employees who succeed them, and the business entity that mutually aligns them.

Eventually we expect our product primitives to form a flywheel that allows constituents to enter the flywheel at any entry point.

More specifically, our first epoch has the following key milestones:

1. Milestone 1 [Today's Launch]: Build owner conviction in EO.
2. Milestone 2 [Launching in Q4 2024]: Energize The Grid about EO.
3. Milestone 3: Drive process efficiencies and ease access to people and finances for EO transitions.
4. Milestone 4: Unlock capital at low cost for financing EO transitions.
5. Milestone 5: Ease ownership culture, administration, and governance at EO organizations.

We expect that our first few milestones will most appeal to the smallest businesses out there, those with ~3 to 50 employees. These businesses form the largest volume in the market (~5.1M of the 6M businesses) yet they tend to be the most under-served of all. As we add more features, our product will become relevant to larger businesses, including those backed by private equity as outlined in KKR's Pete Stavros interview on EO in PE.

The Zolidar Product: Building owner conviction [Milestone 1]

What is the most resilient parasite? A bacterial colony? A virus? An idea! Resilient. Highly contagious. The smallest seed of an idea can grow. It can grow to define or destroy you. By Cobb in Inception

The product that we are announcing today begins at the beginning of a business owner's exit journey. We help them discover their full exit potential by germinating the seed of EO in their minds and build conviction by putting words to their vision for an exit.

There comes a pivotal moment in every business owner's life when they are triggered to think about exiting their business. At this point they often don't know what questions to ask, who they should go to for help, or what their options are. Exiting their business is, after all, a once-in-a-lifetime, irreversible decision. Some procrastinate, others spend time and money with limited progress, and some set aside other responsibilities to laboriously discover their exit path as seen in Webinar on two owners' journey to EO. None of these approaches are easy or ideal, and many owners ultimately drop out of the funnel very early, before reasonably exploring EO, even if it's their only option

Product: Zolidar is making three features available for business owners to understand the landscape of their choices, ensure preparedness for an exit, and build conviction in their ideal exit path:

1. Day Zero Guide: On day zero of their exit journey, business owners can get personalized insights that help them benchmark EO against all other exit options.
2. Aha! Planner: Business owners can get a financial assessment of the health and potential value of their business to understand the feasibility of each exit path. This drives them to their "aha! moment" for EO.
3. Zolid AI: Business owner's can get thought partnership and context-aware support every step of the way with Zolid AI as their exit journey companion.

Based on the financial and operational health of their business, we expect owners to benefit from using the above features for a period of 3 months to 2 years.

Price:

1. Free: The entirety of our Day Zero Guide, personalized to each business owner, is available for free. Additionally, many of the Zolid AI features are available for free.
2. Paid: It is essential that we build a business around Zolidar to sustainably solve many more problems for our users. So our paid plans include additional features that can save owners from spending time and money chasing the wrong exit path. Our simple pricing tiers provide an easy on-ramp. Moreover, we offer a very generous "no questions asked, full refund" policy for our Full Access plan.
3. Fee Waiver: Ultimately we want to help all kinds of businesses evaluate EO as an operating model, so we offer the option to request a fee waiver. Apply here for a fee waiver and we'll review each request on a case by case basis.

The Grid: Energizing the expert community [Milestone 2]

No one can win this fight alone. By Trinity in The Matrix

Each EO transition requires a subset of experts such as CPA, RIA, lawyers, business advisors, valuation experts, trustees, board members, and EO Consultants to come together as a team. Today it is very hard for business owners and experts to find each other, match with other experts, and execute transactions because it is all based on tacit knowledge. Moreover, there isn't a viable means for experts to accrue reputation in the form of an online identity that showcases their prowess.

Zolidar wants to help these experts succeed, and we believe that only then can we succeed. So we are building our products to become the bicycle for the minds of expert practitioners (a concept described by Steve Jobs in Humans are Tool Builders for Efficiency). Furthermore, a recent study from HBS and Wharton shows that management consultants with AI completed 12% more tasks, 25% faster, and at a quality that was perceived to be 40% better by their bosses (full study at Human-AI Collaboration in Knowledge Work). The Grid is a core pillar of our goal to build an Ironman suit for the experts in this domain. (Launching in Oct 2024; Waitlist here)

Product: The Grid by Zolidar, a community for practitioners, employee-owners, selling-owners, and all other adjacent personas in the exit planning, MnA, and employee-ownership domain. The Grid has three key features:

1. Identity: The grid members can build their identity to showcase their prowess in their functional area as well as build reputation. This will seamlessly allow experts to match up with clients through features in milestone 2 of our product.
2. Knowledge Base: There is a plethora of information available online. However, this information is often hard to find, complex to navigate, sometimes ephemeral in nature, or grows stale very quickly. Our knowledge base will provide foundational knowledge on contextually relevant topics while allowing the community to curate it over time.
3. Online Forum: The Grid members can utilize the forum to interact with other members, ask questions, and keep-up with events, knowledge, and latest trends.

Price: Free! We believe that any community is priceless. So we cannot set a price on something that is priceless. When we are successful in establishing engagement within The Grid, we have additional ideas that will make The Grid even more aligned with the crux of stakeholder capitalism. Stay tuned for more.

Our Future Plans: To infinity and beyond…

You're waiting for a train. A train that'll take you far away. You know where you hope this train will take you. But you can't know for sure. Yet it doesn't matter. Now, tell me why?" "Because you'll be together. By Cobb & Molly in Inception

Each time I watch The Last Lecture from Professor Randy Pausch of my alma mater, I learn something new (see video with 21M+ views Headfakes and Brick Walls for Learning and Devotion). Randy introduced the concept of a "head fake" - "a learning experience where the intended lesson is different from what appears on the surface." Zolidar's starting point of helping retiring owners build conviction in EO as an exit strategy is our head fake for expanding the EO funnel. Rather than focusing first on products for existing EO businesses or diving directly in supporting EO transactions, we're making EO the obvious model for all businesses, including those that are just starting out. (For any VCs who have read this far, it is our GTM wedge, a means to "make the market" as we build products for the market).

This head fake is also the simplest path, even though it befuddles others, for addressing our brick wall i.e. the skepticism around whether EO can scale and if our approach can help it scale. As Randy says in his last lecture, "Brick walls let us show our dedication." Our dedication is towards building EO as a brand new market category. With all the signals we see, we feel compelled to invest all our available resources in testing our thesis. This is how new market categories are created.

We are building Zolidar with intentionality. Now that we have launched the MVP, we will build a business => community=> ecosystem around it. We will make mistakes along the way, but we will fix them to unlock EO for those who don't have access to it yet.

We are fortunate to have the backing of amazing investors and fearless team members on our journey towards building Zolidar. We could not have kickstarted our efforts and reached our first milestone without their support.

How you can help

You know, it's funny. Sometimes the answer is the question. By Oracle in The Matrix

You can directly reach out to us: Ashish Agrawal (ashish@zolidar.com) or Sonali Kothari (sonali@zolidar.com). We are always looking to have more supporters by our side.

At this time, we'd appreciate help with the following:

1. GTM partners: Introduce us to trade associations, brokerage firms, advisory groups, any other association of experts, or even corporations that depend on a large vendor network.
2. Design partners: We are always looking to partner with existing players in the nonprofit, MnA, or EO ecosystem to shape our product to align with their workstreams.
3. The Grid participants: We welcome expert practitioners to join The Grid (launching in ~Oct 2024; Waitlist here)
4. Capital Allocators: We'd love to send deal flow to capital allocators interested in financing EO transitions. Send us your fund information packets at capital@zolidar.com
5. Academic Partnerships: We are always keen on collaborating with researchers investigating long-range problems that are best suited in the academic setting.

At the very least, we'd love your help in spreading the word across your social channels. Please follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter/X, Youtube, Facebook, and Instagram. You can also like and share our launch announcement on why Zolidar is building for scaling EO.