Aries Global is a next-gen software platform on a mission to acquire and scale founder-led software applications within large cloud ecosystems. With a vision to building the leading software platform in cloud marketplaces, Aries Global focuses on three key themes within these: Vertical Business Applications, Modern Work, and Data & AI. By leveraging a dedicated growth platform, scale, and an expansive network, the company accelerates growth for its Group businesses, driving innovation and value across the ecosystem.

We sat down with Michael Mitterlehner, Founder and CEO of Aries Global, to discuss how the company is transforming businesses through AI, strategic partnerships, and a central growth platform.

Share the story of Aries, how did it come into fruition?

Aries came together from three fundamental insights. First, we’re transitioning towards an AI-first world in which we believe there is a tremendous opportunity both to operate existing companies more efficiently via AI and to leverage their deep industry- or product-specific data and understanding of workflows and customer needs to build new cutting solutions powered by AI. At Aries Global, we are creating the central AI infrastructure to transform good enterprise applications into truly best in class applications and bring them onto our broader platform, all while allowing them to run more efficiently. Second, we notice there is a vast, often overlooked ecosystem of niche software companies out there that are fundamentally great businesses but fly under the radar because of their size, niche focus, location, or because they’re bootstrapped. We found a particular concentration of these in specific cloud and enterprise app ecosystems, and these are the companies we partner with.

Finally, there’s a big gap when it comes to scaling. The founders we work with are brilliant technologists who deeply understand their industry, but they often lack the experience to build and grow their Sales & Marketing functions, expand internationally, or optimise their revenue models. This is where our central growth platform comes into play, leveraging a centralised GTM function that drives growth and cross-sell within the group.

What’s been the most surprising thing about launching Aries?

Honestly, it’s the extent to which our offering resonated within our target market. The level of enthusiasm from software founders, channel partners, and the ecosystems we operate in has been incredible. It’s clear there’s a real market pull, and that’s been both humbling and motivating as we work to scale quickly and provide our offering to as many customers as possible.

In addition, the encouragement and support received from extremely experienced executives, operators and investors that have also fallen in love with our mission and vision and have dedicated their time, capital and insights to support us has been truly amazing. It’s not just encouraging — it’s pushed us to aim even higher, and we’re extremely grateful for all their support.

What have been your initial thoughts or experiences with funding options as a new business?

It’s an interesting topic to ponder. We found that many people we have spoken to in the industry have very strong opinions about funding, and many capital providers tend to follow formulaic approaches to backing new businesses. For us, it was important to take a different route. We’ve focused on working with smart, high conviction and fast-paced providers that can bring deep experience to the table. We apply the same rigorous standards to our strategic external partners as we set do when hiring full-time team members, and that approach has worked really well for us so far.

As an early-stage company, what milestone or progress are you most proud of achieving so far?

The most important one is the great team and culture that we have built, both in the central team and the companies we brought into the Group, which is fundamental to all of our achievements. The level of ambition that this team is setting and the pace at which we are making progress towards those goals is incredible. That’s what motivates us every single day.

What advice would you offer to other new founders just starting out on their journey?

There are four key areas I would highlight:

• Focus on actual progress, not the illusion of progress. Building a company is hard work — it, requires massive focus and dedication. Most of the real progress happens with your head down, working alongside your team, not at conferences or networking events.
• Trust your convictions. If you have strong convictions, follow them. Don’t let yourself be swayed by commonly accepted truths or certain investor criteria or preferences. Oftentimes this is just lazy pattern recognition or following the herd. This can be highly misleading; each journey is different and most of this won’t be applicable to yours.
• Aim high. If you’re dedicating this much of your live to something, then you might as well shoot for something that can make a meaningful impact on the world.
• Prioritise speed. One of the few advantages that young companies have compared to larger incumbents is speed — lean into this to leverage that advantage and hire people that align with that pace.

Find out more about Aries Global here: aries.global