2021, the growth continues.
As our previous venture post explained, we turned a corner in 2020 into a seed-stage Venture Capital operation. While we’ve internally been operating in that fashion for the past few months, for the record in the journal of our history, the following bears mentioning.
Things we still hold dear:-
(i) Our values. Truth First and F*ck Fake. This tells our approach to life. We believe that to be happy you must live and express your truth. Our guiding principles are “We Grow”, “We Share”, and “We Act”. The brilliant entrepreneur we work with day in and day out have a deep appreciation for these values; they are either born with it or we rub off on them. To note, these are represented in Ducorp XTM swag, with the designer for XTM clothing items, our ‘comma’ book, and our training booklets.
(ii) XTM+. The XTM+ channels were probably the hardest thing that we had to work on and prone to the most confusion over time. We iterated several times in search of a good secret sauce about what we do. We’ve amassed 1k+ on Youtube, 14k+ on Facebook as our main channels (where the focus is on the Mauritian market). We now exclusively showcase the work we do at the XTM Agency to support our ventures and their clients. We share the memorable times of their journey.
(iii) Our Co-Working Spaces. We also call this XTM HQ. It is a place that reflects our identity; we designed the space as a modern sanctuary. In 2021, our co-working offices shall welcome small, modern, and nimble businesses in this incubator-like space.
(iv) Commitment. We’re focused on investing in seed-stage ventures that are involved in the technology sector or come out of the minds of talented individuals with the propensity to become legendary. We’re in for the difficult hard work at the start while aiming to build and win big. We built our VC platform around technology for this purpose, to create a virtual work environment with remote workers to support our ventures in many disciplines, such as marketing, media, advertising, sales, accounting, and business services. This extends the team of our ventures to people in networks around the world, promotes them in a fair, transparent manner.
- VC Platform Services (XTM Agency)
The XTM Agency is the crown jewel at the heart of our operations. It provides VC Platform Services, which is a fancy term to mean services that support the growth of the ventures we invest in; for example, marketing, design, advertising, accounting, etc.
We provide the technology and project managers to our ventures, which can work together to extend their teams with remote workers to help their commercialization and deliver to their clients. The tech is a work tool that contains a communication portal, task, and workspace collaborative space, financial, and payments system. This is a very intricate platform still in development although already in use across the IOS and Android app stores and web applications.
The alpha version (v0.0.19) will be released on 1 March 2021.
The XTM Agency allows teams to form to supply specific projects, then disband or stay on for other projects. It also allows the creation of ambassadors for sales to the work area, with customizable % commissions.
Hence, at the core, the XTM Agency provides human capital and workspace technology to organize and deliver on the needs of clients. To note that a venture may (in addition to the project manager provided by XTM Agency) add their own project managers and teams.
Financially, the XTM Agency aims only to cover its administrative costs and it is therefore significantly cost-effective for its ventures. As the platform grows, it molds around the real demands of the ventures and their clients.
From an investment standpoint, it also provides significant due diligence ability by seeing the interactions with clients.
Note: Not all ventures have clients that are suitable to interact within the XTM Agency (for example, ventures that are themselves technology client solutions); in that case, they use the XTM Agency to internally manage their own offerings with the XTM Agency’s partners and workforce.
In this manner, the XTM Agency acts as human resource recruitment, project management support, and resource planning technology (all rolled in one). We will be adding other features to the platform in the near future for seamless payments, workforce, and financial management tools.
2. Ducorp XTM, DX-1 Fund Investments
(a) Wakanda 4.0 Ltd (2020, Mauritius). Digital transformation and commercialization services. Headed by B. Elisa.
(b) CODX Stealth Ltd (2020, Mauritius). High-End dedicated, and fully-managed software programming teams. Headed by A. Moodoo.
(c) Holo Publicity Ltd (2020, Mauritius). Holographic-effect advertising billboards. Headed by B. Elisa.
(d) StoragePlus Technologies Ltd (2020, Mauritius). Document storage with blockchain technology. Headed by S. Sumaroo.
(e) X-1 Productions (a division of XTM Ltd)(2020, Mauritius). Field: Digital-platform targeted media production. Headed by S. Hanuman.
(f) Aya Trades (2021, USA), upcoming. Field: Finance (stock-options educational tools, and internal trading desk). Headed by I. Ayadassen.
(g) Project GCX (2021, USA), upcoming. Field: Finance (stock, commodities, and forex trading-activities and fund activities). Confidential.
We anticipate our second Fund DX-2 to be operational in Q4 2021, with an expected seed investment ranging from USD50,000 to USD100,000 per venture. We will let you know when we will start accepting pitch decks.
A note on Non-Profit activities:-
(f) Mauritius Blockchain and Tech Meetup. The pandemic, unfortunately, didn’t go well with organizing meetings in person for our 500+ members, and we will be starting new meetups again in collaboration with collaborators.
3. Moved To The Shelf
In 2021, we say bye-bye to the following projects and embryonic business concepts. We loved working on these. They are now relegated to the intellectual and asset shelf:-
(a) FindRate. The site will still be live and can be repurposed to suit the benefit of a subsequent company we decide to invest in.
(b) Designer For XTM. The brand is now solely used for company swag and merchandizing along with the “Comma” book.
(c) Hustlemania. This is probably the one that we wanted to get more airtime and that has been shelved for now. This enormous blockchain-based system devised for this can now be used for similar types of systems, live auctions, rewards systems, etc, on a case by case basis.
(d) Satoshi’s Lounge. This project was put on hold back in early 2020. It was forked to create the XTM Agency, which over the last part of 2020 grew significantly in all aspects. We retained Satoshi’s Lounge code base to vary for use in very particular situations and that can be replicated and used by future ventures of Ducorp XTM.
All of the above sites will remain live as example sites.
(e) Shopper’s Club. Deep in the throes of this project was an original system of using meshed lockers and warehousing in a grid to solve the e-commerce delivery in high trafficked areas. The knowledge acquired in this project can now be put to use at other ventures as an edge.
(f) XTM HQ. There’s been a lot of “umms” and “aah” about this division and what to do to simplify our approach to get investments. While the above projects were leftover from our venture studio stage in early 2020, our pivot into a business incubator was sought to bind our first crop of investments. With the set up of our first investment fund, DX-1, we decided to remove complexity and consolidate the investments under our fund names (current is DX-1 — we’re working towards DX-2 in Q4 2021). XTM HQ now refers to our co-working offices, which we lease to young companies at prices significantly below-market rates. The aim is to share knowledge and go along a path to see whether it makes sense for us to partner up in a more meaningful manner.
With love, Ducorp XTM.
