Applico: The Digital Sherpa for Enterprise CEOs

Applico’s digital sherpa capabilities can be applied to many different verticals due to its multidisciplinary team. From tech entrepreneurs, to platform experts who wrote the best-selling book defining the platform business model, to private equity and M&A professionals – Applico provides a full service offering for the digital ascent.

Founded in 2009 by Alex Moazed, Applico has worked with large enterprises for over a decade. With the release of Modern Monopolies in 2016, Alex Moazed and Nicholas Johnson coined a new industry focused on platform businesses. With the launch of PLAT in 2019, the world's first ETF comprised exclusively of platform businesses, Applico worked with WisdomTree to turn its #1 bestselling book into an investable product for everyone to share in the financial benefit of a world dominated by platforms.

Applico's team of sherpas is growing quickly and unified behind a common vision to help level the playing field against big tech monopolies. Big tech's scale can cause an avalanche of pain on incumbents that have not adopted new digital business models. Applico is here to help change that.

Applico's Platform Insights

In the retail industry, tech makes online, open marketplaces like Amazon possible. In the media industry, tech connects aspiring video producers to an audience of billions on Youtube. In real estate, property owners can now easily list their properties on Zillow, and in the transportation industry, casual car owners can now supplement their incomes by giving passengers a Lyft.

Becoming a "tech company" has become so appealing that long-storied companies like Goldman Sachs, Fidelity, McDonald's and Walmart now call themselves tech companies in the press. Thus "tech" is no longer a meaningful distinction. And yet there are meaningful distinctions between how companies use tech.

What if you could cherry pick the companies in all industries who are using tech at the core of their growth and revenue strategies? Companies who move beyond the marginal gains of greater efficiency from digitization. Companies who reinvent their business models so that tech underpins how they make money.

In the examples above, Amazon, Youtube, Zillow and Lyft are all platform businesses. They connect producers such as vendors, video producers, property owners, and car owners to consumers. This democratization of access to markets has disrupted cloistered industries and handsomely repaid the companies who made it all possible.

That’s exactly the type of company that Applico analyzes in Platform Insights. Platform Insights compiles the data of all publicly listed mid- and large-cap platform businesses that are listed on a US or European exchange. Applico licenses this data to financial companies who want to create investment products or acquire insights about leading platform companies. Platform Insights is the world’s first data set that identifies how much platform revenue a public company generates. With this data set, Applico has created a systematic methodology for identifying these platform businesses that use technology to create highly scalable businesses defined by defensible network effects and winner-take all dynamics. It's a big business for the companies themselves, and just as lucrative for investors willing to invest in them.

Working with Dot Foods

Founded in 1960, Dot Foods is the largest foodservice two-step distribution company in the United States. The food industry has been shifting to be more and more digital, and the pandemic has fast tracked such progress even further. Technology is now at the forefront of every aspect of the supply chain – including farmers, manufacturers, distributors, operators, retailers and the ultimate consumers. The Dot Foods executive team recognized that it needed to make further investments to maintain its leadership position in the core business and capture new opportunities at the same time.

With platform expertise and deep experience in B2B distribution, the Applico team led Dot Foods through Platform Design, which was an intensive 3-month journey to rapidly test and validate a myriad of up-and-coming digital business models. The team leveraged internal prototypes and external proof of concepts to derive true market validation for both customers and suppliers. This process helped Dot's board and executive team reach clarity on the vision and strategies for the company.

On a blinded basis without using the enterprise's name, Applico explored the landscape of over 250 tech startups across a variety of business models that Dot can partner with or acquire. The team executed an intensive proof-of-concept program with a short list of most promising targets and made the final recommendation to Dot on the best fit based on many parameters including technology and relevant IP, product-market fit, team, vision and culture.

Buying a tech company is very different than buying a traditional business. Applico team of entrepreneurs and M&A professionals led the deal execution phase on behalf of Dot to acquire ShopHero, including negotiating on the optimal deal structure and performing due diligence. ShopHero is a leading grocery-focused eCommerce technology company. This transaction was Dot Foods’ first technology acquisition in its 60-year history.

Post transaction, the real work begins with integration. ShopHero needs to tap into the enterprise’s scale which can be difficult to navigate with many competing priorities. Applico continues to assist Dot Foods on how to move faster and achieve scale, helping to ensure the ultimate success of ShopHero.

Alex Moazed, Founder & CEO

He founded Applico in 2009 when he was 20 years old and funded the company with his own credit cards. Alex co-authored the best-selling book, Modern Monopolies, which defines the platform business model dominating the 21st century economy. In his role as CEO, he works directly with Fortune 500 C-suites and boards to help them build or buy their own platform businesses.

Alex is a graduate of Babson College, Choate Rosemary Hall and Greenwich Country Day School.