Repeat Builders has launched in Sydney, committing AUD $3 million to each venture before hiring a founding team. It plans to launch five ventures in its first year.
Based in Sydney’s Tech Central precinct, the venture builder was founded by Andonis Sakatis, a former quantitative trading executive at GSA Capital and XTX Markets. Its model focuses on validating business ideas before recruiting founders, then providing capital and operational support for two years without requiring external fundraising.
Sakatis is positioning the business around a problem that has become more visible as artificial intelligence tools reduce the cost of building early software products. While these tools make it easier to create a prototype quickly, he argues that the main causes of startup failure remain the same: weak market demand, lack of cash, and problems within founding teams.
Each venture will receive AUD $3 million to cover salaries, technology, team growth and marketing over two years. Founding teams begin with 30 per cent equity in what Repeat Builders describes as a validated, independently operating business.
An internal team will work alongside founders across product, engineering, community, talent, capital and governance during that period, without charging service fees.
Failure gap
The business enters a market where startup formation is becoming easier, but survival remains difficult. Figures cited by Repeat Builders show that 60 per cent of Australian businesses fail within their first three years, while 90 per cent of startups globally fail.
The same data identifies lack of market need as the leading cause of failure at 42 per cent, followed by running out of cash at 29 per cent and team issues at 23 per cent. Repeat Builders says its structure is designed to address those three risks before a company formally begins trading.
Australia’s funding environment is also part of the backdrop. Early-stage founders can spend 12 to 18 months raising capital while building a product and recruiting staff, according to figures cited by the company. That period can be especially difficult in Sydney, where housing and living costs remain high.
Instead of asking founders to arrive with a pitch deck and seek investment after incorporation, Repeat Builders first develops and tests ideas. It then matches those opportunities with people it believes have the right sector knowledge and temperament to run them.
Reverse model
The approach differs from the standard venture capital or accelerator route, where founders usually form a company, build an initial product and then seek funding. Sakatis describes it as a reversal of that process, with capital and a business concept in place before the founding team is assembled.
That process depends on three criteria for selecting founders, according to Sakatis: domain expertise, high agency and energy. He said those factors are central to whether a business can withstand pressure once it begins operating.
“There’s an opportunity to make startup creation more accessible without requiring bootstrapped founders to take on all the early risk themselves,” said Andonis Sakatis, founder of Repeat Builders. “Most of that risk isn’t random – it’s systemic and can be addressed upfront.”
He said the rise of tools such as Cursor, Claude and Lovable has widened the pool of people able to build a minimum viable product from a text prompt. In his view, that lowers the barrier to entry for company formation but does not solve the harder task of building a sustainable business.
Repeat Builders says its ideas pipeline spans several industries, although it has not identified specific sectors or ventures. That suggests it will not focus on a single vertical, but instead look for opportunities shaped by market gaps and structural shifts.
International precedent
Repeat Builders sees itself as distinct from a venture capital fund, accelerator or venture studio. It points to Germany’s Rocket Internet as an international example of a model that separates idea validation from execution, although Sakatis said Repeat Builders will develop its own concepts from market signals rather than replicate proven businesses in new geographies.
Sakatis spent 13 years in quantitative trading before moving into consumer brands, where he founded Zenify, an Amazon best-selling business. That mix of finance and operating experience informs the structure of Repeat Builders, which aims to systemise the earliest stages of company creation.
“Find domain expertise, high agency and energy in a founding team, and you have the conditions for success,” said Sakatis.
“Miss one, and small gaps turn into failure points, typically under pressure.”
He said successful Australian technology companies show what can happen when timing, execution and people align.
“Canva, Atlassian, Airwallex and SafetyCulture are homegrown examples of what happens when the right combination of concept, timing, execution and people come together at the right time,” said Sakatis. “The system we have built is designed to surface ideas where the evidence is clear and the conditions are met. If you can remove the predictable failure points, you give good ideas the best chance of success.”
