Essay
Why Startups Should Collaborate and Move as Conglomerates
Short answer: now that anyone can build a software application, building stopped being the edge. The market is flooding with capable but fragmented solo startups, each fighting alone. The startups that win the next phase will pool their resources, networks, and marketing — and move with the combined weight of a conglomerate while staying independent.
Everyone can build now — and they are
The barrier to building software has collapsed. People from every corner of the world are shipping products, and a massive influx of new entrepreneurs is arriving with them. Each one brings something: a new skill set, a new network, new resources.
That's genuinely exciting. But it has a side effect: everything is fragmented. Every one of those founders is operating alone, re-solving the same problems, re-acquiring the same audiences, re-learning the same lessons in isolation.
Fragmentation is the real weakness
A flood of capable solo startups isn't actually strong — it's diffuse. Thousands of small efforts, each fighting for the same attention with a fraction of the resources needed to win it. Building is no longer the bottleneck. Distribution, marketing, and access to resources beyond your own four walls are.
And those are exactly the things that get dramatically stronger when you stop operating alone.
What happens when startups combine
If we combine our efforts — pool resources, pool marketing, pool distribution — startups can start moving as conglomerates. Not by merging or losing independence, but by collaborating: shared launches, bundled offerings, combined reach, with the upside split fairly. A handful of small teams hitting the market together carry the weight of a much larger company.
Don't underestimate the power of collaborations. The leverage isn't in any single founder building faster — it's in many founders moving as one.
How to actually pool resources
The catch has always been coordination: pooling resources by handshake doesn't scale and rarely pays out fairly. That's the problem Ordana solves. It has nearly 100 startups with an estimated $475K of total resources, matched by AI and connected through signed, automatic revenue-share collaborations and multi-party scenarios. Each startup contributes what it has and earns a share of what the combined effort generates — pooling that's real and enforceable, not a loose promise.
The takeaway
The era where building was the moat is ending. The next edge is collective: independent startups that pool resources and move as conglomerates will out-reach the endless wave of founders still going it alone. Combine efforts, split the winnings, move together.
Related reading:
- Scenario Collaborations: How Bundled Partnerships Create Revenue No Solo Project Can
- When Delivery Costs Hit Zero, the Market Goes Outcome-Based
- How Can I Collaborate With Other Startups? 7 Models That Actually Work
Join the ecosystem on Ordana → and start moving with the weight of a conglomerate. Free to join.