Most industries still run on old software, spreadsheets and phone calls. The people doing the work know exactly what's wrong. We give them a team to build the fix.
We co-found software companies with people who know their industry inside out.
The popular markets are crowded. The better opportunities are in the industries most technology people ignore: the ones still running on software written twenty years ago, on spreadsheets emailed back and forth, on phone calls, paper and "the way we've always done it".
These industries aren't small. Construction, logistics, manufacturing, healthcare and the trades employ millions of people. Most of them are stuck with tools that don't fit the job, systems that don't talk to each other, and vendors who don't listen.
The person who knows what's wrong is almost never the person who can build the answer. A site manager or a claims handler can describe the perfect product in five minutes. Turning that into a company is a different skill: engineering, product, design, funding, sales and hiring.
Hard Graft Ventures closes that gap. You bring the industry knowledge. We bring a team that builds and sells software. Together we start a company, with its own customers, team and revenue.
If you've ever said "someone should build a proper tool for this", get in touch. We'll build it with you.
Building software has never been faster or cheaper. Modern tools, cloud infrastructure and AI mean a small, experienced team can build what used to take a large one, and take on systems that have gone unchallenged for twenty years.
At the same time, people in these industries have stopped putting up with it. They use well-designed apps on their phones all day, then get to work and fight with software that looks like it was built in 2003.
The expertise was always there, and the technology is now there too. What's been missing is a team willing to do the hard graft of building a proper company around it. That's what we do.
You don't need to be technical, to have started a company before, or to have a business plan.
You do need to know an industry properly, which usually means years of doing the work and seeing the same problems come up again and again. You also need the stamina to build something difficult alongside us.
Knowledge you earned the hard way, the trust of your industry, a clear view of what's broken, and the drive to see it through.
You're a co-founder with equity in the business. We build it together and we both own it.
We're a venture studio. That means we start companies from scratch, put our own money and our own team behind them, and stay involved for years rather than months.
It starts with you and what you know. We dig into the industry, the day-to-day work, where the money goes and where the pain is. Then we work out whether there's a fundable company in it, or just a feature.
We talk to potential customers, map the competition and look for proof that people will pay. If the idea doesn't hold up, we'd rather know now than after a year of building.
Our team becomes your founding team: engineering, product, design and brand. You stay the expert and a founder of the business. We move quickly because we've done this before.
Your credibility and contacts open doors. Our sales and growth experience turns those first conversations into a repeatable way of winning business.
Once it's working, we help you raise money, hire and grow. We've had a stake from day one, so we want the same thing you do: a company that lasts and is worth a lot.
By the end you're running a company with customers, a team and money in the bank.
You bring the part we can't. We cover the rest, all under one roof.
We look for industries that are large, essential and poorly served by technology. The main tools are decades old, important work still happens in spreadsheets, and there's no decent mobile app or open API to be found.
In markets like these, a focused modern product built with someone who knows the industry can win quickly.
Core work still runs on spreadsheets, email, paper, or software built before the smartphone.
The main vendors are slow, expensive and don't listen to their customers.
There's no good mobile experience and no modern API, so nothing connects to anything.
The people doing the work are clearly underserved, and they say so.
The market is big enough to build a serious business and overlooked enough that we can get there first.
Hard Graft Ventures is a venture studio based in the UK. We start software companies with people who have spent their careers in industries that technology has mostly ignored, and we build those companies with them, as co-founders.
The name is deliberate. "Hard graft" is honest, relentless work, and that's what it takes to build something in industries most investors find too slow, too complicated or too unfashionable to bother with.
We build durable software companies in the parts of the economy that keep the country running, alongside the people who know those industries best.
We're a small team of founders, engineers and operators. Full profiles are on their way. Until then, the quickest way to meet us is to get in touch.
Say hello →Tell us about your industry and what's broken in it. We'll tell you honestly whether we think there's a company to build.