Journal

Insights from
the studio floor.

On building ventures, market theses, and operating a studio across Brazil, the United States, Germany, and beyond.

Featured
Brazil Advantage

The Brazil Stack: Why Sao Paulo Is the Best Place to Build Fintech Infrastructure

Gov.br + Pix + Open Finance + Drex. Brazil has assembled the most advanced fintech operating environment in the world — and most global investors haven't noticed yet.

Basalt Research · · 11 min
Building in AI

Code Is Cheap Now — Taste, Judgment, and Architecture Are the New Premium

AI can generate code in minutes. The bottleneck moved upstream. The scarce resource isn't the ability to write code — it's the ability to know what to build, why to build it, and how to make it last.

Ian Soares · · 13 min
All Articles
Philosophy

The Next 10 Ventures: Where Basalt Is Placing Bets in 2026-2027

Forward-looking thesis mapping across ten areas where Basalt sees venture-scale opportunity. Market sizes, timing signals, what we'd build, and the founder profiles we're looking for in each space.

Basalt Research · · 15 min
Philosophy

Outcome-Based Everything: Why We Tie Our Success to Yours

The shift from hourly billing and seat-based pricing to outcome-based models across consulting, investment, and incubation. If we're not willing to tie our revenue to results, we shouldn't be in the room.

Ian Soares · · 12 min
Philosophy

The Barbell Strategy for Startups: How to Survive and Win Simultaneously

Taleb's barbell applied to startup strategy. 80% safe, 20% speculative. Why most startups die by being 100% speculative, and a practical framework for structuring your venture to survive and win.

Basalt Research · · 11 min
Philosophy

What We Look for in Founders (And What We Don't)

Sequoia asks four terrifying questions. We ask three different ones. Founder-market fit over credentials, taste over technical prowess, judgment over speed. Here's how we evaluate.

Ian Soares · · 11 min
Philosophy

The Flywheel Effect: How Our Ventures Feed Each Other

Collins' flywheel applied to a venture studio. Moonxi consulting funds Apollo development, Apollo creates IP, IP improves consulting, higher margins fund more ventures. Here's how intellectual capital compounds.

Ian Soares · · 10 min
Philosophy

Building the Delivery Control Plane: Lessons from Apollo

Nothing connected tasks to code to deploys to costs. So we built Apollo — 203 governed agent tools, 54 API routes, and a full operational graph. Here's what we learned.

Ian Soares · · 10 min
Building in AI

Agentic Engineering: What Comes After Vibe Coding

Karpathy coined 'vibe coding' in February 2025 and declared it passé by February 2026. The successor — agentic engineering — is about orchestrating AI agents with oversight and scrutiny. Here's the framework for when to surrender control and when to keep it.

Basalt Research · · 10 min
Building in AI

From Pilot Purgatory to Production: Why 85% of AI Projects Fail and How to Fix It

86% of consulting buyers seek AI services. 80% of GenAI deployments report no significant impact. 90% of transformative use cases are stuck in pilot. The gap between experimentation and production is where most AI value goes to die.

Basalt Research · · 12 min
Building in AI

The AI-Native Agency: Why the Next $1B Services Company Looks Like a Software Company

The $400B consulting market is splitting in two. Firms clinging to hourly billing face existential pressure. The winners are building AI-native delivery models with software-like margins. Here's the data on who's winning and why.

Basalt Research · · 10 min
Building in AI

WhatsApp as Operating System: Why LATAM's Messaging Culture Is a $100B Platform Opportunity

Brazil has 217M mobile connections and 183M internet users — most of them living inside WhatsApp. The next great platform opportunity isn't building another app. It's building inside the app everyone already uses.

Basalt Research · · 10 min
Brazil Advantage

AI in Latin America: From $12B to $48B — Where the Real Opportunities Are

LATAM's AI market is scaling from $11.82B to $47.88B by 2031 at 26.25% CAGR. Fintech leads by volume, but the real alpha is in healthtech, insuretech, and B2B SaaS built on structural advantages no other region has.

Basalt Research · · 9 min
Brazil Advantage

Born Global from the South: The International Expansion Playbook for LATAM Studios

Build for the US from day one, leverage LATAM cost structures, and expand when milestones — not calendars — say you're ready. A personal playbook from building across Sao Paulo and Miami.

Ian Soares · · 9 min
Market Thesis

SaaS Isn't Dead — But Seat-Based Pricing Is

The 'SaaS apocalypse' narrative misses the point. SaaS as a delivery model is thriving. What's dying is the per-seat pricing model — because AI agents don't need seats, don't click UIs, and don't respond to upgrade prompts.

Basalt Research · · 9 min
Market Thesis

The Antifragile Company: How to Build Ventures That Gain from Disruption

Most companies are fragile — they break when disrupted. Robust companies survive. Antifragile companies get stronger. Here's how to build ventures that gain from every wave of AI disruption rather than being destroyed by it.

Basalt Research · · 9 min
Market Thesis

The Prototype-to-Production Gap: Where the Real Money Lives

Everyone can build a demo now. Almost no one can ship production. AI co-authored code produces 1.7x more major issues and 2.74x higher security vulnerabilities. The gap between prototype and production is where premium studios capture outsized value.

Basalt Research · · 8 min
Market Thesis

The Agentic Internet: When Machines Become Your Customers

Automated traffic now exceeds human traffic on the web. As AI agents shift from retrieving information to executing intent, the entire architecture of the internet — and the business models built on it — must be rethought.

Basalt Research · · 9 min
Venture Studio

How We Run a Venture Studio Across Two Continents

São Paulo and Miami. Physical space as serendipity engine. Virtual-first for execution, physical for ideation. Here's what works, what doesn't, and what we'd do differently.

Ian Soares · · 12 min
Venture Studio

The 10-Person, $100-Billion Company: What YC's Vision Means for Venture Studios

YC's Fall 2025 RFS called for the first 10-person, $100-billion company. AI makes this possible — but the bottleneck isn't building, it's knowing what to build. Studios provide that curatorial layer.

Basalt Research · · 10 min
Venture Studio

The Intellectual Capital Thesis: Why Smart Money Is the Only Money That Matters

The venture industry has evolved past 'money plus advice.' Studios that embed operators and compound institutional knowledge are producing structurally superior returns. Here's the data — and the thesis.

Basalt Research · · 10 min