A new venture builder founded by a former quant trader and investor has launched in Sydney’s Tech Central.
Repeat Builders is the brainchild of Andonis Sakatis. It will validate startup ideas before recruiting a founding team is recruited, and backing them with $3 million with support from an embedded HQ team for two years.
Sakatis said he’s conscious that during first 12-18 months of a new startup, founders are expected to live on savings in one of the world’s most expensive cities while also having to pitch to investors when they should be focused on the product build, so he wants to take fundraising and bootstrapping out of the mix.
“There’s an opportunity to make startup creation more accessible without requiring bootstrapped founders to take on all the early risk themselves,” he said.
“Most of that risk isn’t random – it’s systemic and can be addressed upfront.”
Sakatis spent 13 years in quantitative trading at GSA Capital and XTX Markets before founding Zenify, an Amazon best-selling consumer brand.
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He said tools such as Cursor, Claude and Lovable let anyone build a working prototype from a text prompt, giving founders with good ideas the ability to bring them to life quickly.
“The gap between a working MVP and a sustainable business still requires capital, domain expertise, disciplined execution and the right team,” Sakatis said.
” That gap is where most startups fail, and it is exactly where Repeat Builders operates.”
A reverse Shark Tank
He said they set out to invert the traditional model of venture building by validating an idea before the next step.
Once a venture passes validation, a founding team is matched based on three criteria Sakatis considers non-negotiable: domain expertise built from lived experience in the sector, high agency to solve problems to unlock a path forward, and the energy to sustain commitment over the years.
“Find domain expertise, high agency and energy in a founding team, and you have the conditions for success,” he said.
“Miss one, and small gaps turn into failure points – typically under pressure.”
Sakatis points to Germany’s Rocket Internet, which has launched more than 100 companies, as a similar model to the Repeat Builders approach.
How it works
Each venture is pre-funded with $3 million to cover salaries, tech, team growth and marketing for a two-year period.
An embedded HQ team operates alongside the founding team as silent operators across product, engineering, community, talent, capital and governance for this timeframe. There are no service fees.
The founding teams start with 30% equity in the startup.
Repeat Builders has set a target of launching five ventures in a year.
“The system we have built is designed to surface ideas where the evidence is clear and the conditions are met.” Sakatis said. “If you can remove the predictable failure points, you give good ideas the best chance of success.”
Details at repeatbuilders.com.
