Sequence: Built to Refound

We started Sequence with a clear conviction: the holding company of the next century will be a technology company that owns and operates businesses. So we brought frontier engineers and seasoned M&A professionals together from day one, building Sequence the way we believe the companies we partner with must be built: with engineering at the core.

Our ambition is to build the next generation of leaders in the service economy. We partner with a select group of companies led by exceptional operators to rebuild how their businesses work, not simply give them better technology. Engineering gives us the ability to design that change. Ownership gives us the mandate and the long-term alignment to carry it through. We call this refounding.^[1]

The opportunity

A new generation of AI models brought this ambition within reach. Over the past three years, models have moved beyond answering questions to carrying out increasingly complex work: reading a file, drawing from several systems, applying a policy, producing a decision, and passing it on. That progress has strengthened our conviction that we can fundamentally reshape how service businesses operate, and the advances we expect in the years ahead expand the scope of what we believe we can achieve.

We are building for that potential, not simply for what the technology can do today. By rebuilding how work gets done around these capabilities, we aim to create more capacity for people to do what makes these businesses valuable: deepen client relationships, develop new ideas, manage talent, guide strategy, and exercise judgment.

Service businesses in the US generate roughly $4 trillion in annual revenue. While the goal is to solve problems and deliver solutions to clients, employees often get overwhelmed with process and administration. An experienced underwriter makes the underwriting decision in ten minutes and spends the rest of the day documenting it. An advisor who knows which carrier will take a risk spends the morning chasing certificates. We believe the opportunity is to help employees spend less time chasing documents and moving information between systems, and more time doing what they love: solving problems, exercising judgment, and building relationships. For customers, that can mean faster and more accurate answers, more personal attention, and access to deeper expertise and services that were previously too costly or difficult to obtain.

What refounding requires

Realizing that potential requires more than adopting new tools. As in the Industrial Revolution, enterprises will need to reimagine how work gets done. Most established businesses are organized to improve how they operate today, not to rebuild themselves around a new technological foundation. Carrying out that transformation while continuing to serve customers takes frontier engineering, deep operating expertise, and patient ownership working together. That is the combination Sequence was built to provide.

We have built an organization that is centered on engineering with talent from Palantir, Scale AI, Apple and others. Our technology platform, Atlas, is a horizontal model that can be applied to the majority of services businesses. This is the heart of our refounding motion: our engineers work alongside operators to understand existing processes and workflows, and reimagine a new way of working around Atlas.

While still early, our work with BankSouth is already showing signs of what the principles behind refounding can mean for customers, employees, and the business. BankSouth, a leading community bank in Georgia, has a deep culture of innovation & customer service, so our efforts have been focused on automating redundant tasks, reimagining processes across traditional reporting lines, and amplifying the ability for bankers to serve and advise customers. Among other areas, working alongside the bank’s team, we have streamlined the loan origination process from nine stages to three while reducing the number of days from application to closing across all loans by ~52%. During this time, loan volume doubled year-over-year, with the same team now able to support the increased volume given higher middle and back-office efficiency.

The bank has focused on enabling employees to spend more of their time applying their expertise and judgment to higher-value work. These early results give us confidence that we can build businesses that serve more customers, deliver better experiences, and create more rewarding work for the people who make that possible.

Who we partner with

We combine our engineering core with a selective investment lens to identify the right companies to partner with. Given the speed of change, we want to operate with a sense of urgency in refounding companies. As a result, we are focused on scaled companies in large markets that want to be a disruptive force in their respective industries. We seek companies with strong competitive attributes: long-standing relationships, deep customer trust, hard-earned regulatory standing, and proprietary data. It’s also important to us to have a leadership team that shares our conviction around technology and rebuilding as we are partnering in the transformation together.

Today, we’re thrilled to share that we, along with the Dell Family Office and the Baldwin family and management team, have agreed to take The Baldwin Group private. Baldwin is an exceptional business and has rapidly become one of the largest insurance brokerages in the United States. It’s led by a world-class team with the ambition to shape the future of insurance. That team has already begun its AI transformation in earnest, investing in talent and technology to build a more diversified, vertically integrated insurance firm. We are honored to partner with them and look forward to bringing our engineering capabilities and patient capital to amplify the work already underway and help realize their vision.

Built to Refound

We are in the midst of the intelligence revolution and we believe this will ignite change across many industries. Owning and operating companies will require technology and engineering to be the driving force. Similarly, service companies will need to amplify their best asset - the talent and judgment of their people. Sequence is a new type of holding company that brings frontier engineering, operating expertise and patient capital to help scaled companies reimagine themselves for the future. We exist to forge the next generation of leaders in the service economy.

Michael J. Lee and Alexander C. Rubin