New venture builder launches in Sydney, offering founders a unique path to success

By Newsdesk

May 05 2026
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In a bold move set to reshape Sydney's startup landscape, Repeat Builders has launched in the city's Tech Central precinct, offering a fresh approach to venture creation. Founded by Andonis Sakatis, a former quantitative trading executive and operator-investor, this new venture builder aims to provide founding teams with $3 million in capital and two years of embedded support, eliminating the traditional need for fundraising.

New venture builder launches in Sydney, offering founders a unique path to success

Repeat Builders is a venture builder that aligns ideas, capital, and talent before a company is even formed. This innovative model is designed to address the systemic risks that often lead to startup failures. According to Sakatis, "There’s an opportunity to make startup creation more accessible without requiring bootstrapped founders to take on all the early risk themselves. Most of that risk isn’t random - it’s systemic and can be addressed upfront."

The statistics on startup failures are sobering. The Australian Bureau of Statistics reports that 60 per cent of Australian businesses fail within their first three years. Globally, 90 per cent of startups do not succeed, with the leading causes being a lack of market need, running out of cash, and team issues, as highlighted by CB Insights. Furthermore, Sydney ranks 35th globally for cost of living, making it a challenging environment for budding entrepreneurs.

Repeat Builders aims to flip the traditional startup model on its head. Instead of founders pitching ideas to investors, the company first validates ideas and then seeks out the right founding team. Sakatis emphasises three non-negotiable criteria for selecting founding teams: domain expertise, high agency, and sustained energy. "Find domain expertise, high agency and energy in a founding team, and you have the conditions for success," he explained. "Miss one, and small gaps turn into failure points - typically under pressure."

The venture builder's model provides pre-funding of $3 million AUD for each venture, covering salaries, technology, team growth, and marketing for two years. An embedded HQ team operates alongside the founding team, offering silent support in areas such as product, engineering, community, talent, capital, and governance. Founding teams start with 30 per cent equity in a validated, funded, and independently operating company.

Repeat Builders has set an ambitious target of launching five ventures in its first year. The ideas in the pipeline span multiple industries, reflecting a broad and evolving opportunity set. The company is not a venture capital fund, an accelerator, or a venture studio; it is a venture builder. This model has seen success internationally, with Germany's Rocket Internet being a notable example. However, Repeat Builders takes a different approach by deriving and validating ideas from market gaps, signals, and structural shifts.

Sakatis draws inspiration from successful homegrown companies like Canva, Atlassian, Airwallex, and SafetyCulture. "Canva, Atlassian, Airwallex and SafetyCulture are homegrown examples of when the right combination of concept, timing, execution and people come together at the right time," he said. "The system we have built is designed to surface ideas where the evidence is clear and the conditions are met. If you can remove the predictable failure points, you give good ideas the best chance of success."

Before founding Repeat Builders, Sakatis spent 13 years in quantitative trading at GSA Capital and XTX Markets and founded Zenify, an Amazon best-selling consumer brand. His extensive experience in both finance and entrepreneurship has informed the development of the Repeat Builders model.

With its innovative approach, Repeat Builders is poised to make a significant impact on Sydney's startup ecosystem. By removing the traditional barriers to success and providing comprehensive support, the venture builder offers a compelling alternative for founders looking to turn their ideas into sustainable businesses. As the company embarks on its mission to launch five ventures in its first year, the eyes of the startup world will be on Sydney to see how this new model unfolds.

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