Supply Chain: wait or partner.
Supply chain is the slowest-moving sector we track, bet on capital, not on velocity.
Scope: Procurement, logistics orchestration, freight, warehouse software, customs/trade compliance, B2B marketplaces, supplier risk.
TL;DR, Supply Chain
Supply chain is the slowest-moving sector we track, bet on capital, not on velocity.
Quadrant: Wait or partner , High cost-to-build, low deal-velocity. Capital-trap territory, stand down, partner with an incumbent, or stage cheques against milestones instead of announcements.. Data refreshed weekly.
Build-vs-invest scoring measures engineering cost-to-velocity ratio across GitHub organizations: a sector where high commit velocity co-occurs with low cost-per-commit is a build signal (founder-addressable); high velocity with high cost is a fund signal (capital-intensive, institutional). All scores are derived from the SSRN panel dataset and update with each weekly data refresh.
Cost-to-build
58/100
Building is not what's expensive; integrating with legacy ERPs, EDI, and 1970s-era trade systems is.
Deal-velocity
34/100
Long fuse, deals close, but not on the same calendar as the rest of the site. Resolution is monthly, not weekly.
Live signal: 24 supply chain startups currently tracked for Q3 2026. See the roster →
Where Supply Chain lands
Build
Build it yourself
Fund
Write the cheque
Avoid
Reroute the energy
Wait
Wait or partner
High cost-to-build, low deal-velocity. Capital-trap territory, stand down, partner with an incumbent, or stage cheques against milestones instead of announcements.
The honest version
What the score is really saying.
Engineering-acceleration windows in supply chain are the longest on the site, 18-24 weeks is normal. The cost-to-build is mid-range but the procurement cycle is long, the buyers are conservative, and the data-quality work nobody talks about pre-consumes years. The honest quadrant placement is wait-or-partner.
If you are building
The indie playbook.
Fits when: You have operating experience inside logistics or procurement and you can land a paid pilot through your network in under a quarter.
- 1Start with a single mode (freight, customs, warehousing) and a single buyer persona.
- 2Avoid the marketplace shape, the take-rate math is brutal at indie scale.
- 3Anchor revenue on annual contracts; supply-chain buyers do not pay monthly.
If you are funding
The investor playbook.
Fits when: You have patient capital and you can ignore engineering-acceleration spikes that do not translate into revenue for 9 months.
- 1Underwrite the founder's industry network harder than the technology.
- 2Treat fast engineering acceleration as suspect, most supply-chain commits do not predict revenue at the cross-site median lag.
- 3Time the cheque to the second design-partner conversion, not the first.
Frequently asked questions.
Why is the signal lag so long in supply chain?▾
Because the buyer is slow and the integrations are calendar-driven. Engineering acceleration shows up months before procurement clears, which is also months before revenue.
Are there exceptions inside supply chain?▾
Modern-stack adjacent plays (Slack-native ops, embedded-finance for SMB freight) close on conventional venture calendars. Treat them as supply-chain by topic but not by velocity.
Same quadrant, different sectors.
Healthcare
Healthcare is the patient capital quadrant, and most founders forget the patient.
Robotics
Robotics is the most capital-intensive sector, wait quadrant for almost everyone.
PropTech
PropTech is the slowest fund-quadrant adjacent we track, avoid the indie path.
AgTech
AgTech is hardware-heavy, slow, and only fundable inside a dedicated thesis.
Space Tech
Space tech is the only sector where the cheque needs nine zeros, wait quadrant for everyone else.
See the full matrix.
Every sector we track lives somewhere on the 2×2, the index page groups all 20 verdicts in one place.
When the verdict isn’t enough
You read the quadrant. Now you want the names.
The free Monday email tells you which way the wind is blowing. If supply chainis the call you’re weighing this quarter, two faster moves: pull the live teardown on this one sector, or watch every sector week over week so you see the team pulling ahead before it shows up in someone’s deck.
Pressure-test one sector
€7
One sector, one teardown, one sitting. The same read your analyst would spend an afternoon on, who’s shipping like they’re about to raise, and who just looks busy. Cheaper than the coffee you’d buy to ask around.
Test one sector, €7 →Watch it move every week
€49/mo
The standing dashboard across every sector we track, so the team that quietly doubled overnight lands in front of you, not in front of the partner who beat you to the term sheet. The deck lags the work by 21 to 47 days; this is where you spend that head start.
Get the dashboard, €49/mo →