360APPROACH Takes Off

Wogbe Ofori has been helping build entrepreneurial ventures for over 25-years — qualifying him as a middle-aged Jedi (although still trying to find his way in the world). He first used the trade name 360APPROACH in 2007 to engage in advisory work buying, building, and operating airports worldwide. Not long afterward, Wogbe was asked to help launch and build a JV airport development startup backed by a prominent Canadian pension fund. Over the next six years, Wogbe led Airports Worldwide’s growth — first as head of business development, then as SVP of Global Operations — to a valuation of $500M with operations in five countries.

After departing Airports Worldwide in 2014, Wogbe revived the 360APPROACH brand as an industry-agnostic boutique advisory practice with focuses on strategy & planning, organization & culture, operations & execution, and design & experience. However, Wogbe was never satisfied with just giving advice. He wanted to build ventures. So, he developed a unique type of service offering called Functional Outsourcing + Execution (aka "FOX”). During FOX engagements, clients would engage 360APPROACH to develop, build, and operate externally-launched white-labeled de novo business units. In time, these FOX units would be merged back into their sponsor organizations.

Although very interesting work, this spin on business process outsourcing wouldn't scale. The value could be seen, though. We just needed a more suitable domain.

“The [hardtech] revolution has begun!'“ - Korg

2018 would see the start of Houston’s current tech innovation and entrepreneurship renaissance, and it didn’t take long for Wogbe to be drawn in. Hoping to generate business for 360APPROACH within Houston’s emerging tech innovation ecosystem, he volunteered hundreds of hours mentoring startup founders and companies through his association with startup development organizations Founder Institute, Capital Factory, MassChallenge, gener8tor, the University of Houston’s SURE (Stimulating Urban Renewal through Entrepreneurship) program, and The Cannon. In time, a few things became clear:

1. To build great companies, capital was essential but not sufficient.

2. Risk capital’s obsession with “repeatable processes”, “blitzscaling”, and “asset lite” plays was stifling innovation necessary to improve our physical existence. Starting the decade with a pandemic made clear the need for investment in innovative solutions enabled by engineering and the physical sciences.

3. Hardtech innovators were working on hard problems whose solutions were as inspirational as they are aspirational.

4. Although the hardtech startups that he advised appreciated the guidance, they also needed investment, which they found very difficult to secure from VCs who looked at every startup opportunity through a software-focused lense.

5. Many technical hardtech founders needed/wanted partners to share the load of building great hardtech products and successful companies at the same time.

Coming Full Circle

Wogbe’s perspective, mentorship, and thought leadership was in high demand, but it became clear that 360APPROACH’s fee-for-service-based business model was not optimized to help early-stage startups get established and grow. He needed to get closer — to have skin in the game. And although VC investment seemed to be what every startup founder was obsessed with, an opportunity became evident to develop an investment platform with the resources and flexibility to support hardtech innovators as institutional co-founders rather than just financiers. And so began his most ambitious project to date.

Emerging Soon: 360APPROACH reimagined — wrx

Photo By Erik Mclean on Unsplash