- Survival Rate: Over 90% of franchise units remain on the market after 5 years, compared to less than 50% of independent companies (IFA/BFA data).
- Bankability: Financial institutions treat licensing models as low-risk assets, offering cheaper capital.
- Business-in-a-Box: When buying a system, you buy the mistakes someone else has already made and fixed for you.
- Leo’s Role: We don’t sell dreams. At Leo Originals, we turn risky innovations into boring, predictable, and profitable processes.
In the Venture Capital world, the rule is “High Risk, High Reward.” It’s a great game for funds that have 100 companies in their portfolio and hope one will return the losses of the others. But for an individual entrepreneur or investor risking their own wealth, such math is suicide.
The alternative is the “Success Replication” model—franchising, licensing, or affiliate systems. At Leopard Brands, we call this the “Business-in-a-Box” approach.
Why Do Startups Die?
The main reason startups fail is not a lack of product, but a lack of an “operating system.” Founders lose liquidity while learning marketing, logistics, law, and HR on a living organism. It is expensive learning.
An independent business is constant improvisation. A licensing system is execution.
In the Leo Originals model, before we offer a concept to an investor (e.g., a network of vending machines or service points), we go through the “Mistakes and Distortions” phase at our own expense. We test locations, optimize the supply chain, and validate pricing. The investor receives a ready algorithm: “Input X, execute procedure Y, extract Z.”
The Power of Scale and Negotiation
A lonely startup founder ordering goods from China is nobody to the factory. They pay the highest price and wait the longest for delivery.
A network operating in a franchise/group model has purchasing power. This translates into margins that an independent player will never achieve. At Leo, by aggregating orders for our partners (e.g., for devices from Leo Industrial), we ensure they have a competitive advantage at the start, unavailable to “soloists.”
A Safe Haven for Capital
Data from developed markets (USA, UK, Germany) clearly shows: banks and leasing companies are more willing to finance the opening of the 50th unit of a known chain than the 1st unit of a brilliant startup. This is called “Bankability.”
For our clients, this means that by investing in Leo systems, they do not freeze 100% of their own cash—they can leverage the investment with cheap external capital because the bank sees us as a credible technical and strategic partner. Innovation is good in a product. In a business model, predictability is better.
“The myth of the ‘garage genius’ is harmful to capital. Leo’s true innovation lies in taking a risky technological concept and wrapping it in procedures so tight that success becomes a matter of statistics, not luck.”
— Krzysztof Wasielewski
