The thesis
Physical industries hold the biggest productivity gaps, and their workforces are ageing fastest. Many operators still run on clipboards, spreadsheets and tribal knowledge. The first company to digitize a workflow often earns the right to automate it.
Physical automation is broader than robots. It is the vision system that inspects a weld, the software that schedules a plant, the retrofit kit that makes an old machine smart. Much of it deploys without replacing existing equipment.
It is also close to home. The Eastern Townships, Québec, are full of manufacturers, farms and trades ready for exactly this. That makes the region a natural testing ground for companies building for the real economy.
Themes
Making existing machines, plants and fleets smarter without starting over.
Vision, quality inspection, predictive maintenance and scheduling for plants and warehouses.
Tools that bring planning, measurement and automation to the job site.
Precision agriculture, processing and supply-chain automation.
Studio companies here
No physical automation company has joined the studio yet. If you are digitizing a real-world workflow, you could be the first.
What we look for
How the studio helps
Every service below comes from a role Joaquim has actually held. We picked the ones founders in this sector ask for most.
Leading your team through growth, reorganizations and new systems, including the human side of adopting AI.
Experience · COO through hypergrowth at MLG Blockchain. Installed HR and marketing systems as Chief of Staff at Secure Digital Markets.
AI agents for prospecting, outreach, qualification and follow-up, wired into a clean CRM. Your pipeline keeps moving while the team sleeps.
Experience · Builds and runs AI lead-generation and outreach agents across his own companies.
Partnerships, corporate development and positioning: the relationships that open markets and doors.
Experience · Founding Partner of GDA Capital. Mentor and advisor at Techstars, Founder Institute, Outlier Ventures and FounderFuel.
Launch strategy, pricing, channels and community-led growth, including token launches for digital-asset companies.
Experience · Co-founded TrustSwap ($400M+ market cap, users in 75+ countries). Alpaca Network’s community round raised $1.2M in 2 weeks.
Agents that take over admin, reporting, support and back-office work, so a small team operates like a large one.
Experience · Runs a fleet of dozens of AI agents across his own businesses. Co-founded the AI inference platform Gatewayz.ai.
Hiring plans, recruiting pipelines, onboarding and the HR foundations you need before you need them.
Experience · Scaled MLG Blockchain from 4 to 120 employees in 9 months. Built the HR function at Secure Digital Markets as it grew from 9 to 40.
Fundraising readiness, investor mapping and warm introductions to angels, funds and family offices. Plus help structuring the round.
Experience · Backed 70+ companies as a founding partner of GDA Capital, including 2 seed-to-unicorn outcomes. Alpaca Network raised $1.2M in 2 weeks. LP at Holt Xchange.
Automating a physical business is as much about people as machines. Change management and trust with operators are part of the product.
Other sectors
Profitable, community-anchored businesses that we help grow with patient capital and modern tools.
02Robots and autonomous systems moving from the lab into the field, and the software that runs them.
03AI-driven discovery, lab automation and the platforms that make biology faster and cheaper to engineer.
04The space economy after the launch revolution: data, communications, in-orbit services and the software that ties them together.
05Market infrastructure, tokenized real-world assets, stablecoins and healthy token communities.
06Payments, capital-markets technology and financial services rebuilt for global, remote-first customers.
07AI agents, applied AI and agentic autonomous organizations (AAOs): companies where humans and AI agents share the work under one rulebook.
Work with the studio
Tell us what you’re building and what you need. We read every application, and every founder gets an answer.
