Independent holding company — Amsterdam, NL
Internet businesses, engineered to last.
I'm Iron. This is my holding company. I team up with great engineers to build profitable software products, funded by customers instead of investors. And I don't sell them. Ever. The whole run is public on The Road to 1 Million ARR ↗.
01THESIS
Most companies are built to be sold. Mine are built to be kept.
The default path for a software company: raise money, grow at any cost, exit before it breaks. Impressive charts, fragile companies.
I do the opposite. Every company here starts as a partnership: an engineer who loves building the product, me on everything commercial. Positioning, marketing, sales, support. No venture capital, no board seats, no growth targets set by someone who'll be gone in five years.
The name is the strategy. Iron isn't exotic. It's abundant, honest, and it holds. Bridges are made from it because they're meant to outlive their builders. Software companies can work the same way: load-bearing products, small crews, margins that survive bad weather.
It's slower, and there are no rocketship stories here. The current milestone, tracked in public: 1 million ARR. Three companies in, zero for sale.
02REGISTRY
Current holdings
Every entry works the same way: an engineer who loves building the product, me on the commercial side. Short list, real attention, nothing for sale.
| ID | Company | Category | Position | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FE-001 | Simple Analytics ↗ | Privacy-first web analytics | Co-founder · operating | |
| FE-002 | UniHosted ↗ | Managed UniFi hosting for MSPs | Co-founder · operating | |
| FE-003 | SignalBase ↗ | Real-time B2B intelligence | Co-founder · operating | |
| FE-004 | Fiks ↗ | Connecting students with companies | First venture · 2019 | Origin |
03MATERIAL PROPERTIES
Six properties every Iron company must have
P-01 / TENSILE STRENGTH
Profitable by default
Revenue from customers is the only permission a business needs to exist. If a company can't sustain itself, it isn't a company yet. It's a bet someone else is underwriting.
P-02 / LOW ALLOY
Small surface area
Small teams, boring technology, few dependencies. Every added component is a future failure mode. The best system is the one with the fewest parts that still carries the load.
P-03 / FATIGUE LIMIT
Decades, not quarters
Decisions are evaluated on a twenty-year horizon. That instantly kills the clever stuff: growth hacks, dark patterns, lock-in. What survives is worth keeping.
P-04 / NON-REACTIVE
Privacy is structural
Don't collect what you don't need. It's not a compliance posture. Data you never store is a liability you never carry and trust you never have to ask for.
P-05 / SELF-SUPPORTING
Independence, kept
No outside capital, no debt, no board. Independence is the one asset that compounds silently and can never be bought back once it's sold.
P-06 / CORROSION RESISTANT
Built for bad weather
Platforms shift, channels decay, economies turn. Companies survive that the way iron structures do: honest margins, low overhead, and direct relationships with the people they serve.
04CONTACT
Engineer with a product? Let's talk.
That's how this registry grows: engineers who'd rather build than sell, teamed up with me. I'd rather sell than build. I also occasionally buy small, profitable software businesses from founders who care where their work ends up.
iljbrands@gmail.com