Backing Paradox: Building the Organizational Intelligence Layer for the AI Age

In every fast-growing company we meet, a familiar set of questions emerges:​

“Why are our teams misaligned?”
“Why does it feel like we’re flying blind?”
“How come we only realize what’s wrong after it’s already too late?”

It’s a paradox. As organizations scale, they invest heavily in systems, tools, and processes meant to drive clarity and coordination. But more often than not, those systems create fragmentation, not focus. Leaders drown in dashboards. Teams work at cross purposes. Strategy becomes a slide, not a signal.​

That’s why we’re excited to back Paradox, a company rethinking organizational design from first principles and building the intelligence layer modern companies desperately need.​

From Complexity to Clarity: How Paradox Works

Paradox doesn’t layer more AI on top of dashboards. It reimagines how organizations understand themselves.​

At the core of the product is a reasoning graph, a dynamic model that connects decisions, processes, goals, blockers, and people into a live map of how the business actually works. It evolves continuously, drawing from real-time inputs across systems and conversations.​

This unlocks a new kind of insight:​

• Not just where something is stuck, but why
• Not just what a team is doing, but how it connects to broader intent
• Not just what changed, but what it means​
  
  

It’s not a reporting tool. It’s an interpretive system, one that can surface hidden constraints, prompt better alignment, and support faster, more confident decision-making.​

Think of it as a strategic co-pilot that helps you think clearly, see early, and act decisively.​

Introducing Hyper-Alignment

Paradox is built around the idea of hyper-alignment. It’s what happens when strategy, execution, and context are connected across every layer of an organization.​

The inspiration comes from nature, bird flocks and fish schools moving in sync, governed by simple shared rules. In businesses, Paradox achieves this by continuously mapping what’s going on and prompting course correction before problems escalate.​

Instead of strategy being a quarterly slide deck, it becomes a living current that guides day-to-day actions. Teams understand how their work ladders up. Leaders see where misalignment is forming before it shows up in the numbers. Everyone has the same mental model and knows how to adjust when the environment shifts.​

Why Now

Paradox sits at the intersection of several tailwinds:​

• Teams are more distributed and interdependent than ever
• Strategy cycles are compressing, and static tools can’t keep up
• AI is moving from analysis to action, but most companies aren’t ready​

At the same time, executives are realizing that scaling operations without scaling clarity is a recipe for drift. They want tools that go beyond reporting. They want insight, anticipation, and shared direction.​

Paradox is solving a trillion-dollar problem. Sure, we’re half-joking, but not really. Misalignment, inefficiency, and slow decision-making cost businesses real money every day. Fixing that isn’t just valuable, it’s transformative.​

We believe this type of infrastructure will become foundational to how modern organizations operate. As decision cycles shorten, teams decentralize, and AI accelerates execution, the need for shared understanding and constraint visibility will only grow.​

Companies that get this right, the ones that build reasoning and alignment into their core, will compound faster, hire smarter, and execute with clarity, while others scramble to keep up.​

Why This Team

We’ve known Niels since his Contractbook days. He scaled it from an idea into a European category leader, backed by some of the world’s top funds. He’s a systems thinker with product depth and an uncanny ability to turn abstract challenges into clear, usable tools.​

His co-founder Torben brings the engineering leadership and applied AI experience that make this vision executable. At Pleo, he led the AI enablement function during a period of rapid growth, building scalable infrastructure across teams and functions.​

This is a team with extreme talent density, not just at the founder level, but across the first core hires. In just a short time, they’ve brought together a group of sharp, deeply experienced builders who are fully aligned on the mission and moving with rare precision and focus.​

To be honest, our initial interest in Paradox was driven primarily by Niels and Torben's exceptional track records. We flew to Copenhagen to meet them, intrigued by their impressive CVs, but admittedly, we didn't fully grasp the potential of their idea at first. It's a new category that takes time to understand. However, after spending seven hours in a meeting room with the two founders and a whiteboard, we came away with absolute clarity: we had to do the deal.

What Comes Next

Paradox is still early, but the foundation is extraordinary. We’ve seen the team operate with unusual clarity, discipline, and ambition. Early pilots show clear value: surfacing constraints, aligning teams, and accelerating decision velocity.​

The opportunity ahead is massive. Every scaling company needs to see itself more clearly. Every leadership team wants to move faster with less friction. Paradox gives them the structural intelligence to do both.​

We’re proud to support Niels, Torben, and the team on this journey.​

If you’re leading a growing company, thinking about org design, or building the future of enterprise AI, we’d love to hear from you. 

And if you’re looking to work on one of the most foundational challenges in modern software, Paradox is hiring.​

Let’s build companies that don’t just move, but move in sync.