Why trade data is the moat for the next generation of cross-border companies

Every company selling across borders eventually needs to answer the same question: who is actually buying, from whom, and at what price? Surprisingly few can answer it with confidence. Customs records are fragmented across more than two hundred jurisdictions, inconsistently formatted, and often months out of date.

BTD has spent twenty years turning that mess into a structured, queryable asset. What we have learned is that the data alone is not the product. The product is the decision it enables: which buyer to call, which supplier to trust, which lane to ship on, which invoice to finance.

We back founders who start from the decision and work backwards to the data. When they do, the data becomes a moat: every customer interaction improves the model, and every improvement makes the next customer easier to win.