Busy day in the SIPP. Opened four new positions: ServiceNow (NOW), SoFi Technologies (SOFI), Zeta Global (ZETA), and Strata Skin Sciences (SSKN). Four very different companies, four very different theses, one common thread: all are small satellite positions inside a pension dominated by broad ETFs. Let me walk through each one.
── ServiceNow (NOW) ──
ServiceNow is the enterprise software company that most people have never heard of — unless they work in a large organisation's IT department. They make the platform that handles IT service management, IT operations, HR service delivery, customer service management, and increasingly, AI-powered workflow automation across the enterprise. If you've ever raised an IT ticket at work that wasn't just an email to Dave, there's a decent chance ServiceNow was the platform routing it behind the scenes.
The investment case: ServiceNow is deeply embedded in enterprise IT infrastructure — they're the workflow layer that sits on top of legacy systems, SaaS applications, and cloud platforms, connecting them all together. That's valuable real estate. Switching costs are enormous — once an organisation builds its service management workflows on ServiceNow, ripping them out is painful and expensive. The company has been expanding from IT into HR, customer service, finance, and risk management — each a new addressable market. And the AI angle is genuine: ServiceNow's platform is tailor-made for AI-powered automation (incident routing, automated resolution, predictive maintenance). They own the workflow data that makes AI useful in an enterprise context.
Risks: the valuation has never been cheap — this is a premium-priced software stock trading on high multiples. Competition from Salesforce, Workday, and Microsoft's expanding enterprise platform is real. Enterprise software spending can slow in a recession. And AI could theoretically commoditise some of the workflow automation that ServiceNow charges for. Small position, long time horizon, watching closely.
── SoFi Technologies (SOFI) ──
SoFi is a digital-first financial services company — a neobank, essentially, but with a banking charter and a broader product set than most. They offer student loan refinancing, personal loans, mortgages, a money account with high-yield savings, a credit card, and an investment platform including their flagship product, SoFi Invest. They also own Galileo, a B2B fintech platform that powers card issuing and payment processing for other fintechs. That's an important distinction: SoFi is both a consumer fintech AND a fintech infrastructure provider.
The investment case: SoFi is growing members quickly and converting them into multi-product households. A member who starts with a student loan might add a money account, then a credit card, then open an investment account. Each additional product increases lifetime value and makes the member stickier. Having a bank charter (via their acquisition of Golden Pacific Bancorp) means SoFi can hold deposits and fund their own loans — lowering their cost of capital relative to fintechs that have to borrow from partner banks. Galileo, their B2B platform, is a genuine growth engine — it powers the back-end for other fintechs and neobanks, meaning SoFi participates in the broader fintech growth story even beyond their own app. And rates coming down would be a tailwind — lower rates mean more loan refinancing activity (SoFi's original bread and butter) and a more favourable environment for their mortgage business.
Risks: lending is a cyclical business, and SoFi is exposed to credit risk on the loans they hold. Student loan policy in the US is unpredictable — forgiveness programmes, repayment pauses, and regulatory changes create uncertainty. The neobank space is crowded — Monzo, Revolut, Chime, Varo, and a dozen others are competing for the same digitally-native customers. SoFi's stock has been volatile and should be expected to remain so. Small position, high conviction on the long-term thesis, comfortable with the turbulence.
── Zeta Global (ZETA) ──
Zeta Global is an AI-powered marketing cloud company — they provide a platform that helps enterprises acquire, grow, and retain customers using predictive AI and a massive proprietary data set. Their platform covers email marketing, social media, programmatic advertising, site personalisation, and customer data unification. The pitch is that Zeta can help a large brand replace a patchwork of point solutions (Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Adobe Campaign, Mailchimp, etc.) with a single AI-native platform that works across channels.
The investment case: marketing spend is shifting toward AI-driven personalisation, and Zeta is positioned as the AI-native alternative to legacy marketing clouds. They own their data — over 2.4 billion opted-in identity profiles — which gives their AI models a training advantage that competitors struggle to replicate. The company is founder-led and the founders hold significant equity, which I like (alignment with shareholders). Revenue has been growing and the company is approaching profitability on an adjusted basis. Enterprise customers are sticky — once a large brand integrates Zeta's platform into their marketing operations, switching is disruptive and expensive.
Risks: the marketing technology space is brutally competitive — Salesforce, Adobe, Oracle, HubSpot, and a hundred startups all compete for the same budgets. Zeta is smaller than most of its competitors and has less brand recognition. The data privacy landscape is shifting — changes to cookie policies, GDPR-style regulations, and Apple's ATT framework could constrain the data advantage Zeta relies on. And the stock has been volatile since coming public. Small position, watching how the AI-native marketing thesis plays out over the next few years.
── Strata Skin Sciences (SSKN) ──
Strata Skin Sciences is the speculative one — a medical technology company focused on dermatology, specifically the diagnosis and treatment of skin conditions including skin cancer. They operate the XTRAC laser platform for treating psoriasis and vitiligo, and they own a dermatology practice network that provides in-office treatments using their own technology. It's a micro-cap healthcare company with a market cap that makes the other three look like mega-caps.
Let me be upfront: this is the highest-risk position in my SIPP by some distance. Micro-cap healthcare is not where sensible pension money goes. The investment case — to the extent there is one — is that SSKN has recurring revenue from their dermatology network, the XTRAC laser has genuine clinical utility for conditions that affect millions of people, and the company has been restructuring to reduce costs and focus on profitability. If management can execute on the turnaround, the stock could re-rate significantly from these levels. If they can't, the downside is total loss of capital.
Position sizing here is absolutely critical. This is the smallest position I've ever opened — genuinely tiny relative to my SIPP's total value. I'm treating it as a deep-speculative lottery ticket: the outcome distribution is almost certainly binary (it works or it doesn't), and I've sized it so that a total loss is a rounding error on my overall portfolio. I would not be comfortable with this position at any meaningful size. If you're reading this and thinking about buying SSKN yourself: please understand that this is speculation, not investing, and the most likely outcome for any individual micro-cap is failure. I mention it here for completeness and honesty — this is what I actually bought — not because I think anyone should follow me into it.
── Pulling It All Together ──
Four positions, four different risk profiles, one common discipline: they're all small. Collectively, these four new positions plus my existing satellite holdings (TTWO, VST, CRWV, GOOGL, META, JNJ, CEG, NBIS, CIFR, the MEAT leveraged ETF) make up less than 10% of my SIPP's total value. The other 90%+ sits in broad ETFs — VUAG, VWRP, VDPG, VAGS, SMH, ISF, EQQQ, FGQI, EMIM — doing the heavy lifting over decades.
The satellites are where I express conviction, explore themes, and occasionally make mistakes that the core portfolio barely notices. The core is where the real wealth-building happens. I write about the satellites more because they're more interesting to write about, but never confuse the volume of words with the size of the positions. The boring stuff — the VUAGs and VWRPs — is where most of the money lives.
As always: this is what I did with my own money. Not a recommendation. All investing carries risk — you can lose money, and past performance doesn't predict future returns. Individual shares carry significantly more risk than diversified funds. US-listed shares carry currency risk for UK investors. Micro-cap stocks like SSKN carry extreme risk including the possibility of total capital loss. Do your own research and consider seeking professional advice.