Vennli: the entrepreneurship dean's own startup

FOUNDED 2013 · FEDERAL PIVOT 2019 · JOINED ATTADALE, DATE UNPUBLISHED

The pipeline's most personal product was built by the man who built the pipeline: Vennli was founded in 2013 on a strategy model developed by Joe Urbany, a marketing professor in Notre Dame's Mendoza College of Business — a framework for winning customer choice by mapping what customers weigh — and on the software and venture experience of Gary Gigot, the alumnus and former Microsoft and Visio executive who had founded the Gigot Center itself in 1998. Gigot moved from Seattle to South Bend in June 2014 to run the company full time. The Tribune's October 2014 account counts twenty full-time employees, 79 customers trying the beta software — 23 of them local — and a local capital base that reads like the region's roster: investment from 1st Source Bank, Great Lakes Capital, Magnet Investors and the city's own Industrial Revolving Loan Fund. The company's releases carry the funding: a seed round the databases date to March 2014 at 1.3 million dollars, then a convertible note of 2.5 million dollars closed in April 2015, bringing total venture funding to 3.815 million dollars, with IrishAngels and Ambassador Enterprises joining the earlier local investors. In May 2015 the company won TechPoint's Mira Award for technology services and the 1st Source Bank Commercialization Award, the prize for carrying university research to market.

The second act turned toward the federal customer. The IDEA Center's own accounting records Vennli's reinvention as a government-research contractor: a first SBIR Phase I award in 2019, for scheduling software for Marine Corps flight units, followed by a Phase II in 2020 that brought that project to 2.3 million dollars, an Air Force STTR award of 150,000 dollars in late 2020, and a 750,000-dollar direct Phase II SBIR in February 2021 — 3.2 million dollars in federal research awards in all, alongside the commercial insight business. The funding databases put the company's lifetime venture total at 9.8 million dollars. The end of the independent record is documented on the acquirer's own site and nowhere else: Vennli's team and platform now sit inside Attadale Partners, a Chicago-area private-equity and consulting firm, as "Attadale Insights — powered by Vennli," with the client's questions answered in the firm's own FAQ and the platform promised a continuing life. The transaction's date and terms were not published in any source reached, and neither is printed here; the databases mark the company acquired, and the acquirer's site is the proof of where it landed.

Sources:

1. Vennli, press release, April 16, 2015 — the 2.5-million-dollar convertible note; total venture funding of 3.815 million dollars; the investor list; the 2013 founding on Urbany's model and Gigot's software record. pr.com
2. South Bend Tribune, October 26, 2014 (carried by Notre Dame Public Affairs) — Gigot's move from Seattle; twenty employees; 79 beta customers, 23 local; the local investor roster including the city's Industrial Revolving Loan Fund. nd.edu (publicaffairs.nd.edu)
3. University of Notre Dame Research, May 26, 2015 — the TechPoint Mira Award and the 1st Source Bank Commercialization Award; more than twenty employees in the South Bend office. nd.edu (research.nd.edu)
4. The IDEA Center, 2021 — Vennli's SBIR/STTR course 2019–2021: the Marine Corps scheduling awards to 2.3 million dollars, the AFWERX award, the 750,000-dollar Phase II, 3.2 million dollars in all. nd.edu
5. Attadale Partners — "Attadale Insights — powered by Vennli," the acquirer's client FAQ recording the team's move and the platform's continuation; PitchBook company profile — lifetime funding of 9.8 million dollars and acquired status, as the database records them. attadalepartners.com