Bill Gurley, Jack Altman back startup Pursuit, which helps companies sell to government

Mike Vichich grew up successful Michigan. His family, helium recalls, dedicated their lives to nationalist service. His parents were teachers, his uncle a combatant pilot, portion some sets of grandparents served successful the army. “Growing up, nationalist work was ever a truly admirable mode to walk one’s beingness and one’s career,” helium told TechCrunch. “I person 3 young kids. I privation them to turn up successful a state wherever authorities tin really get worldly done.” 

He went connected to enactment successful consulting, past launched a user institution that helium sold to Olo for $200 cardinal backmost successful 2021. After his woman gave commencement to their 3rd son, helium and Brandon Max, a founding technologist astatine his past startup, began discussing what they wanted to bash successful this adjacent section of their careers. 

Each thought they had came backmost to 1 thing: that selling to the authorities was truly hard. “We were like, possibly there’s thing to that.” In 2023, they launched Pursuit, a tract that helps companies find and triumph authorities contracts. On Wednesday, it announced a $22 cardinal effect circular led by Mike Rosengarten, the co-founder of OpenGov. The institution has raised $25.5 cardinal successful backing to day from investors specified arsenic Jack Altman (then astatine Alt Capital), Bill Gurley, and Sam Hinkie astatine 87 Capital. 

Image Credits:Pursuit

Pursuit works by continuously speechmaking nationalist information from astir 11,000 state, local, acquisition (SLED) entities, Vichich explained, meaning its AI systems are crawling budgets, declaration registers, FIOA records, petition for proposals from each state, schoolhouse district, county, city, and peculiar territory crossed the nation. “We crook fragmented nationalist information into afloat researched opportunities,” helium said.

Then it surfaces the SLED agencies astir apt to bargain a Pursuit’s customers peculiar services wrong the adjacent year, based connected signals specified arsenic their budget, the issues they face, and who is successful charge. 

He said the lawsuit is immoderate institution that sells to nationalist work agencies, and described Pursuit arsenic an “AI clone of themselves, making definite they cognize everything that’s happening crossed each relationship successful their patch.” 

Others successful this abstraction see Starbridge, GovSpend, and Deltek GovWin IQ. 

Vichich said helium hopes Pursuit tin assistance marque SLED declaration opportunities much transparent and accessible. “The information has ever been public, that’s the irony,” helium said. It’s conscionable that this information is buried crossed thousands upon thousands of websites, mislaid successful PDFs and gathering videos.

“The outgo of uncovering and parsing it has historically been excessively precocious comparative to the worth of immoderate awesome contract,” helium continued. “Pursuit is the furniture that turns sunlight into thing useful.”