Bill Gurley, Jack Altman behind Pursuit, which helps companies sell to the government

Mike Vichich grew up in Michigan. His family, he recalls, dedicated their lives to public service. His parents were teachers, his uncle was a pilot, while his grandfathers both worked in the military. “Growing up, philanthropy was always a great way to spend life and work,” he told TechCrunch. “I have three small children.

He continued to work in negotiations, then founded a consumer company that he sold to Olo for $ 200 million back in 2021. After his wife gave birth to their third son, he and Brandon Max, an engineer at the start of his last startup, began to discuss what they wanted to do in the next chapter of their careers.

Every thought he had came back to one thing: that selling to the government was too difficult. “We were like, maybe there’s something to it.” In 2023, he founded Pursuit, a website that helps companies find and win government contracts. On Wednesday, it announced a $22 million seed round led by Mike Rosengarten, co-founder of OpenGov. The company has raised $25.5 million to date from investors such as Jack Altman (then Alt Capital), Bill Gurley, and Sam Hinkie at 87 Capital.

Tracking works by continuously reading public information from about 11,000 state, local, educational (SLED) organizations, Vichich explained, meaning that its AI system is crawling budgets, contract documents, FIOA documents, requests for proposals from every state, school district, county, city, and special district across the country. “Let’s turn classified government information into a fully researchable opportunity,” he said.

It then identifies SLED organizations that can purchase additional services for Pursuit clients within the next year, based on signals such as their budgets, challenges they face, and who they are leading.

He said the client is any company that sells to government agencies, and he described Pursuit as “automated AI, making sure they know everything that’s going on in every account on their parts.”

Others on the site include Starbridge, GovSpend, and Deltek GovWin IQ.

Vichich said he hopes Pursuit will help make SLED’s partnership opportunities more transparent and accessible. “Information has always been known, so that’s the surprise,” he said. It’s just that these are posted on thousands upon thousands of pages, lost in PDFs and conference videos.

“The cost of acquisition and evaluation has been very high compared to the cost of any contract,” he continued. “Tracking is the part that turns sunlight into something useful.”