Taiga Data
Year founded: 2019
Top executive: John Oakley, CEO
Website: taigadata.com
Describe your company and the service you offer. Taiga Data is a technology and software-as-a-service company that delivers a suite of practical business intelligence tools to the convenience store industry. The company’s founders, John Oakley, Greg Oakley, Matt Gattiker and Bill Ivers, Jr. had a successful exit in 2016 and are excited to do it again.
Taiga’s flagship product, StoreKeep, uses advanced integration techniques, data analytics and machine learning to provide a platform for independent c-store operators. We provide them with the resources to compete with the larger, national brands.
How is your company fostering a culture of innovation? Taiga’s founding team has worked together for 16 years across several ventures. We excel at creating scalable, enterprise level systems that solve real world problems.
Accounting, point-of-sale, and payment processing systems are all needed. The companies that create these products are great at specializing in their respective areas but lack in integration. Their software applications were never designed to talk to one another.
Taiga’s true niche is building platforms that connect disparate systems. By focusing on the data being generated we have created a business intelligence system that allows organizations to stop running on centralized, routine driven practices, replaced by localized, insight driven operations.
What has been the company's smartest move so far? We took our time thoroughly evaluating 17 industries to find an ideal product market fit. Our team researched and interviewed leaders in hospitality, restaurant, and retail where each of these markets had glaring needs for deeper business intelligence. Interview after interview with leaders
in convenience retail and the petroleum distributing market kept exposing widespread deficiencies in their capabilities. We knew our products could solve their problems.
Today, as the pandemic continues, we look back and are thankful that we took our time, learned, built connections, and are working with c-stores. Our story could have turned out much differently had we chosen an area that was nonessential and paused operations. Instead, for convenience retail, our offering has helped ease the challenges of remote operations which is another area that the retail industry has struggled with for years.
