Based: Covington, Kentucky
Year founded: 2021
Founder(s)/top executives: Michael Howard, CEO; Steven Brown, COO; Khalil El-Amin, CRO
Capital raised to date: $1.2 million
Key investors: Keyhorse Capital, Bluegrass Angels, Allos Ventures, Deftly Ventures, Cintrifuse
Number of employees: 5
Brief company description: Nichefire is predictive cultural intelligence platform. We help businesses identify and predict the impact of emerging consumer, political, economic and societal trends on their brands and consumers.
What are some major milestones in the company’s history? We started on this project in 2022 and launched our very first self-service product in November. During this journey we’ve been able to generate some significant traction and contracts with some of the world’s top retail and consumer product goods [CPG] brands.. ... We just completed our first major fundraise this year.
What is your company working on right now? We launched our v1.0 platform. Now we’re on track for launching the next version of the platform. With this update, we’re going to see some massive improvements to our predictive analytics models, generative AI and much more. We’re also gearing up for new hires — looking to bring on someone to lead our customer success team, new engineers and data scientists.
What’s on the horizon for your company in 2024? Our objective in 2024 is to bring awareness to the idea of predictive cultural intelligence. With that is a massive campaign we’re initiating next year. This includes a refresh on our brand, website and messaging — and a road show of speaking opportunities to educate consumer insights professionals of the benefits and importance of understanding culture. We have numerous enhancements to our platform on deck, including abilities to analyze trends for audiences, global capabilities and offer more predictive power and advanced generative AI. 2024 is the year we’re also scaling up our hiring and sales efforts.
Why grow your company in/from Kentucky? Covington and Kentucky have provided a wealth of support and opportunities for startups like ours. Kentucky’s subsidies/incentives, affordability and great community really make growing a startup a wonderful experience.
