Louisville startup reshuffles C-suite with new CEO

When co-founders Aaron Peabody, Connor Gaffney and Kramer Caswell quit their jobs to launch Untitled Firm nearly four years ago, none of them felt ready to take on the role of chief executive officer.

"We wanted someone really experienced to come in and lead the way and show us how to build a company from the ground up," Peabody said.

That's where Steve Huey stepped in.

Huey, the former top executive at Louisville-based Capture Higher Ed, helped the early-stage company find its footing as the acting CEO. He was also the one who pushed Peabody, the company's chief technology officer, to take the reins when the timing was right.

Peabody transitioned to the CEO role in recent months, sparking a shift in the leadership team at the growing company.

As Business First previously reported, Untitled got its start as a data-driven marketing firm in 2018. It's since evolved into a full-service data architecture and business intelligence firm, developing a data warehousing management platform called Distilled.

It's also grown exponentially, having hired at least 15 new employees in the last year for a total of 30 staffers at its headquarters in Butchertown. Without disclosing specifics on revenue, Peabody said the company has maintained triple-digit growth over the last year and has served roughly 180 clients to date.

In addition to Peabody's appointment, the recent changes to Untitled's leadership team include:

Gaffney remains Untitled's COO, and Caswell is the head of product.

Bickel, the former director of data science at Papa John's International Inc. (Nasdaq: PZZA), said he and Robbins met while working together at Brown-Forman. It was JK McKnight, founder of Forecastle Festival and Art of Impact, who introduced the duo to the founders of Untitled about three years ago.

"The concept of lowering the risk and increasing the reward for a set of the industry that typically doesn't have access to the tools and capabilities that the co-founders here really want to bring to the table for those companies," Bickel said. "Back then, I was sold. Fast forward three years, seeing the growth and seeing them kind of stick true to that vision ... It wasn't a hard sell for me to come on board.

"I knew that I trusted their vision. I knew I trusted what they're building. And I was excited to be a part of that."

Robbins came to Untitled from Provi, where he served as the senior director of commercial analytics and data strategy. He said he joined the startup because he sees the value the company provides to its customers, but also because he genuinely enjoys the environment.

"I'm having fun," he said. "Every day I wake up and it's a startup, you're going to hustle, but it's fun."

Wyllie, meanwhile, wanted to get back into building startups and helping young teams after a stint at Oracle. He brings to the table more than three decades of engineering experience, specializing in evaluating and implementing cutting-edge technologies including machine learning frameworks, serverless frameworks and NoSQL databases.

"When I came out here and met the team, I was just super impressed with the team they had assembled at that point," he said. "My main goal is to mentor the team and just be that part of the org."

With each new hire, Peabody said the firm can see the efficiencies they create.

"The dynamics are always interesting, right? Startups are a bit of a pressure cooker sometimes — well, a lot of times — so you're going to quickly experience that as a team. If those dynamics are offset from what you're used to, it takes time to really start aligning and synchronizing," he said. "But it's been a really great experience for us each time we've brought in someone new, whether it was Andrew, Ellen, Eric or Dan ... If we have things that we need to work out, that's fine as long as the business is getting collectively smarter and better and stronger."