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A few years ago, around the time of the mass shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., Thomas Dean started a technology company aiming to solve the problem of active-shooter incidents.
The solution he built under a company called IntelAegis was essentially a human workflow management system that could help schools and businesses manage the people coming in and out of their buildings for security purposes.
"We had a real personal passion about solving that problem in schools," said Dean, who's originally from a small Kansas town and has an accounting and finance background.
But then, the pandemic hit.
With schools and many offices closed, IntelAegis customers had less of a need for a building safety platform. But its largest customer, a local steel manufacturer, asked for something different — a way to manage the delivery trucks and drivers in their shipping yard.
IntelAegis shifted gears to focus on logistics and quickly realized the platform they had built could be easily adapted to fit the supply chain industry. Under a new name — Renaissant — the company now markets its product solely for logistics purposes because the demand for supply chain technology is so high, Dean said.
"From a mathematical and analytical standpoint, it's the same problem," Dean said. "It's getting people information they need because something happened."
In the crowded supply chain technology market, Dean said Renaissant differentiates by focusing on what it calls "the golden triangle" — the area where truck drivers meet a company's warehouse and freight yard.
"We operate in that triangle where all of the people are," said Dean, who moved to Milwaukee around 2007 for a job at Stark Investments, formerly a large locally-based hedge fund. "We provide all the visibility that our customers need literally on the ground, where everything is actually happening."
The recent supply chain disruptions in the economy have highlighted the need for warehouse managers to have greater visibility into that area, which is where freight truck shipping backups frequently occur, Dean said.
Using Renaissant's platform has helped one customer, a $2 billion manufacturer, speed up its shipping operations and increase inventory turnover such that it may not need the additional distribution center space it had been planning, Dean said.
Moving forward, Renaissant aims to use the data it collects from customers to offer predictive analytics to help customers optimize their supply chains even further.
"A simple example ... we have all the information to predict how many (warehouse door deliveries) you should be scheduling at every hour of the day," Dean said. "That's incredibly powerful because what it leads to is the need for fewer warehouse workers. ...We predict those things and help them plan in real-time for real day-to-day operations."
Company name: Renaissant Inc.
Headquarters: Milwaukee
Year founded: 2019
CEO: Thomas Dean
No. of employees: 5
Website: renaissant.com
The product: A logistics and supply chain software-as-a-service (SaaS) and enterprise integration platform designed for business customers to connect truck drivers, warehouses and freight yards in real-time.
How it makes money: Software licensing fees collected from customers monthly or annually, as well as implementation fees from enterprise clients and some hardware sales.
Size of the market: Renaissant is targeting a multibillion-dollar market, Dean said. It plans to be a $10 million company in two years and a $50 million firm in five years, he added.
Competition: Companies that make "track and trace" solutions such as Project44 and FourKites, as well as makers of warehouse management systems (WMS) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems such as Blue Yonder, Oracle and SAP, Dean said.
Competitive advantage: Renaissant's solution requires less hardware, is less expensive, and is easier to use and implement compared with those of many competitors, Dean said. It also enables contactless interactions in shipping yards.
Key leaders: Co-founder and CEO Thomas Dean, co-founder and executive vice president of business development Patrick McGartland, vice president of marketing Carl Cahill, customer success engineer Max Werner.
Investors: Angel investors
Capital raised: $2 million+
Capital sought: Renaissant plans to seek $5 million to $10 million in Series A financing in early 2023, Dean said.
Ideal exit: Selling the company to a larger WMS or ERP company, Dean said.
