Seth Waite and Jim McBride didn’t sit still for long.
After selling their home relocation technology startup, Handled, in 2021 to Fenton-based transportation giant UniGroup, the local entrepreneurs knew they wanted to team up again on high-tech startups.
As they plotted their next move, Waite and McBride knew they wanted to focus on advancing companies with products that included artificial intelligence and machine learning. But aside from the technology, the duo realized what they loved most about being entrepreneurs was building companies, what they call the process of taking a startup from “zero to one.”
It’s that mindset that led the pair to form Algrthm Venture Studio, which launched earlier this year to create a portfolio of products and companies focused on artificial intelligence, machine learning and computer vision.
“Because we’ve built a number of companies through the years and sold companies and acquired other companies ourselves, we thought that was a really good fit to our experience and skill set,” said Waite, CEO of Algrthm.
Waite and McBride both have extensive backgrounds in the technology sector. In addition to launching Handled, Waite was chief strategy officer at Bentonville, Arkansas-based technology firm RevUnit. McBride's resume includes stints as chief technology officer at UniGroup and chief engineer at Express Scripts.
In recent weeks, Algrthm has launched its first company, with others in the works. The venture studio is targeting companies that incorporate cutting-edge technologies to bring modernization to industries. That builds upon Waite and McBride's experience at Handled, which developed an app that used machine learning and artificial intelligence to offer new tools for home relocation, including instant pricing, flexible bookings and automatic digital inventories without requiring home visits or appointments.
The first startup created by Algrthm is Real Goods, which has developed a mobile app to authenticate and grade collectibles and luxury goods such as trading cards, watches and handbags. Through its app, Real Goods says it will be able to help keep counterfeit goods off the market while also speeding up the process of grading collectible and luxury items. Waite says that traditionally, collectors have to submit their collectibles and luxury goods to firms where humans assess and grade the items. That’s a process Waite contends is time consuming, costly and prone to human error.
Real Goods’ software is designed to let that process be completed fully through a cell phone and says it has eight patents pending for its technology.
"Real Goods starts by capturing more than 1 billion pieces of visual and nonvisual data, which we then process with our proprietary artificial intelligence technology,” said McBride. “By processing multiple data types concurrently, we can accurately determine whether an item matches the characteristics and correct materials of a genuine item, and what condition it's in compared to an object in mint condition on a 1-to-100-point scale – something no human can do.”
Waite said Real Goods envisions its software being used by secondhand marketplaces, luxury and collectible brands, and firms that authenticate and grade the items.
With the launch of Real Goods, Algrthm's founders think it has entered the collectibles and luxury goods market at the right time. The collectibles market is poised to grow 22% annually to become a $692.4 billion industry by 2032, according to a report released earlier this year by Market Decipher.
“The market is huge,” Waite said. “It’s expanded a lot over the last few years in particular. Covid actually triggered a massive upsurge in collectors.”
Algrthm currently operates with an 11-person team. In addition to Waite and McBride, Algrthm’s leadership also includes Chairman Rich Waidmann, who has invested in the company. Waidmann is the founder and former CEO of St. Louis IT services provider Connectria.
Currently, Algrthm’s operations have been funded by its leadership team, and Waite said they plan to continue to bootstrap the business.
“Our goal is to get to profitability as fast as possible. The goal isn’t to raise the next (funding) round. It’s to not need to,” Waite said.
