Newly formed Twin Cities venture capital firm Bread and Butter Ventures has made its first investment, backing ConverSight.ai.
Indianapolis-based ConverSight is an artificial intelligence and adaptive analytics company. The startup said today that it had raised $1.5 million in a round led by Elevate Ventures with participation from Techstars, Bread and Butter, Angel Round Table, Atland Ventures and Charmides Capital. Atland, another Minnesota-based firm, is run by undergraduate students at the University of Minnesota.
ConverSight offers an AI assistant for supply chain leaders that delivers business insights and answers user questions. The company recently won the People's Choice Award for SXSW's Startup of the Year pitch competition. ConverSight has also seen significant traction in its customer base over the past year, recruiting large companies to its clientele such as St. Paul-based Cargill.
News of ConverSight's fresh round of funding comes less than a year after raising $700,000 led by Angel Round Table. The company plans to use the funds to invest in its technology, hire more sales talent and expand its business.
Bread and Butter, led by Brett Brohl, Mary Grove and Stephanie Rich, officially launched last month. Brohl is the managing director of the St. Paul-based Techstars Farm to Fork ag-tech accelerator. Rich is Farm to Fork’s entrepreneur in residence and the founder of local tech news site Starting Up North.
Grove is a former Google executive. Around two years ago, she moved to Minnesota to become a partner in Revolution and make investments from the firm’s Rise of the Rest Seed Fund.
Bread and Butter is the evolution of The Syndicate Fund, a venture capital group founded by Brohl around four years ago.
“It wasn’t that we needed to change, but that we had an opportunity,” Brohl previously told Minne Inno. “The three of us have very different backgrounds and we all look at deals differently. By bringing us all together, we can do more and improve our results.”
