How AI Changes Governments & Business Models, From $11 to $187M Exit | Mike Vichich, Pursuit
The Peel with Turner Novak
Turner Novak
4.6 • 11 Ratings
🗓️ 15 May 2025
⏱️ 107 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Mike Vichich is the Co-founder and CEO of Pursuit, which helps companies generate more revenue from the public sector.
We talk about how AI is changing Helmer’s 7 Powers, how it’s impacting the government, if DOGE is actually working, building a startup in the Midwest, and how to disagree with your team.
We also get into Mike’s prior company Wisely, and how they went from $11 in the bank account and unable to pay payroll for six months, to over $10 million ARR and a $187 million exit to Olo, a public company.
Thanks to Jack Altman and Blake Robbins for their help brainstorming topics for Mike!
Timestamps:
(3:21) How AI changes Helmer’s 7 Powers
(17:06) What becomes important in AI-first economy
(21:02) How AI interfaces with the government
(24:02) “The rules intended to save taxpayer money ironically cause taxpayer money to be wasted”
(29:34) How change orders impact public sector costs
(33:20) Why DOGE has not impacted US government spending yet
(38:15) Three pieces of wisdom from 2nd-time founders
(41:44) Starting Pursuit to make selling to the public sector as easy as the private sector
(45:35) Why cities grow expenses 5x faster than tax revenue
(51:42) Pros + Cons of building startups in Ann Arbor, MI
(57:43) Hiring talent density in the Midwest
(59:30) Starting his first company to fix consumer credit cards
(1:08:50) Pivoting Wisely to restaurant loyalty
(1:12:49) $11 in the bank, missing payroll for six months
(1:15:21) Embarrassing demo at an Ann Arbor tech meetup
(1:18:18) Why CEOs don’t always have to be right
(1:20:54) How to disagree
(1:25:48) Hiring at Pursuit
(1:28:30) “A bad day with customers is better than the best day in the office”
(1:31:33) Crashing their first customer’s PoS on Labor Day Weekend
(1:35:55) Using “The Cadence” to hit $10M ARR
(1:41:55) Selling Wisely to Olo for $187M
Referenced
- Check out Pursuit: https://www.pursuit.us/
- The Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steve Blank: https://www.amazon.com/Four-Steps-Epiphany-Steve-Blank/dp/0989200507
- Ann Arbor New Tech Meetup: https://www.meetup.com/a2newtech/
- How to Disagree: https://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html
- The Cadence by David Sacks: https://sacks.substack.com/p/the-cadence-how-to-operate-a-saas-startup-436aa8099e8
Follow Mike
Twitter: https://x.com/mikevichich
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikevichich
Follow Turner
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak
Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week: https://www.thespl.it/
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | the rules that were intended to save taxpayer money, ironically caused taxpayer money to be wasted. |
| 0:05.1 | This is kind of the point about risk. |
| 0:06.5 | Like our tolerance for projects going sideways in the public sector is, I would argue, near zero now. |
| 0:14.1 | And I think that hurts us because then we create a bunch of rules that are designed to save taxpayer money. |
| 0:19.5 | But the people who know the rules and can navigate them |
| 0:22.7 | are those who are on the inside of the castle, right? And they can price the compliance with those |
| 0:28.2 | rules into what they're charging the government. And people who are on the outside of it, |
| 0:34.2 | they look at like, oh, hey, you know, maybe I should like sell to the city or to the |
| 0:39.1 | county or to that school district because I have a good idea for how they could help. But the |
| 0:43.8 | reality is they look at the procurement and they're like, oh, it's a total black box. And they're like, |
| 0:48.8 | ah, forget it. I'm just going to work on the on the private sector. So over time, there are fewer |
| 0:53.3 | and fewer companies on the inside of the proverbial castle, |
| 0:57.0 | and there's not enough backfilling of new, innovative companies behind it. |
| 1:01.6 | So I think any time you have a situation where there's a monopoly or a duopoly, |
| 1:07.3 | you're just not going to get good price discovery. |
| 1:10.1 | We can unpack that if you want, |
| 1:11.2 | but like I think that's a fundamental thing that is a really hard problem. I could work for |
| 1:15.5 | the rest of my life and not solve that problem. Welcome to the Peel. I'm your host, Turner Novak, |
| 1:20.2 | founder of Banana Capital. Today's guest is Mike Vitchick, co-founder and CEO of Pursuit. |
| 1:25.2 | One way that we think about our job is like reducing the overhead of selling to the public |
| 1:29.3 | sector, the best contractor should win, not just the best connected one. |
| 1:34.3 | Our conversation gets into how AI will impact business models. |
... |
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