Mike Vichich grew up in Michigan with a family dedicated to public service and now, through his startup Pursuit, aims to make government contracting simpler. After working as a consultant and selling a consumer company for $200 million, he and Brandon Max launched Pursuit, which uses AI to read public data from over 11,000 state, local and education entities across the US.

Their vision is clear: making government contract opportunities more transparent. 'The data has always been public,' says Vichich, 'but now it’s turned into something useful.'

Bill Gurley, Jack Altman and Sam Hinkie have backed Pursuit with $25.5 million in funding, seeing potential not just for companies but perhaps for a more efficient government too.

Pursuit isn’t the only player in this space—Starbridge, GovSpend and Deltek are also working to make public tender processes accessible. With Vichich’s hope that Pursuit can democratise access, one wonders whether such tools could indeed transform how business interacts with government.