TampaBay.Ventures has led an investment into St. Petersburg, Florida-based Procoto, a procurement and spend analysis platform for businesses. Procoto is a graduate of the famed Y Combinator startup accelerator program and the first Y Combinator graduate located in the Tampa Bay area. The investment represents the first investment from TampaBay.Ventures, a new venture capital firm dedicated to backing Tampa Bay’s most promising startups.
Procoto was founded by childhood friends Michael Otis and Ryan Muckel to address challenges within procurement management. With a stated mission to make modern sourcing management accessible to smaller companies at a fraction of the cost of today’s enterprise solutions, Procoto seeks to become an essential tool to the 28.8 million small and medium-sized businesses in the United States.
“The founding team behind Procoto characterizes all of the traits TampaBay.Ventures values in a founding team: varied experience solving complex problems, complementary backgrounds, a clear product vision and a deep understanding for their end-user,” said TampaBay.Ventures General Partner Andreas Calabrese. “The genesis of the concept for the company came from seeing the lack of support from enterprise procurement software as potential customers. We find these types of problem-solution product developments incredibly compelling as a firm.”
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“We are pleased to make our first investment into Procoto. As one of only four Y Combinator graduates located in Florida, and the first in Tampa Bay, Procoto exemplifies the increasing startup activities happening in the state,” added TampaBay.Ventures General Partner Marcus Adolfsson
Michael Otis, Cofounder and CEO of Procoto stated, “We’re thrilled to partner with Tampa Bay Ventures in our seed round. Coming out of Y Combinator this spring, we were very fortunate to garner interest from funds out West. But when we relocated to the area, it was important to us that we become a true Tampa company, not just one that happens to be based in Tampa.
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“From our very first conversations with Andreas and Marcus, we knew TampaBay.Ventures was the right fund to get us there. With the individual successes of the fund partners and their existing presence in the Tampa tech community, there’s no one with whom we’d rather partner. We’re excited to tackle the road ahead together and to contribute to the area’s budding tech scene for years to come.”
TampaBay.Ventures was founded in 2021 with an initial $20 Million seed fund committed to investing in Tampa Bay-based technology companies. The firm intends to lead investments into between 15 and 20 companies over the course of the next five years.
