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ARI Venture Studio
The next generation of ResTech
- About Us
- …
- About Us
ARI Venture Studio
The next generation of ResTech
- About Us
- …
- About Us
Restaurant Technology Software
ARI Venture Studio is the first Venture Studio to focus exclusively on technology solutions for restaurants.
Learn more about ARI Venture Studio, our AI thesis and what we have
cooking for the restaurant industry.
ARI-VS
At ARI Venture Studio, we are harnessing the power of AI to reshape the future of the restaurant industry. With decades of startup experience, deep industry relationships, and a relentless passion for innovation, we’re not just creating and launching software startups—we’re setting a new standard for what’s possible in ResTech. Our proprietary development platform accelerates the journey from concept to reality, turning bold ideas into operational beta startups in weeks, not months.
ARI-VS is more than the sum of its ventures; it’s the catalyst for a revolution in an industry on the cusp of transformation. Backed by the credibility of our founder’s extensive industry relationships, ARI Venture Studio is not just participating in the future of ResTech—we’re building it.
Venture Studios - a Superior Model and New Asset Class
Startup's tend to follow a playbook regardless of industry. Whether they are incubated internally or organically from scratch, there is a process to follow.
A major point of difference between the Studio model and others in the startup world is what and how studios invest and support their startups. Successful entrepreneurs create and innovate but they also operate their companies until co-founders are recruited. ARI-VS supports the companies it creates long after its founding in the Studio. Startup venture studios bring capital and all the support startups need in the early days. ARI-VS bring access to everyone it knows and everything the team knows to the table as restaurant industry influencers.
The Venture Studio
The venture studio framework is a new model for entrepreneurship, combining company building with venture funding. The ARI Venture Studio (ARI-VS) business model combines entrepreneurship, skilled technology innovation, a proprietary software development platform and company-building tactics with venture funding. By design, venture studios link organic and curated business ideas to talented in-house and recruited founders and counterparts to build and execute those ideas. This new business building program offers entrepreneurs a new kind of value support system to reduce time to market, iterate rapidly and expand more ambitiously into untapped markets.
ARI-VS creates new companies as founders with co-founding entrepreneurs. Together we help with the unknowns of building a new company by providing ideas with an initial capital amount, a talented development team and ongoing operational support. ARI-VS' main goal is to found as many successful ResTech startups as possible with the resources we have — all from the ground up - and support them through their journey towards an exit in the future, providing a high potential IRR to our ARI Venture Studio Holdings, LLC investors.
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To build companies quickly, Ari Venture Studio leverages its proprietary Software Development Platform SPRINT, to accelerate time-to-market. SPRINT brings light and order to the infinite possibilities of large language models and supporting AI offer to next generation technologies. ARI Venture Studio, its startup building processes and SPRINT platform are AI-first in application.
Learn more about Venture Studios here
Investors
Our objective is to create, innovate, launch and exit startups within 4-6 years from launch, returning a projected 34% IRR over the initial 10 years to studio investors. How? We start with 100% ownership.
Partners
We always look for industry partners and early adopters interested in
participating in creation, adoption, and scaling of next generation of ResTech solutions.Create
We offer passionate co-founders the opportunity to develop and scale a validated business idea, with access to capital, enabling technology, industry connections, and a team of experts. Entrepreneurs in Residence (EIRS) are always welcome.
ARI-VS ResTech Innovation:
Solving Problems
A venture studios is NOT an accelerator, NOT an incubator and NOT a venture fund. Venture studios are innovators, founders and creators of multiple startups simultaneously.
Essentially, ARI-VS is a startup and technology and AI innovation company at its core. We use our capital for studio operating expenses plus, we provide the seed capital investment for each new startup in the Studio - a for an initial 100% ownership in each startup we found.
Venture studios as a new asset class are creating a new breed of innovation accelerated by pairing business challenges with the founders who are
committed to solving them and the companies that need them. ARI-VS focuses on the domain they know best, restaurants._________________________
Partners
Our Studio founders are experienced, credentialed and influential with deep restaurant, ResTech software development and startup experience.
Gennadiy Goldenshteyn - CEO | Founder
Gennadiy is a ResTech innovator, product & businessstrategist, and entrepreneur with 20+ years of experience heading existing and building new organizations. He is passionate and relentless about thinking ahead of the current foodservice landscape, having previously led adoption of new to the industry technologies aimed at improving the experiences of both
operators, team members, and customers at YUM! Brands and Welbilt.Gennadiy has deep expertise across all phases of productlifecycle, from strategy through iterative development, go-to-market, and field support. He brings extensive holistic systems mindset to the world of ResTech, rooted by the first half of his career in automotive and aerospace verticals with Ford and United Technologies Corporation, and honed by serving clients as a member of McKinsey’s Operations / Product Development practice.
A global citizen, Gennadiy has chosen to make Dallas, Texas his current home.
Michael L. Atkinson - CFO | Founder
Michael is a serial ResTech investor, entrepreneur, writer, speaker and restaurant technology multi-hyphenate with 40+ years of experience. His investment thesis is supported by an all-around restaurant and technology industry background as
an operator, strategist, financier, and technologist, and he is deeply passionate and committed to solving restaurant business and store-level operations problems. Often referred to as “Master of ResTech”, Michael is a frequent speaker on topics ranging from emerging technologies to future of restaurant operations.Michael is a consumer/tech sector investment banker with over 250 transactions and assignments in food, beverage, retail, restaurant, CPG and information technology and a repeat entrepreneur with experience in a diverse range of bootstrappedand investor-backed startups, having managed nearly every function in a company in his career.
Michael currently lives in Dallas, Texas, and maintains active presence in San Francisco Bay Area and London.
Jeff Hughes - CTO | Founder
Jeff is an accomplished technology architect and strategist, with 20+years of experience creating and transforming technology platforms for leading enterprises globally. A renaissance man, he has been a part of noteworthy entrepreneurial
ventures in ResTech, foodservice, FinTech, retail, commercial real estate, aviation, and entertainment industry – including working with Citadel, Thomas Keller Restaurant Group, MSNBC, and Disney.A fervent advocate for native cloud-based and serverlessarchitectures, Jeff stays at the forefront of technological advancements. His background provides him with a (rare in ResTech world) foundation that blends cutting-edge technological insights with ability to identify and resolve real needs of restaurant operators, team members, and customers through innovative and robust technical solutions.
Having worked and lived around the world, Jeff currently resides in Dallas, Texas.
Christopher Sebes - Partner
Christopher is an accomplished and successful ResTech entrepreneur and executive. He has built tech companies and cloud-based solutions, led cross-discipline departments and global operations, and held leadership roles including CEO and President. Christopher's expertise lies in driving transformational strategies that simplify core business systems and foster growth through multimillion-dollar IT innovations.
His career began as a restaurant and hotel operator in England, South Africa, and Kenya. Over the years, he has helped companies become industry-leading, financially robust organizations. He specialize in selecting the right technology through due diligence, building strategies from concept to global distribution, and facilitating growth through acquisitions.
Christopher has been featured in Forbes, Nation’s Restaurant News, QSR Magazine, Hospitality Technology, Fast Casual, Loyalty360, and Modern Restaurant Magazine. As a Forbes Technology Council member and board member of StarBar Advisory Board and Results Thru Strategy, Inc.
Advisors
Studio Advisors and members of our Operating Counsel are experienced, credentialed and influential in the restaurant sector.
Lane Cardwell - Operations & Industry
Lane Cardwell is the President of Cardwell Hospitality Advisory. He advises both established and emerging restaurant brands on their growth, strategic positioning, and concept branding to help their leadership accelerate their path to success. He has been on the senior management team, or board, of 40 restaurant concepts during his career. This experience includes over 20 emerging concepts, working alongside over 90 restaurant presidents and CEOs, and 9 Nation’s Restaurant News Hot Concept award winners.
He is the past president of P.F. Chang’s, former president and CEO of Boston Market, and was president and CEO of Eatzi’s Market and Bakery, which was a joint venture between Phil Romano and Brinker International. During his tenure with Brinker Lane was Chief Administrative Officer and a member of its board of directors, with responsibilities for marketing, corporate development, new concept development, acquisitions, and other strategic initiatives.
Lane is an experienced board member, having served on 13 boards of directors (4 public, 9 private) and 9 advisory boards of both restaurant and restaurant technology companies. He lives in Dallas, Texas.
Kevin Ma - Finance
Kevin Ma is a Co-Founder and serves as Managing Director at Diversis Capital. He serves as Chairman at Caligor Coghlan Pharma Services, Chairman at Form.com and a Board Member at RFI Global and ServicePower. He has spent several years in operations, strategy consulting and financial roles and brings due diligence and portfolio company transformation skill set to the team. Kevin is Chairman of the Board at Black Box Intelligence and through Diversis, past board chair and owner of Arrowstream, both Restaurant technology software companies.
Prior to becoming a founding member of Diversis Capital, he worked at The Gores Group where he was involved in the diligence, acquisition, and portfolio management of the firm's private equity investments.
Prior to joining Gores, he was a consultant at the Boston Consulting Group with a focus on strategic transformation, cost-reduction and sales force effectiveness at Fortune 500 companies in Tech, Healthcare, and Consumer. He also has experience in investment banking, fixed-income investment management and tech start-ups. He graduated with honors from the Management and Technology Program (M&T) at the University of Pennsylvania with a BS from The Wharton School and a BS in Electrical Engineering from the School of Engineering.
Barry Herbst - Industry Relations
Barry is a relationship builder and Senior Vice President at The Elliot Group, an executive search firm specializing in Consumer Retail, Hospitality & CPG, Consumer Tech Investor.The Elliot Group act as partners, thought leaders, and strategic advisors, is highly sought out to build best in class executive teams in the consumer space. We are a trusted partner to public companies, independent owners/operators, and private equity firms, family offices and venture capitalists to drive their brands and investments forward with the most important asset in any business: human capital.
Barry and The Elliott Group serves Private equity firms, family offices and public and private companies of all sizes. We leverage our informed intuition, technology, and cultural and business intelligence to successfully pair talent and companies in ways that unlock growth, and make futures happen for our clients and candidates alike.
Nick Calla - Investments and Studio Operations
Nick is currently an Investor at Serent Capital, where he focuses on investing in technology businesses across multiple end-markets, including Hospitality. Prior to joining Serent, Nick was an investor at High Alpha, an early stage B2B software venture studio and venture capital firm. Nick is passionate about working with technology businesses, learning about new markets, and developing relationships with the people who are leveraging technology to drive industries forward.
Sarah Higgins - B2B Marketing
Sarah is a powerful, hands-on brand builder with more than 2 decades of restaurant and restaurant technology marketing experience. She has a passion for growing and empowering high performing marketing teams.Sarah has a proven track record of developing and deploying succesful strategic inbound marketing programs that align with company objectives and driving record-breaking results. Sarah is focused, disciplined and creative, with the ability to produce quick results.
Sarah was Black Box Intelligence's first marketing manager where she excelled in project management, organization and data-driven decision making for over 10 years. While there she led the rebranding efforts while managing the Company entrepreneurial teams exceeding the Companys OKRs. Today she is Global VP, Field Marketing & Operations at Harri, a leading Workforce Management system, where she brings experience in start-ups, private equity transactions and acquisitions, branding, rebranding and event planning. With over 20 years of professional experience, Sarah has strong roots and affinity for the hospitality industry.
Tammy K. Billings - GTM
Tammy has primarily worked with ResTech start-ups, several of whom were acquired and on while becoming an expert in restaurant marketing which relied heavily on technology. She has led marketing efforts for two separate restaurant groups with multiple concepts and ~30 locations each and opened 20+ restaurants and venues during her career. Her affinity for all things data & technology propelled a move to the supplier side in 2015.
Tammy has built a reputation in the restaurant technology space as someone who behaves more like a consultant than a ‘salesperson’. She had a significant impact on each Company that she worked with. Currently, Tammy is utilizing her learnings and experience in restaurant technology as an Advisor for multiple companies. Tammy has an undergraduate degree in Marketing and an MBA with an emphasis in Entrepreneurship.Byron Dailey - General Counsel (Venture Studio)
Byron leads Fenwick’s private investment funds practice, advising on every type of investment fund or venture studio formation related to venture, tech, life sciences, blockchain or cryptocurrency. He counsels venture capital funds, venture studios, crypto investment vehicles, DAO-based investment funds, corporate venture operations, investment clubs, impact funds, incubators, accelerators and private equity funds—at all stages and sizes—on fund formation, seamlessly guiding fund managers through the design, fundraising, governance and investment process.
Byron has been listed among the best lawyers in America for corporate law, in the 2022 edition of The Best Lawyers in America, and named for the past several years as a “Washington Super Lawyer."
Fenwick & West LLP provides comprehensive legal services to leading technology and life sciences companies — at every stage of their lifecycle — and the investors that partner with them. We craft innovative, cost-effective and practical solutions in areas ranging from venture capital, public offerings, joint ventures, M&A and strategic relationships, to intellectual property, litigation and dispute resolution, taxation, antitrust and employment and labor law. For more than four decades, Fenwick has helped some of the world's most recognized companies become and remain market leaders.ARI Venture Studio Portfolio
Our current portfolio of next generation ResTech sofware startups are all AI-based, open systems designed to stand alone or integrate with legacy systems to supercharge applications and systems of record. There is a difference between nice-to-have and must have applications. And ARI understands the value of both long before we invest capital and resources.
Our current focus, where embedded AI is now table stakes, is addressing (FOH) customer acquisition, engagement and personalization, and (BOH) management inefficiency in workforce, data management, team communications, inventory, automation, robotics. Other projects pending include guest experience, LLM operator-in-a-box, kitchen AI and automation, payments and e-commerce restaurant solutions.
ARi intends to add 4-6 new startup each year, with the goal of creating over 50 ResTech startups in its initial 10 years.
Here are our first six:
Voice and optical enabled inventory management
“Taking the pain out of taking inventory”
SaaS
World's largest voice-enabled restaurant marketplace
"Voice activated food ordering using AI"
Transactional
Voice-driven team task and information management
“Stop typing, start talking and do more”
SaaS
WinWork.ai
Performance-based scheduling and shift management
“Optimize the value of every table,every shift”
SaaS
Our Restaurant Technology Blog
Thoughts, musings, and ruminations on restaurants, technology and venture studios
ResTech,restaurants,Workforce,Artificial Intelligencerestaurants,ResTechventure studios,ARI venture StudioResTech,venture studiosResTech,restaurants,ARI venture Studio,venture studiosventure studiosResTech,VoiceTechWe're going places. Solving Problems.
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