Innovate
The Proveit Origin Story with Nathan Lehoux [Audio 22:26]
Nathan Lehoux, cofounder of Proveit, stops by the Catalyst studio to share the company’s origin story. This almost textbook success story starts in one of our favorite places – the St. Pete Greenhouse. Nate’s now partner Prem Thomas was presenting for his company Gurus at 1 Million Cups. Nate connected with Prem afterwards, and the two began having regular ideation sessions at local coffee shops.
From these talks, the idea for Proveit emerged. Nate leveraged his network to gain attention from Hilt Tatum, one of the founders of poker giant Absolute Poker. Hilt and another local mystery investor seeded the company with $300,000.
Nate and Prem spent countless hours building Proveit – the technology platform, the content and the payment processing, which turned out to be a mammoth effort. The bank that finally agreed to work with Proveit had a very noteworthy board member – John Morgan of Morgan & Morgan. While this is certainly a stroke of luck, it was Nate’s examination of the board and again tapping his network that led to a meeting with the risk-hungry investor. He agreed to take the entire ‘Angel’ round on the spot, and two months later the money was in the bank.
Click the arrow below to listen to Nathan tell the Proveit origin story with the same passion and precision he brings to his business.