The Texas Venture Labs Investment Competition was held last week May 4-7 in Austin.  Styled as the “Super Bowl of Investment Competition,” 38 university-connected teams from 12 countries vied for a $135K price package and the opportunity to open the NASDAQ OMX market on June 3.

I found one particularly compelling story of perseverance – V-Chain Solutions, representing Kennesaw State University in Georgia.  V-Chain provides what it calls the Materials Decision Support System, which combines BI and BPM techniques with supply chain management.  I would liken it to a consolidated dashboard that gives managers a comprehensive view across silos of information.

Part of the company’s handout was a very personal story of its founding and progress to date, and I am providing it here with permission, edited for brevity:

“The story of V-Chain Solutions begins with two supply chain professionals:  James Vinson (pictured above) and Tom Sweeney.

James Vinson, president and founder, began his career with the Georgia Army National Guard’s artillery unit in Springfield, GA.  James had an interest in logistics and the supply chain and quickly learned how those operations worked and didn’t work.  James concurrently worked for Sony Music Entertainment as a shop floor scheduler while serving in the National Guard.   He would eventually move to Motorola where he designed and developed an analytics tool to streamline supply chain operations there.  This tool would lead James to found V-Chain Solutions and would serve as the genesis for the V-Chain Materials Decision Support System (MDSS) Hybrid.

Tom Sweeney graduated from Georgia Southern University in 1994 with a degree in Logistics & Intermodal Transportation and began working for SSA in Savannah ,GA before relocating as an international consultant to the Manzanillo International Terminal Project, in Colon, Panama, in 1995.   His next move was to GE Polymerland to work on a new project to consolidate the logistics operations of GE Plastics with GE Polymerland.   He subsequently joined Menlo Worldwide logistics as a Logistics Manager at the Electrolux facility in Springfield, TN.  During that time he developed a logistics program with an embedded BI functionality to improve existing spreadsheet driven logistics operations.   

Although Tom was in the area of transportation and James was in shop floor scheduling, they recognized that the two domains had common issues; mainly that that they did not communicate enough with each other.  As a result decisions made in these areas were frequently in conflict with each other.

In 2002, James lost his father to a heart attack, which left him as the only male remaining in his family of 5 sisters and a mother.  It was at this time that James channeled all of his energies into making his work at Motorola successful.  James relocated from Atlanta to Chicago and eventually to California.  His responsibilities increased and he was tasked as an Oracle expert to implement solutions to connect a disjointed Motorola supply chain and make it seamless.

By 2004, James and Tom had been exposed to the operations of 5 large companies and their supply chain operations. Tom met James in Chicago, and they started down the path to building a company to address the supply chain issues companies were facing.  It all started at a Hooters restaurant near the Motorola facility, in Schaumburg, IL, where on the proverbial napkin, James and Tom sketched out their current view of supply chain operations and how it should operate. 

In 2005 James resigned from Motorola and Tom left Menlo Logistics to form V-Chain.  They left their companies with a mission to solve supply chain and logistics problems present in many companies. They spent the next three years studying the industry’s problems and gathering key players to produce the technology solution. 

James and Tom applied their life savings to this dream because they believed in what we were doing. Tom sold his house and cashed in his life insurance and his 401K.  Likewise, James cashed in his 401K, his bonus checks, and life insurance, and he maxed his credit cards.  They met with and recruited founding investors from various companies that James had worked with.   

In the midst of the economic downturn of 2008 the company was too early stage to attract funding from VC’s and was on the verge on collapsing.  James and Tom downsized the company to the point that they no longer had a place to live.  In fact, James spent a homeless 3 weeks in 2009 living in the camp sites on Mount Tamalpais in San Francisco and, later, when the weather got too bad, he was forced to move into a homeless shelter in San Rafael.  James eventually found a part time job with a moving company and later got an “affordable” apartment in a converted garage.  This is a stark testimony to the limits V-Chain’s founders are willing to go in order to achieve a goal.

As if things weren’t bad enough at the time, the bottom dropped out of James’ world.  James’ mother had been battling cancer for years and succumbed to the disease.  He realized now that neither of his parents would see the V-Chain dream manifest itself.  Twelve hours before his mother’s death, she told James to make V-Chain a success.  James wrote at the time:  “The death of my father gave me the courage to start my dreams, but it was the death of my mother that gave me the strength to succeed.”  That quote would later give James the inspiration he needed to move the company forward.

Four months later, the prototype was completed.    V-Chain began engaging companies like Celestica and Motorola to demonstrate the value of this tool and gained their interest in testing the product.  Today V-Chain has begun testing the V-Chain Hybrid prototype and is seeking funding to ramp up development, engage new customers and roll out a vision that has been a decade in the making.”

This is what I call being “all in”  -- and I certainly wish them well.