Chantico Technology

Gina Sanchez spent a decade as a portfolio manager at American Century Investment Management and then ran a profitable consulting firm, during which time she discovered the power of recursive partitioning for analyzing financial data. Unlike traditional regression analysis, which predicts average outcomes, recursive partitioning excels at identifying the extreme scenarios—the tail events where portfolio managers lose money or earn their fees. She realized that if she could help wealth managers understand the specific combinations of market conditions that would devastate their portfolios, she could solve a critical pain point in the investment industry.

Gina spent roughly a decade developing and testing the underlying intellectual property through her consulting business, essentially building a prototype with real client feedback embedded in every iteration. When she formally launched Chantico Technology in late 2021, the IP had already been battle-tested across a decade of consulting work. She initially planned an organized beta round with structured feedback, but the market had other plans. When Silicon Valley Bank collapsed in March 2023, clients who had signed up for beta suddenly wanted to become paying customers. They approached Chantico directly asking for access to the data engine and analysis engine, forcing the company to pivot from beta to revenue-generating SaaS faster than expected.

Chantico's first customers came from Gina's existing network of registered investment advisors (RIAs) built over her consulting career. The company was pre-selling access to the platform even before it was fully built. The first customer alone committed to 75 seats (at $350/user/month). What started as a planned beta round with 100 seats across multiple customers in 20-seat increments quickly converted into paying customers across approximately 5 logos. The company reached "$35,000 a month today across five customers with 100 paid seats at 350 bucks a pop," effectively hitting profitability within its first full year of operations.

What worked was having deeply differentiated IP that solved a real problem: portfolio managers desperately needed to understand tail risk, especially during volatile markets. The 10 years of client validation before launching meant Gina wasn't discovering product-market fit in real time—she was merely packaging something that already worked into a scalable SaaS model. The pivot from beta to immediate revenue was forced by market conditions but proved the value proposition. The company is also discovering strong expansion potential within accounts; the initial 20-seat beta customers are growing to 75+ seats as more team members need access. Gina is also in discussions with "big ones" among platform partners that could enable multi-logo distribution at scale.

Chantico raised $425,000 in pre-seed funding in 2022 at a $5M valuation from 2045 Ventures, Ulu Ventures, and angel investors, with the company selling roughly 10% of the company and targeting another 10% in a second tranche. With 8 full-time employees and a founding team of Gina (CEO), Gregory Hansen (CTO), and Shannon Luzer (CRO), the company is targeting $1-2M in revenue for the next year. Gina's confidence extends to $10M in revenue with "really good confidence," but notes that scaling from $10M to $100M will require deeper venture backing. She's using tools like Carta for cap table management and Gusto for payroll and HR support.