A Q&A with Nimbello’s Sunjay Agtey
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Sunjay Agtey was born into a business family. After a winding career path took him from positions at tech startups like Groupon and HubSpot in Chicago and Boston, the South Bend native decided three years ago to return home to work for his father’s financial technology company, Nimbello.
Inside INdiana Business talked with Agtey about applying a startup mindset to small business, returning to the region and what it’s like to work with family.
Tell me about your experiences in business prior to joining your family’s company.
I was born and raised in South Bend. My father was a CPA and he used to work at Crowe. Growing up, I actually wanted to be a teacher. However, (my parents) were helping pay for my education and they thought finance and accounting would give me better opportunities in the future so I graduated from the [Indiana University] Kelley School of Business with a finance and accounting degree.
I had an internship with Crowe while in college, and that led to a job offer, so my first job out of school was in the audit team over at Crowe. I came back to South Bend. I was here for about a year and a half to two years out of school and then, like a lot of Big Ten kids, was interested to try to get to Chicago, and Crowe had a different team, a team within the transaction services side that kind of helped with mergers and acquisitions, that was based out of Chicago, and based on my growth trajectories and work I’d done on the audit team, I was able to get transferred over the Chicago department.
That really gave me guidance into seeing how companies were bought and sold and just a real excitement for business. I also was at the point of needing to take my CPA to get to the next level of Crowe, and I’m not really a good test taker, so at that point I realized that my life as an auditor at Crowe was probably short lived, and that was in 2009 when the economy went down. Companies weren’t really being bought and sold anymore. So, at that time, I parted ways with Crowe and at that time, a new company in Chicago was just getting started.
Groupon was there and I had a good friend from South Bend who was an early employee at Groupon. He said, ‘Hey, we’re hiring. I think you’d be great at this role.’ It was sales. I’d never done sales before but I met the hiring team on a Thursday. I got an offer on Tuesday and started the next week. So I went to Groupon, was there for about a year and a half in Chicago and then my wife and I started to date long distance. She got into a doctoral program at Boston College and she said, ‘We’re probably not going to be dating long distance. You need to be out here.’
I was fortunate enough to have done well in Chicago at Groupon. They were looking to hire an outside sales rep for Boston, and they said ‘Hey, you know Groupon. Why don’t you go out there?’ So, I went there and built up the sales team for Groupon and after Groupon went public, I was looking for my next adventure, the next startup.
There was a company that was growing in Boston. It seemed a lot like Groupon except instead of having everything green, everything was orange. That company was HubSpot. I joined them and they’ve since gone public. So, between those two companies, I really enjoyed startups and enjoyed growing companies. Then, my wife graduated from her doctoral program and we moved back to Chicago, and through that process, I got my MBA from Notre Dame. I then started working for the improv comedy club, Second City, and that was awesome. I did a bunch of cool work with them in business development. Then during the pandemic, my wife and I were talking about different things and what was next and that led me to, I’ve helped a lot of different startups, but it’d be great to maybe go back.
My father started this company in 2010, and every time I changed jobs, I’ve done a lot of thinking that maybe it’s time to come back and help him with his company, which is a startup, and see if we can grow together.
Tell me more about why you chose to come back to South Bend.
My wife and I, like a lot of people our age, heard the Redfin jokes and were always looking to move whenever we got somewhere. So, we were in Chicago for six years and we kept looking. We liked the city, but we kept looking for the suburbs, the traditional ones most people go to, like Wilmette or out west in Hinsdale or Oak Brook or Clarendon Hills. We couldn’t find anything. Then the pandemic was kicking off and we came back. We visited my parents. We had some friends who moved back to the area. We were driving back to Chicago and my wife had a suggestion, ‘Hey, this is gonna be crazy, but would you ever move back to South Bend?’ I joked and laughed, and I said, ‘Hey, just so you know, you’re the one suggesting it.’
My parents lived here, but it makes sense. My wife’s big in education. She knows a lot about it. Our older son was in kindergarten and going through that during COVID, but we really wanted to be settled by first grade. And, we were fortunate enough that we knew a builder in South Bend who I’d gone to grade school with. The school where I went for fourth through eighth grade, Stanley Clark, is in South Bend. It was a good school. We talked to the admissions directors and we were able to get our kids in. And, we were able to work with a builder and they said, ‘If you started in December, we’ll be done by the school year.’ So everything happened pretty quick.
You serve as vice president of alliances and strategy at Nimbello. What does Nimbello do?
Nimbello is a B2B fintech software company. We’re focused in the accounts payable and payment automation space. It’s a software that helps finance and accounting teams do more with less. So, it’s automation, and since we automate invoices, if you process a lot of invoices, and usually if they’re complex invoices, the more automated it is, the better time savings and more visibility in the cash flow you have. With that we can help any company, but usually companies who have a large invoice volume or complex invoices benefit the most. Those three industries are usually manufacturing, higher education and health care.
My father started this company about 10 years ago as more of a lifestyle business. It just kind of grew by word of mouth, organically. Over the 10 years, we’ve been fortunate enough, if we lose a customer, people just keep coming to us because of the software and the product. And, my role is a vice president of alliances and strategy. Basically that means, ‘How can we get more people aware of our solution?’ The benefit of being local to South Bend in this area is there are a ton of manufacturing companies in the area and we’re fortunate to work with quite a few of the large RV manufacturers, RV producers as well as the University of Notre Dame, and some large universities in the area.
How have you applied your startup mindset to work at Nimbello?
It’s funny. I’ve got an older sister. She lives in Chicago and she went to IU, the school of business, and she’s got a technical background. Anytime we come back home for Thanksgiving and the holidays, my dad would always ask us questions about the way our companies were operating, and he tried to bring it back into the organization. He built a business for 10 years and has been successful and he employed over 50 people and he had over 50 customers, so he’d been doing things great.
However, when I came in, I tried to say ‘What do we want to do for the next three years, and how do we scale? How do we make things more repeatable? And more efficient that way?’ Those are some of the things, learning from the startups, how do we hire more salespeople? How do we hire more marketing people? How do we provide even better customer support?
What have you learned from working alongside family?
For the 10 years prior to joining, I didn’t want to rock the boat. When we came home, it was fun. We could talk about work. We talked about family, but there weren’t any odd dynamics. So, before jumping in, I was fortunate enough to talk to some good friends who live in South Bend, who actually have worked with their own family businesses since we graduated college.
I think the funniest thing is to figure out what to call him at work or with colleagues. Is it his first name, Milind, or is it dad? Those are the small things, but luckily, the past three years, it’s been good. Our other family members who come home, they probably see we’re a bit too passionate about work because we’re talking about it when we’re not in the office, but that’s a good thing overall.
What advice do you have for others like yourself who are contemplating roles in a family business or startup?
Question: Are you okay if things go south? Even if they don’t. I’ve been fortunate enough that things have gone well, and I think it’s really dependent on your family dynamics. It could be difficult if things go south. This is probably a good case of, all startup, or all business mentality, of the grass is always greener on the other side. Are you okay with that? Things will be bad. You’ll have ups and downs.
I’ve been fortunate that the family has always been good. Even when we’ve had tough times at work, if we do go home, we’re able to separate it and just say ‘Okay, that was maybe a work argument.’ We can still enjoy board games with the grandkids and still be okay.
What’s next for Nimbello?
We’re mainly in those three main areas; manufacturing, higher education and health care. Because of some of the growth we’ve seen in the RV manufacturers, we’re looking at a lot more of that. There’s been a lot of interest from others thanks to some of the current customers we have in the space and it’s nice because we’re a software for the CFO and finance and accounting teams. No one has to hide the fact that they use it. It’s more ‘Hey, I’m a CFO. You’re a CFO. Our lives and our team’s lives are difficult. The pandemic was tough. It’s tough to hire. Here’s a great solution. They’re local. How about you try to use Nimbello?’
So, those things and the people leaning in and wanting to tell their friends is really starting to get more and more manufacturers on it, as well as we’ve got great universities like Northwestern University, the University of Chicago, and Notre Dame on it. More universities are interested in doing more with less and leveraging software. The future is bright at Nimbello.
Anything else?
One thing — joining South Bend, sending our kids to Stanley Clark, being on the board — I am really passionate about South Bend. Even when I joined Groupon earlier on, I’ve always said I can be the best hype man for anyone. So, South Bend is home to me and one of the main reasons I’m really excited about Nimbello and the success we’ve had is trying to keep South Bend on the map.
When people think of startups, they think of San Francisco, the east coast or Chicago even. The state of Indiana is doing well. Indianapolis has a good thing. High Alpha is down there. Elevate Ventures. And at Notre Dame, the IDEA Center at Notre Dame is good. But, being able to be a part of this startup ecosystem is something that does excite me.
I want to see Nimbello continue to grow. We were able to raise money when people weren’t raising money. We are a minority owned business. My father and my mother came from India to South Bend in 1977. He graduated from Notre Dame and stayed here, so keeping things local, and being able to attract top talent as our company grows and provide a solution where these Midwest companies are looking for solutions elsewhere and other people could provide them a solution, there is a sense of pride to know this company is local and they’re doing great things for the area.
That really excites me. I want others to see the stories and say, ‘Hey, if we get more universities or more manufacturing or more health systems, people will know about Nimbello but overall will know about South Bend.’