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Fishers-based automation technology company Robosource has secured a $750,000 round of investment funding led by former NFL quarterback Tim Tebow’s investment firm, The Tebow Group.
Arizona-based Legacy Portfolio LLC was also an investor in the funding round, which closed on June 8 but was not publicly announced until this week. In connection with the investment, Legacy Portfolio President Brian Johnson—a cybersecurity expert and former PayPal executive—will join Robosource’s board.
The investment is a seed round for Robosource because it’s the first outside investment the company has taken. But Robosource is not a brand-new startup—it got its start in 2012, when the husband-and-wife team of Jason and Kendra Beutler launched a firm called J.R. Beutler Inc. that did consulting and custom software development.
Over time, Jason Beutler said, the firm recognized a common thread among its clients—they wanted to automate their routine tasks and become more efficient—so the Beutlers decided to make a business pivot.
A few years ago, J.R. Beutler shifted its focus to developing a common software product it could sell to multiple clients, rather than building custom products for each individual client.
“With artificial intelligence technology coming the way that it has, it allows you to do things that we couldn’t have done before—to make [a single software platform] more reusable across all of our various clients,” Jason Beutler said.
So J.R. Beutler adopted the doing-business-as name of Robosource and began building its core software product. That tool, called Process Coach, is set to launch in October.
Jason Beutler serves as Robosource’s CEO and Kendra Beutler is its president. The company has 12 full-time employees, including three recent hires.
Robosource will initially target the insurance, health care and financial services industries. Its Process Coach tool can be useful for things like automating the onboarding process for new employees, or helping insurance professionals automate the laborious task of gathering and inputting client data.
“Our mission is just to free humans from monotonous work. We believe humans are built for more than that,” said Kendra Beutler.
The Tebow Group is the business arm of the Tim Tebow Foundation, a faith-based nonprofit launched by the Heisman Trophy winner and former NFL quarterback.
“There is so much discussion around artificial intelligence right now that it was important for our team to get under the hood and understand how AI tools could be used as a force for good,” Tebow said in a written statement. “Robosource brings personalized AI-powered automation into business, and we believe that can help businesses focus on what really matters. I’m honored to work with a team that’s helping shape the future of AI.”
Both The Tebow Group and the Tim Tebow Foundation are based in Jacksonville, Florida, but there is an Indiana connection to how Robosource got connected with The Tebow Group. The Tebow Group’s CEO, Tommy Martin, works for the firm remotely from Fort Wayne.
Jason Beutler said he met Martin through their mutual participation in C12, a faith-based peer group for business executives. (Based in San Antonio, C12 Business Coaching operates peer groups throughout the U.S., including several in Indiana.)
Beutler said he was presenting information on his company as part of a C12 activity, Martin took notice, and his interest in Robosource led to an investment in the company.
The seed funding will help Robosource grow its operations as it prepares to launch its Process Coach product.
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