A pair of wine enthusiasts turned their shared passion for Burgundy into an enterprise software startup - and they just got $8 million in funding for it

Squelch

Giorgina Gottlieb and Jayaram Bhat took their startup Squelch out of stealth mode on Monday.

• After becoming friends through their wine club, Giorgina Gottlieb and Jayaram Bhat decided to start a company to help wine enthusiasts like themselves.
• But when they pitched their wine software to potential customers, one suggested they revamp it for businesses.
• They followed that advice and built a data analytics product aimed at customer support teams.
• On Monday, Gottlieb and Bhat unveiled Squelch, their new startup built around the software they created and announced an $8 million funding round led by Shasta Ventures.

Giorgina Gottlieb and Jayaram Bhat found a way to turn their shared passion for wine into a venture-backed startup.

Originally targeted at wine enthusiasts like themselves, their firm, dubbed Squelch, now focuses on enterprise-tech companies. On Monday, Squelch came out of stealth mode and released a data analytics product aimed at customer support agents. It also announced it's received $8 million in funding in a round led by Shasta Ventures, where Bhat is a partner.

Gottlieb and Bhat make an unlikely pair. While Bhat is an active venture capitalist and former CEO, Gottlieb is a tech novice.

They first met in a wine club and bonded over their mutual love of Burgundy wines. They eventually decided to form a startup targeted at wine enthusiasts like themselves.

Their company "started with the notion that there are people with knowledge and information that exists, and you're trying to find it," said Gottlieb, Squelch's vice president of marketing. "For us it was about Burgundy. Even though we drink the same thing, we have different preferences within it and were trying to find people who share our preferences within this small space."

But over time their concept evolved, particularly after a conversation with a potential client. A year-and-a-half ago Gottlieb and Bhat officially refocused the company on the enterprise market.

"We had built the product for the consumer but focusing on wine and other subjects," said Bhat, Squelch's CEO. "We were showing it around, and one of the people we spoke to said can we do this for the office?"

As a product, Squelch stays true to its name. Just as the squelch on a radio blocks out static and excess noise, Squelch's software is designed to help companies gather only the most relevant information from the robust amounts of data they collect from multiple sources. The software can be integrated with Salesforce, Slack, and other common enterprise applications.

"We are keeping all the noise out of the results that we present to the agent; only relevant information is present," said Bhat, a ham-radio enthusiast.

Squelch will start out by targeting customer support departments at software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies. It eventually plans to move on to broader markets.

The company now has 18 employees, including Illan Raab, Gottlieb and Bhat's third cofounder who serves as Squelch's vice president of engineering.