The holding company that buys the quiet software the world already runs on - then builds it into something that lasts.
Somewhere right now a hairdresser is booking a Tuesday appointment, a rider is logging a trail in the hills, and an artist is generating a concept frame. Three people who will never meet. Three tools built for exactly them. One owner behind all of it.
That owner is Universe. It is not a startup chasing the next super-app, and it is not a fund parking money in spreadsheets. It is a holding company - a small one, about a dozen people in Atlanta - with a stubborn idea: the best software isn't broad, it's built for one specific kind of person. Universe finds that software, buys it, and keeps building it.
Founded in 2021 by Nick Miller and Eric Stromberg, Universe describes itself plainly - "a modern holding company of vertical software businesses." The plainness is the point. Where others promise to disrupt, Universe promises to own and improve. It acquires and incubates products, then feeds them capital and shared infrastructure, and holds them for the long run instead of flipping them.
"Universe buys and builds software companies." - Universe, in its own words
The genius of Universe's portfolio is that it looks like an accident. Beauty, horses, and AI art have no obvious thread. The thread is the strategy: each is a purpose-built tool for a market big software forgot.
An all-in-one business management solution for solopreneurs and small business owners in beauty, wellness, and lifestyle professions. The software running your local salon.
Billed as the world's largest training community for equestrians - a place to track and share riding performance. Proof that a "boring" niche can be a very big one.
The next generation of tools for artists and creative teams, powered by AI - a professional AI creative suite, and Universe's most forward-looking bet.
Universe's model borrows from an old idea dressed in new clothes. Acquire good software businesses, deploy capital and infrastructure, and hold. The bet is that niche markets - the salons, the stables, the studios - reward patience more than reinvention. You don't need a billion users. You need to be indispensable to a few hundred thousand.
The company puts it this way: it delivers products "purpose-built for vertical markets," so customers have the tools they need built into the software they already use every day. No pivots. No hype cycle. Just software people open on a Tuesday morning without thinking about it.
"A modern holding company of vertical software businesses." - Universe's founding description
Universe is led by Nick Miller, its founder and CEO. His path is a straight line drawn through unglamorous, durable businesses: a start at Bain & Company, then co-founding the hospitality-software company Gather, which was acquired by Vista Equity Partners. Universe is the sequel - a chance to do the buy-and-build thing on his own terms, across more than one market.
Alongside him is co-founder Eric Stromberg, who serves as an advisor, with a lean operating bench - a partner and finance lead among the roughly dozen people who keep three companies moving. The team's own shorthand for how it works is disarmingly simple: go further together.
Nick Miller and Eric Stromberg found Universe. Goldie and Equilab join the portfolio.
Universe raises a seed round (~$1.3M) with backing from Bedrock, part of ~$20M raised across three rounds.
Invoke - an AI creative suite for artists and creative teams - is added, pushing the portfolio into AI-native territory.
Back to that Tuesday morning. The hairdresser confirms the appointment. The rider closes her app, boots muddy. The artist exports the frame. None of them thinks about Universe - and that is the whole idea.
Universe doesn't want to be the story. It wants to be the thing underneath the story - the software that quietly holds up somebody's ordinary, working day. Salons, stables, studios: three orbits, one small team in Atlanta, keeping them spinning.