Today we’d like to introduce you to Nassir Criss.
Hi Nassir, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I actually didn’t grow up in Kansas City — I moved there in 2020. But it’s the first place I truly found my stride, both as an adult and as a businessperson, executive, and entrepreneur. The roughly four years I spent there shaped who I am.
I cut my teeth at Five Elms Capital, a growth-equity firm in KC, spending my days inside great software and services businesses: how they scale, where they break, and what separates the companies that compound from the ones that stall. That work pulled me toward the founder’s side of the table. From there I joined the founding team of Sixty8 Capital, where I helped get the firm off the ground and deploy our $20m Fund I — learning firsthand what it takes to build something from nothing.
Rather than settle in, I expanded and pivoted my focus into a bigger chapter — heading to business school and spending this stretch of my life learning, building, and working across different parts of the world, getting exposure to markets and problems well beyond what I’d see staying in one place.
But I never really left Kansas City — and I didn’t just pass through it, either. I threw myself into the city’s entrepreneurial ecosystem: I invested over $500,000 in WorkTorch, a Kansas-based technology company, and was recognized as a NextGen KC Leader, alongside a lot of other work in the community. Just as important, some of the most meaningful relationships in my life — lifelong friendships and connections — were built during those years, and they’ll be with me no matter what I’m working on. I’m still committed to backing KC’s founders and business community from a distance, and much of what I’m building now is aimed squarely at the owner-run businesses that are the backbone of cities like it.
Investing has only been one side of it, though — I’ve been just as much a builder and operator. I was part of the team that built Skopenow, a venture-backed company now doing over $20 million in ARR, and I’ve been a crucial part of scaling many other businesses over the years. Along the way I found my real specialty: operating — helping companies fortify, scale, execute, make sharp decisions, raise capital, and exit. My fingerprints are on a lot of companies, and that hands-on track record of directly shaping how they grow is the work I’m proudest of.
Which brings me to today. My co-founder, Bryant Johnson, and I are building Helm by Atlas — an AI platform that acts as an extended general manager for small businesses: the restaurants, clinics, shops, and service companies that almost never have a COO or CFO. After years of evaluating companies as an investor and building them as an operator, the throughline became obvious — the best businesses run on numbers and systems, while most owners are flying on instinct simply because they’ve never had the infrastructure. Helm uses AI to automate the back office — cash flow, profitability, operations, compliance — and give owners the clarity that once required a full finance team. For me, it’s the most direct way to put my finance, investing, and operating experience to work helping entrepreneurs operate better, and build businesses worth far more.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Honestly, no — and I’d be a little skeptical of anyone who tells you their road was smooth. The bumps are where most of the real learning happened for me.
The hardest one was leaving. By 2024 I’d built a whole life in Kansas City — a career, a reputation in the ecosystem, and relationships that meant the world to me. Walking away from that to chase a less certain chapter wasn’t a clean or easy decision. It’s one thing to talk about “expanding your horizons”; it’s another to actually let go of the comfort and community you’ve worked to build and bet on yourself in rooms where nobody knows your name yet. I had to get comfortable being a beginner again.
There’s also been the challenge of changing lanes. I spent years on the investing side — evaluating companies and helping build them — but sitting in the arena as a founder is a completely different thing. It’s humbling to go from analyzing businesses to building one from zero, especially as someone whose background is finance, not engineering. I’ve had to pick up new skills, sit in a lot of discomfort, and accept that a clean thesis on a slide is nothing like a working product in someone’s hands.
And then there’s the problem itself. The reason my co-founder and I are building Helm is something that frustrated me for years: I watched genuinely good businesses struggle — not because their product was bad, but because they were flying blind on cash, pricing, and operations with no infrastructure underneath them. Solving that for small businesses is genuinely hard; if it were easy, someone would have already done it well. But that difficulty is exactly what makes it worth doing.
If anything, the struggles clarified things. Every hard stretch — leaving, starting over, learning to build — gave me something I now lean on every day. I’ve stopped expecting the road to be smooth. The friction is the education, and it’s a big part of why I’m so convinced about what we’re building.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
At its core, Helm by Atlas is an AI-powered general manager for small businesses. We give owner-run companies — the restaurants, clinics, shops, salons, and service businesses that are the backbone of every local economy — the kind of financial and operational command center that, until now, only big companies with a full finance team could afford.
What we specialize in is the back office: the unglamorous but make-or-break work of cash flow, profitability, pricing, operations, compliance, and planning. Most owners are brilliant at their craft but were never handed the infrastructure to run the business behind it, so they operate on instinct. Helm uses AI to automate that work and put it in plain English — a live 13-week view of your cash, a clear picture of what’s actually profitable, the handful of KPIs that matter each week, and a heads-up on what needs your attention — all without hiring a controller or a COO. Think of it as an extended general manager: roughly 70% handled by smart software, with the other 30% being real human advisory when a decision actually calls for it.
What sets us apart is who’s behind it and how we think. Helm isn’t built by technologists guessing at what businesses need — it’s built by operators and investors who’ve spent years scaling companies, deploying capital, and watching up close why some businesses thrive while others quietly fall apart. We bring institutional, private-equity-grade financial rigor down to the corner business. And we don’t just hand you a dashboard and walk away like most tools do — we focus on telling you what the numbers mean and what to do next. We also take the long view: everything Helm does is designed to make your business run better today and be worth more tomorrow, because the same discipline that makes a company healthy is what makes it valuable and, eventually, sellable.
Brand-wise, what I’m most proud of is the mission baked into the name. “Helm” is the wheel you steer a ship with — the whole point is to put owners back at the helm of their business, steering with confidence instead of constantly reacting. “Atlas” is the strength and structure underneath that makes it possible. We built this for the owners who pour everything into their business and deserve to feel on top of it, not buried by it. Leveling that playing field — giving a single-location operator the same clarity a venture-backed company has — is the thing I care about most.
What I’d want your readers to know is that Helm is meant to be a partner, not just a piece of software. We’re early and building deliberately, and we’d love to work with local businesses — especially in communities like Kansas City — that want to stop flying blind and start running on real numbers. If you’re an owner who’s great at what you do but tired of guessing at the business side, that’s exactly who we built this for.
How do you think about luck?
Honestly, I don’t fundamentally believe in luck. I do think fortune deals people different hands — some start with more than others — but luck itself is just what you make of the hand you’re holding. It comes down to staying prepared, so that when timing meets opportunity, it has the room to become something expansive on your behalf.
Pricing:
- Free Initial Business Diagnostic
- Needs Based Tiered Pricing
Contact Info:
- Website: https://tally.so/r/2ER049
