Seth Patin is a Raleigh-based serial entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of LogistiVIEW, a SaaS startup that makes Augmented Reality (AR) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) software for warehouse optimization; and Accelogix, a professional service firm that specializes in implementing warehouse technology transformations.
Educated as a computer engineer, Seth graduated from the Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE) in 2005 and started his career as a software engineer at a warehouse-focused software company. Seth’s entrepreneurial interests led him to join a small consulting firm in 2007 as its third employee and third partner and then to found Accelogix a few years later in 2012 and LogistiVIEW in 2014.
Over the last 10 years, Seth grew both companies, with Accelogix landing on the Inc. 5000 list in five consecutive years and LogistiVIEW growing from just an idea to a seven-figure enterprise SaaS business. In 2020, Seth was recognized as CEO of the Year by TBJ and Alumnus of the Year by MSOE.
Seth is a member of the Duke Children’s National Leadership Council, which encourages philanthropy for the advancement of pediatric medicine at Duke Children’s Hospital, and is a member of the MSOE Corporation Board to advise on industry-focused educational excellence.
1. What is in your pockets?
I tend to be a bit of a pocket minimalist. The only thing that stays there consistently is the key to my Audi. I love my car, specifically, and all exotic/performance cars in general, so I guess it makes sense that my car key is the only thing I actually keep on me.
2. What exciting thing has happened recently for you or your organization?
LogistiVIEW is a software company that builds solutions to improve the productivity and job satisfaction of people working in manufacturing, logistics, and retail operations. Ultimately, we built the software because we believe that great software can improve quality of life for frontline workers and all the people who manage them. And that creates a win-win-win-win for the workers, the employers, and the rest of the world that depends on all of those people.
Right now, we’re in a big growth phase and I think that’s exciting. Our software works because the world economy has never been more dependent on frontline workers. And we make frontline workers more productive and improve their job satisfaction and quality of life. We’ve recently had a Fortune-100 organization begin a network-wide rollout of our solution, and that has been really exciting. It obviously creates many challenges, but it also creates huge opportunities. That growth and the need of the world for improvements in frontline labor tools has made LogistiVIEW a very in-demand solution.
3. What is your favorite coffee spot?
I’m a coffee nut, but I make most of my coffee at home or my office in Cary. I have a Jura automatic espresso machine at both locations! When I do stop in between to meet with someone, I love La Farm in Cary—great coffee, but also fantastic breakfast!
4. What keeps you up at night?
The reality is that I sleep pretty well because I try not to lose it too much about all the different things that are going on in the world. Ultimately, there’s a lot of reasons to have a bit of concern and negative outlook. If I really take a look at what things I should be concerned about versus what things I could choose to be concerned about, I’m focused on trying to make sure that our product is doing everything that it needs for the customers.
I know that we’ve got some places where we’ve got shortfalls, I’ll spend a lot of time thinking about that hard. How do I grow the business? How do I make sure that we’ve got the right funding and human capital to move forward? Those are the kinds of things I spend a lot of time thinking about. I try to stay away from big-picture things like politics and whatnot, because the reality is that if I do my job well, my software matters, regardless of whether you’re Democrat or Republican.
5. What is your favorite restaurant or happy hour?
My most often go-to is Tasu Asian Bistro in Waverly Place or Brier Creek. But lately, I’ve been really into a Korean place at the corner of Maynard and Harrison called Aroma Korea Sushi and Grill. Fantastic food.
Then I’ve recently found this place, it’s a bit of a chain, but they’re a small chain and they’re new to the area. Perry’s Steakhouse and Grille on Creedmoor up by Crabtree Valley Mall. They have some pretty unique and tasty food. It’s a good steakhouse, but they add a twist to it that you don’t get with The Capital Grille or Ruth’s Chris Steak House or stuff like that. Those two are my new, most recent favorites.
6. What is next for you or your organization?
As LogistiVIEW reaches this growth pattern, the next thing is to double down and focus. We found where the market needs the type of solutions that we deliver. So identifying how we can best serve our customers to just make it that much more relevant to their needs is really going to be our next big thing. I’m excited because we already see things going in the right direction there. There’s a lot of really cool technology like augmented reality and smart glasses, robotics, etc. that we’re leaning into and delivering for our customers and it’s exciting.
Our vision is to become a new operating system for frontline operations where you have this platform where you can configure solutions, deploy multiple-use cases, and solve multiple problems all on one cloud-based platform. That’s what we’re trying to build LogistiVIEW into.
