Northern Virginia firm’s bet on workplace culture pays off with an acquisition

After purchasing and remodeling a company morale-focused software platform during the height of the pandemic, a tech-enabled consulting firm is now an acquiree itself. 

Joe Mechlinski, Shift’s founder and a best-selling author, sold the Latch tool at the beginning of 2025 to Los Angeles-based AI company Atlas Up. Latch is an asynchronous video communications platform for hybrid work where leaders can send out messages and employees can give feedback directly to the sender. AI technology also analyzes the feedback to help the leaders frame future communications. 

The goal is to help employees feel seen and heard, Mechlinski said, and eliminate the “telephone game” between managers, staff and the C-suite. It’s more personal than a deck at a team meeting, too. 

“This is the way that the leader can put out a message,” Mechlinski told Technical.ly, “so that there’s one version of that truth.”

The deal involved the acquisition of just the product, in what’s also known as an asset purchase. The entire company — once based in Baltimore’s Fells Point neighborhood but now rooted in Tysons Corner, Virginia — was not sold. Financial terms were not disclosed. 

Atlas Up, founded in 2022, developed an AI chatbot platform dubbed a “chief of staff” to help companies streamline their operations and get questions answered. For example, it can walk employees through the process of taking paternity leave and tell a staff member to calculate runway based on projected sales. Latch will be integrated into that platform, and the firm boasts high-profile customers in the public and private sectors like the FBI (which has leaned into using more AI over the last few years), SpaceX, Lockheed Martin, the Department of Defense and Booz Allen Hamilton. 

Mechlinski said his vision since buying Latch and its developing company Avanoo was to be a feature on another company’s platform. Competing as a non-native AI platform would be difficult for raising money and garnering clients. 

“I just knew at some point we needed to be part of something that was bigger,” he said, “and see if we can help increase the probability of its success and the probability of a higher amplitude — a higher impact in the world.”

Beyond his company leadership and writing, Mechlinski works with Novella Center leader Jeff Cherry as a general partner with Baltimore-based investment firm Conscious Venture Partners. 

Mechlinski will be working with Atlas Up in some capacity, focusing on raising money, go-to-market strategy and business development as a strategic advisor or something similar to a chief growth officer. The details are still being finalized, he said. 

Aligning strategy makes acquisitions work 

When Mechlinski acquired Latch in 2021, he had lost 70% of his business due to the pandemic. Today, Shift has five full- and part-time employees, down from 30 across the country before Covid. 

In some ways, Mechlinski looked to Latch to keep funding Shift. He also raised $1.5 million in 2022, and the platform accrued 2,000 users prior to the acquisition.  

He met with Atlas Up founder and CEO Jere Simpson in the firm’s early days. The pair have invested in each other’s companies, Mechlinski said. Over lunch in Los Angeles, he and Simpson talked about how similar their two companies are. 

“He [Simpson] said, ‘Do you think we’re trying to solve this problem together? Do you think it’s the same problem, trying to get people on the same page, trying to unlock productivity?’” 

Mechlinski also learned a lot about the delicacy of purchasing a company back in 2021. 

“We understood that when you take your team jersey off and you start playing for a different team,” he said, “there’s a series of emotional stages that people go through.”

It’s been helpful that he and Simpson are aligned on strategy, which he said made the integration and purchase process a lot smoother. 

That mostly involves helping organizations boost workplace culture and streamline operations, which is Latch’s focus. 

“Our serendipitous connections and collisions, they’re just gone,” Mechlinski said, referencing the pandemic. “We don’t do it as much anymore. And when we had a meeting, and then we’d all leave the meeting to go to the kitchen and get something to drink — that sometimes is the best five minutes of that meeting. That’s the thing that we try to solve for at Latch.”