Two U of M students who saw a broken industry — and decided to fix it.

ThriveMN started with a simple observation: small and mid-sized businesses were stuck paying high processing fees for disconnected tools that barely spoke to each other — one system for payments, another for inventory, another for staff, and a spreadsheet holding it all together.

Mustafa El-huni and Adel Sabri met as students at the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities, where a shared entrepreneurial streak and technical backgrounds in software and systems led them to the same conclusion: the merchant services industry hadn't caught up to modern technology, and there was real opportunity in building something better.

Rather than wait for that solution to come from somewhere else, they built it themselves — combining card processing, ERP, and point-of-sale into a single connected platform, priced transparently and backed by founders who actually answer the phone. What started as a class project turned into a company they're now building full time, right here in Minnesota.

ThriveMN is still young, but the mission hasn't changed: give business owners one system that works, at a price that makes sense, from people who genuinely want to see them thrive.