Enterprise power,
local hands
Project: Main St. is a Koloni, Inc. company building AI for the businesses that make neighborhoods worth walking — and for the organizations that support them.
We think the next decade decides whether local business competes or disappears. We are building so it competes.
The playing field wasn't uneven. It was broken.
The decline of Main St. was never about passion, product, or service — it was a systematic squeeze by companies with software no independent business could buy. AI is the first technology cheap enough to hand that same capability back, and it is the armor Main St. needs to reclaim the center of the local economy.
The historical squeeze
For three decades, corporations and e-commerce titans weaponized three advantages: economies of scale in logistics, hoarded consumer data, and algorithmic pricing. Main St. was fighting a tank with a sword.
Enterprise AI raises the stakes
Multinationals are deploying multi-million-dollar AI pipelines right now — predicting hyper-local buying patterns, repricing minute by minute, automating logistics end to end. Left unchecked, it consumes what margin is left.
AI is the great equalizer
Enterprise-grade technology used to require an enterprise budget. The cost of intelligence has fallen to near zero, and a five-person business can now operate with Fortune 500 logistical, analytical, and marketing precision.
Local Intelligence is the edge
AI plus deep hyper-local knowledge neutralizes the corporate advantage — and leaves Main St. holding the one thing that can't be automated: authentic community connection.
The shift in competitive advantage
When a local business adopts operational AI, the math changes. Each historical corporate advantage has a direct answer sized for a storefront.
Data monopolies and market analytics
Guesswork, relying purely on gut feeling and manual observation.
AI synthesizes your own POS and CRM data into actionable, localized business intelligence.
Just-in-time global logistics
Over-ordering, stockouts, and cash trapped in dead inventory or idle fleet time.
AI automates supply ordering and routing against precise local demand forecasts.
Automated financial and P&L optimization
Costly outsourced accountants, or margin analysis that never happens.
Instant financial auditing, expense flagging, and margin protection without the corporate overhead.
Massive marketing and support budgets
Missed calls, high no-show rates, and inconsistent self-promotion.
24/7 support, dynamically generated campaigns, and recovered leads at zero marginal cost.
Why we started
Over the last several decades the largest global companies held one durable advantage over small local businesses: enterprise software, automation, and data. Forecasting systems, supply chain engines, customer databases, marketing machinery — all of it priced and staffed far beyond the reach of a shop with nine employees.
AI will accelerate that advantage. It is also the first genuine opening in a generation. The same capability that once took a seven-figure implementation now runs from a conversation. For local businesses this is not a threat to survive — it is a chance to level the playing field and, on their own street, to gain an advantage of their own.
And it compounds. When AI is used at every business in a district, the district grows: fewer vacancies, more spend that stays local, more jobs that stay put. That is why we build with economic development organizations, chambers, and business improvement districts — collective adoption is how a community wins, not one early adopter at a time.
Brian Dewey
Brian started a main street business in 2014, buying a commercial building in Pocahontas, Iowa and renovating it into a 24/7 gym, an event space, and coworking offices. It was a first-hand education in the economics of a small downtown — foot traffic, vacancy, payroll, and the slim margins in between.
In 2015 he joined the Chamber of Commerce board, where he served as president, and in 2016 he was elected to the County Economic Development Commission Board for a three-year term — working on the same growth, retention, and recruitment problems that EDOs, chambers, and BIDs face everywhere.
He went on to found Koloni on the idea that technology should enable communities, launching bike share programs, smart locker applications, and the software that lets a downtown run shared assets without an IT department. Project: Main St. is the next chapter of that work.
From one building on Main St.
- 2014
A Main Street business of our own
Brian Dewey purchased a commercial building in Pocahontas, Iowa and renovated it into a 24/7 gym, an event space, and coworking offices — a working education in what it takes to run a business on a small-town main street.
- 2015
Chamber of Commerce board
Brian joined the local Chamber of Commerce board, later serving as its president and working directly with the businesses that anchor the district.
- 2016
County Economic Development Commission
Elected to the County Economic Development Commission Board, where he served three years on the strategy behind local growth, recruitment, and retention.
- 2017
Koloni founded
Koloni, Inc. was founded to build technology that enables communities — bike share programs, smart locker applications, and the shared infrastructure that sits behind them.
- 2019
Product suite and scale
Koloni launched a full suite of products and raised capital to scale its community technology platforms across cities, campuses, and downtowns.
- 2026
Project: Main St.
Koloni launched Project: Main St. to put enterprise-grade AI in the hands of local businesses and the organizations that support them.
About Koloni, Inc.
Koloni, Inc. builds technology that enables communities. The company started with shared mobility — bike share programs — and grew into smart locker applications and the software layer that lets a city, campus, or downtown run shared assets without an IT department.
Koloni launched its product suite in 2019 and scaled its community technology platforms across cities and campuses. Project: Main St. is a Koloni company, applying the same community-first principle to AI: enterprise capability, sized and priced for the businesses on the block.
What we believe
AI belongs at every business
Not just the ones with an IT department. If a tool requires a systems integrator, it was not built for Main St.
Density beats scale
One shop with AI is a better shop. A hundred shops with AI is an economy that competes with any chain that shows up.
Built for the block
Weather, events, school calendars, construction, paydays. Local signal is the data advantage a national model does not have.
Communities are the channel
EDOs, chambers, and BIDs already have the trust and the roster. We give them the stack to deploy behind it.
Who we build for
Independent businesses — service crews, professional practices, retail and restaurants, small manufacturers, studios and gyms — and the community organizations whose job is to make those businesses succeed.