VCA is an analytics studio in Johns Creek, serving small businesses across the north Atlanta metro We work with photographers, restaurants, fitness studios, wedding vendors, and other small businesses where one person wears every hat. We build the spreadsheets, dashboards, and reports that should already exist but don’t, and we do it without making you sit through a thirty-slide Power Point deck first.
The name comes from the Violet Crown — the deep purple-and-lavender glow that settles over the Austin, TX hills at sunset. O. Henry called it that in 1894 and the city has been the Violet Crown ever since. Kara is from Austin. The name fit.
The Team
We’re three people. The work is led by Kara. Ari and Zach take on specific pieces — data cleaning and reconciliation, systems and process work, the kind of focused job that’s better done by someone who isn’t also running the rest of the firm. And when a project needs a skill set VCA doesn’t keep in-house — a heavy Power BI build, say, or a specialized data pipeline — we bring in a trusted specialist for that piece. The bench stays small on purpose. Everyone on it has done the work before.
Kara Hudson
Founder
Kara started VCA in 2026 after two decades turning messy data into decisions at a Fortune 500 communications company. She learned that the difference between a good business and a struggling one is usually whether the right person can see the right number at the right time. She’s spent years in and around the small creative and service businesses VCA works with — photography, weddings, food — so she knows what a small operator actually needs from their numbers, and what they don’t.
Ari Holmes
Data Associate
Ari handles the cleaning, structuring, and reconciliation work that has to happen before any analysis is worth trusting. If your customer list has 2,847 records and only 2,400 are real, Ari is the one who figures that out — and then tells you exactly which 447 went where and why. Ari has a nano-degree in data analytics.
Zach Mabe
Solutions Architect
Zach has spent 25 years getting data and systems to behave — mostly for banks, where the data is messy, the rules are unforgiving, and “close enough” gets you a call from a regulator. He connects the tools that won’t talk to each other, cleans up the inputs, and builds the process so the right number comes out the other end. That includes AI where it actually earns its place, not because it’s the word of the year.
How we work
We start with a conversation. Most engagements begin with a 20-minute call where you tell us what’s actually frustrating, and we tell you whether we can help. If we can’t, we’ll say so.
Pricing is on the Services page. Everything starts at a posted rate — no “contact for quote” theatre. If the work is bigger than a starting rate, we’ll quote it before starting, not after.
We’re based in Johns Creek, part of the north Atlanta metro. Most of our work is remote, but we’ll meet in person for engagements that warrant it.
If you have a number you can’t see clearly, or a spreadsheet that’s eating your evenings, that’s the kind of problem we solve.