Skip to content

Our purpose

Built around the work.
And the people doing it.

Give distributors a more connected day.

Distribution is a business of details and handoffs. We believe the software running it should bring those pieces together—and make the next step easier to see.

AbbeyGate builds Abbey: an AI-native ERP for wholesale distribution.

We bring sales, purchasing, inventory, warehouse, delivery, service, and finance into one operational core. Then we make that core easier to work with through conversation, visual evidence, thoughtful automation, and reviewed actions.

Our perspective comes from running distribution operations, building enterprise systems, and helping people implement and use ERP software. GuestCheck and our consulting work exposed the daily friction Abbey is designed to solve.

Our team

Operators, engineers, and product people.

Different backgrounds, grounded in the same question: how can we make this work better for the person doing it?

Chris DiNoto

Chris DiNoto

Co-Founder & CEO

Chris started GuestCheck to fix a problem he saw while running his own wholesale company. After leaving a career with an inventory management tech firm, he set out to expand his own wholesale company. The result was an unmanageable influx of daily calls, emails, and text messages. He created GuestCheck with his lifelong friend to make it easier for customers to order, review information, and settle invoices. Chris brings firsthand experience running distribution operations and deep relationships across the industry.

Chris Gilmore

Chris Gilmore

Co-Founder & CTO

In addition to co-founding AbbeyGate and serving as CTO, Chris is a Solution Engineer at OpenAI, helping organizations apply frontier AI to complex business challenges. Previously, he served as Chief AI Strategist for Salesforce's Private Equity Practice. For 20+ years, Chris has built enterprise software, architected AppExchange products, and led large-scale integrations spanning SAP, field service, and workforce management. That combination of AI strategy and hands-on enterprise engineering uniquely positions him to build Abbey—the modern ERP alternative he wished existed throughout his career.

Jim Messina

Jim Messina

Chief Product Officer

Jim is Chief Product Officer at AbbeyGate, with more than 15 years of experience across the full ERP and warehouse management software lifecycle—from implementation and testing to customer support and product management. That combination of hands-on technical experience and product leadership gives him a practical understanding of how businesses actually use ERP software, where legacy systems fall short, and what it takes to build a better alternative. Having spent his career helping companies implement, troubleshoot, and improve mission-critical business systems, he now brings that experience to shaping Abbey into an ERP platform built around the needs of modern businesses and the people who rely on it every day.

Our name

A promise kept.

AbbeyGate is named after Abbey Gate at Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. In 2021, Chris DiNoto led a rescue effort to evacuate Afghan interpreters who had worked alongside U.S. Marines—including Karim Ahmadi, who had served as his translator during his deployment. The story of that mission and the promise kept at Abbey Gate is part of who we are.

Read the story in The Newtown Bee ↗

What guides the product

Practical experience. A different foundation.

Wholesale realities first

Customer pricing, units of measure, inventory commitments, purchasing, and delivery are central to the product—not edge cases to work around.

Context across the handoffs

An order, its fulfillment, the service conversation, and its financial effects should tell the same story to every team.

AI with human judgment

Use intelligence to find evidence and prepare the next step. Keep permissions, review, and accountability in the workflow.

Let’s talk about your operation

See Abbey work through
your next order.

Bring an example from your operation. We’ll walk through order entry, purchasing, fulfillment, and billing with your team.

Explore the platform