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hello welcome to stack genius the podcast for data-driven investment professionals my name is sylvan and i'm greeting you from berlin today i'm also um greeting ernest who's joining us from latvia is that right Yeah, hi. Very good. So as if we had organized this, we almost wear the same clothes and the same... Beard. We don't have hair. Exactly. So brother from another mother. So yeah, thanks for joining us today. We want to speak about Starwatcher. You're the founder of Starwatcher. And I would say Starwatcher is... discovery tool that helps investors and maybe even startups to find similar companies? Is that a good description? How would you describe Starwatcher? Starwatcher is out there always observing startup universe. What do we do? We basically map out startup universe. So we are analyzing both sides of the table. We analyze investors and startups, and we are aiming to serve both audiences, both startups and investors, because our vision is that truly a good platform is where the information flows freely from to between both sides so yeah and so when you say both sides you can look at investors and similar investors and you could look at startups and similar startups or how do we have to imagine that yeah yeah so we have spent half a year being under the rock and building the new version and the vision behind is um we kind of are building this graph where you can look at the imagine like star constellations and then it would be like oh i'm curious to explore the fintech corner of this universe and then you would see what are the companies there but what are the investors there and there are several ways how to look at different kind of perspectives. You can also dive in from, hey, I have a company URL. What happens around this company? What are the similar companies in the field? What are the investors who might be fit with this company? there could be that you're more interested in understanding particular problems people are solving like which startups are solving this problem which startups are targeting this particular target segment and uh or being in industry so there are different ways how you can enter this universe I actually like that you can look at it from different angles, almost like a three dimensional star map like you described. Can we maybe look at it and make some examples so that becomes more tangible? Yeah, sure. Awesome. Here we go. So what are we looking at? You are looking at my personal dashboard, but this is a VC interface. It's possible to have also a startup interface, which is pretty much similar. uh over here so we can type in url and uh and see what i what's what's happening around and so uh over here i have swatsicom which is those are good friends of ours but we see that it's a good one to demonstrate how it works So what happens is actually we either have this company or we don't. We actually, if we don't have this company, we will go out and gather information about the company in real time. So, that's quite a bonus where you don't have to worry if this company is in our database or not. We will have an opinion on it anyway. So, here are similar companies. So, Swartzy is a comprehensive shipping and logistics platform for e-commerce businesses. And then there's 3pel.ai. They are a platform that simplifies the process of finding and comparing third-party logistics providers for businesses, especially those in e-commerce space. So pretty much head-on, spot-on stuff. As you can see, I just can check out everything on these companies pretty fast, where they are based, when they are founded, what are the industry stack. And over here below, I can... go on and on by checking similar companies over here. Does this have a specific geographic focus? Does it work in the Western world? We have launched this one last week. We have been focusing mainly on European companies, but we are gathering companies across the world. uh our data sources are portfolios of vc firms uh different kind of events accelerator programs so we have different kind of sources where we are getting these this information uh over here we also can check on investors we haven't implemented uh geography filters, but we actually check on what's the geography where a company is investing. For example, this is an Australian investor. So yeah, this is not a good fit, but we are planning to implement over here. Swazi is operating in logistics. And we know, for example, over here, there's Tradework VC, which is actually an investor in B2B log tech startups and scale-ups. And they are investing in the geography where Swazi is based, B2B software, and we even have information on their ticket size. So that's something we are getting out. As I said, this is our first version. We are implementing filters, so it would be narrowed down and improving the quality of these results. Yeah, but that's one of the ways how you can check that you can dive in, like just giving stock on. You put in the URL, and then you click through, OK. One of the takeaways is while working on this product is that we stopped trusting VCs and startups to provide accurate information. Sometimes startups would simply oversell, undersell and missell. Like they don't know how to describe what they do. So we just skip that part. And the investor part is that investors tend to be very vague about what they do and then you talk or check what they do and then they're investing in ambitious founders who want to disrupt industries cool story bro what exactly you're doing your lorem ipsum investor and so we try to analyze their portfolios and their landing page and basically by bits and piece figure out what they exactly do. What is the industries they are investing in? What's the geography? What's the ticket size? So another way how we can dive in is actually to check on target customers. Like who would be the target customers? Can you show that? That would be awesome. Yeah. So who is targeting this particular target customer? Who is building products for this target customer? So maybe we could try like startup portfolio managers, startups. Yeah. Portfolio managers. And so we're looking for stuff where like, okay, we have open round where we have platform designed to help founders streamline their investor relations and fundraising process. So this is a close. Also down there dialogue. We actually had them on the podcast the other day. They are a portfolio management solution. Yeah. Yeah. And we see that the investor is over here that helps start fundraising. Yeah, so this is one more way how to look at this one. We can also go into problem. Like what problems are being solved? And this is particularly interesting because it can be very wide range. We could go diabetes, dementia, or whatever medical stuff. Dementia. Yeah, like we have, yeah, this one is for E-based test that can detect early stage dementia. But then we can totally switch gears and jump into something else. Real estate, real estate. real estate portfolio management ah always get this one wrong uh commercial real estate management software that provides comprehensive solutions for managing asset spaces range features to help real estate manage their finance more effectively real estate investment platform so This is also free much, and this is free text. So you can do whatever you want. Like you, you go, you, you do you, you can go nuts over here. And of course then we have industries and industries are pretty flexible. We can go health tech, Norwegian health tech company, that healthcare, everything related to health. We can go FinTech. uh, FinTech products, uh, FinTech, FinTech, basically these are FinTech companies. And as I said, we have this, we launched last week and we are now exploring, we are adding on top of this more filter options and, uh, management. Um, yeah. Yeah. So when you, when you say it's been launched last, uh, six, no, last week you said, sorry. Um, yeah. So. can people sign up for it already is it live for customers yes yeah okay actually the the company url check we have put in the landing page so you can go to the landing page and just drop in uh url of company and we will try uh to check we launched it half baked because We want to understand what doesn't work. I love the saying from Reid Hoffman said, if you're not embarrassed by your first product, you're shipping too late. Yeah, you're a bit too late. Exactly. That's the case. And so we have launched this one to basically check on what's happening. And there are many things what we have been thinking were how to evolve this from both sides. We have got feedback from investors and startups alike. We are still figuring on the pricing. At this point, startups can use it for free and investors have pricing per seat, 200 euros. uh per month but yeah we are interested a lot in uh feedback and there's a month free usage so sign up and just give it a go we are we we probably will change the pricing for this product we have been working intellectually have been working on this product for six years. In past three years, we have done some three iterations and this one is fourth iteration. So I have learned a ton about how startups VCs are working with technology and data-driven stuff. Yeah. That's awesome. You're just press a little button in my head when you said data driven stuff, because I want to mention here that you have a super cool podcast yourself. Um, that has a very high nutritional value for data driven VCs. It has practitioners speaking there. I don't remember yet. I think the Tommy Cole on and early bird and Hoxton Hoxton EQT. Um, yeah, the cool cats. The cool kids, the kids who have been playing around, actually playing around with the real deal. Like, yeah, that's the point of the podcast to explore what's happening, actually, what people are actually doing. Because if you ask anyone, everyone is so data-driven. But then it's like, what exactly are you doing? And yeah, we have installed Airtable, or started to use Airtable. And that's good. That's good. But yeah, let's just start. Yeah, that resonates with me for sure. Yeah, so that warrants a separate conversation, I think, speaking about your podcast, about Star Watchers. So you say, is it in the VC space more usable or private equity or M&A? So where do you think it's strong, like mid-cap, low-cap? Yeah, it's a very good question. Uh, because I have got feedback from different kinds of people and on different kinds of features they have said, well, I'm not, I don't care about that one, but this one is interesting. Like there are, there are accelerators who are researching companies for their specific niche. And that's like, I'm really interested in this and understanding who's building something for particular stuff. I have, uh, One company, he approached me and they were like, I'm not interested in anything, but you have this ability to actually, I can find very niche solutions, which could be potential acquisition. Because I know exactly what kind of company I need. And I have no clue how I can find that in anywhere else. And the guy had scouted Crunchbase. He had went through Google. And it's pretty hard to find these small bits and pieces that you want to find. And because in our context, you can describe the problem, Or you can look for a target customer. It's pretty easy to find all sorts of solutions which fit the bill. And private equity is also like, okay, if you're building portfolio of companies and you have pretty clear strategy how you want to do that, It could work. It could work. And then again, corporate VCs, where they have very specific view what they are looking for. Again, automotive industry, who is doing something in automotive industry. But then if we flip the table, startups are, I have spoken with a bunch of startups and there are a lot of these, hey, check out this list of investors. And those VC lists, first of all, they are pretty hard to go through. And second, they are full of trash. And we have analyzed those investor lists. And in one investor list, I found airport in Paris. Apparently, they have attended some investor meeting. And so it was there. Then there's plenty of dead VCs. And because those lists are the bigger, the better, hey, here are the list of 1,500 VCs. Of course, the author of that list probably haven't checked everyone. And we see that a lot of them are dead, like simply dead. They don't operate anymore. And so what startups are looking for, they actually look for genuinely, they look for just show me like 100, but which are more suitable for me. And that's one of the goals, what we want to accomplish, that you spend your time, not just like, digging into the garbage and looking for a couple of gems which will respond you but actually spending time on okay i have a short list with something which is more suitable for my particular need would that be industry product market specific and we don't want to replace people we just want to have on both sides nice short list whatever you do whatever is your goal because the first principles stay the same whatever happens here is that there are people with ideas and there are people with money and how to effectively connect them and that that's what we are solving this information this balance that basically they cannot find each other Now, very appealing. And I think this space, I mean, a lot of stuff is recently happening. We had Nilo from Inven recently on the podcast also. They're also in a similar geographical space like you guys. But I mean, I really like what you've built. I like the different angles you can use to explore. I like that you have this focus on Europe for now. which is super helpful if people want to acquire targets over here. So kudos to what you guys built. Thanks for showing us today. Maybe almost in closing, I did hint at you guys being in Latvia. So help the ignorant people around the world like myself. Where is Latvia and what is there to know about the country? So you know that big Russian country? We are like on the map on the left. And then, you know, there's this Finland thing. We are below. And then there's this Skype country. Skype, if you happen to remember Skype, there's this Estonia thingy. We are not Estonia, but we are below Estonia. That's like where we are. Skype country. Yes. Yeah. So that's one of the Baltic states also. Yeah. And so we are in Europe. There's this term emerging, which is we are the new Nordics because we kind of are not typical geography for Eastern Europe. um but we are not kind of scandinavia but we are not referred to nordics but we are we get this snow and everything and we are here up north but do you also have this nasty old fish that comes out of a tin can That's a Norwegian thing. Swedes have this one. We have our own stuff. There are some food over here. But some good parts is that we have, particularly in Latvia, we have a pretty long coastline. And I live in Liepaja, which is on the seaside. And it's just kilometers on and on on the white sanded beaches and lonely time where you can just contemplate on stuff and think. That sounds awesome, actually. I might need that for myself. I think that was named one of the top jewels of Europe, which was the Kerland, the region sanded beaches, because they are genuinely, they are emptied. Like there are nothing happening. And that's a fortunate, unfortunate outcome of Soviet Union because it was very heavily militarized. So there were no industrial stuff happening here. So we basically, when the army went away, it was put like a lot of parts on the reservation. And so it's pretty, yeah, it's green, nice and empty. Sounds like a perfect invitation to visit someday. Ernest, thank you so much for spending time with us today, showing us Starwater. So I'm definitely a fan of the podcast. I will play around with your tool a little bit and probably become a fan of that too. I wish you tons of success. And, you know, we see each other somewhere in the world sometime. Cool. Have a good day. Bye now. Thank you, Silvan.

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