Winner of the startup pitch by Marktforschung.de, Norstat, GIM, ADM and BB Recruiting
Last April, the sixth Startup Pitch of marktforschung.de and Consulting.de took place, a Germany-wide online competition for market research, consulting and data analytics. Four startups from the fields of AI, UX, CX and data analytics were allowed to present their business ideas in front of an expert audience and a top-class jury. Fortunately, we made the running this year. With the following video our co-founder Florian Polak had introduced Tucan.ai in advance.
The competition was supported by the industry association ADM, the personnel consultancy BB Recruiting, the institutes GIM and mindline, and the online field specialist Norstat. Sabine Menzel (L’Oréal), Janina Mütze (Civey), Jörg Kunath (mindline), Stephan Telschow (GIM), Arndt Schwaiger (Serial Entrepreneur), Christian Arndt (Hightech Gründerfonds), Birgit Bruns (BB), Roland Abold (ADM) and Sebastian Sorger (Norstat) sat on the jury. Marktforschung.de managing director Holger Geißler conducted a short interview with Sorger afterwards. Here you can read what the juror and CEO of Norstat had to say here in Germany:
The participating start-ups were in very different stages. Can you even fairly compare a start-up like Gutfeel, which are about to enter the beta phase, with a start-up like Objective Platform, which already has a presence in three countries with 60 employees?
Sebastian Sorger: Yes. Basic things should be understandable in both phases: What is the business model? How is added value generated and monetized with the customer? What makes the market tick, the competition, what is the unique selling proposition?
I was surprised that few financials were mentioned by the startups compared to previous pitches. How do you rate that?
Sebastian Sorger: I felt the same way! Perhaps the promotional character towards the viewers was in the foreground?
What is exciting is: how large is the market realistically interested in the solution, how long is the sales cycle, and how can pricing work? Furthermore, how many early adopters or – if the company is mature enough – customers from the majority market could bite in order to be able to estimate sales revenues (and production costs). Fixed costs (personnel, travel, marketing, etc.) are deducted from this margin, and EBITDA can then be used to estimate how much capital is needed.
What are the milestones for the investment rounds? Of course, not everything is mentioned, but for example how high the funding was or should be, how much you want to collect now, when you want to reach break-even. Compared to a pure investor round, this information would certainly have come, or been demanded.
The maturity levels of the startups in terms of pitch presentations also varied widely. How crucial was it in your perception that Tucan.AI presented comparatively convincingly?
Sebastian Sorger: Florian from Tucan.AI managed to get the business model across very simply. What is the problem? How is the solution supposed to stop the problem? Everyone understood that.
I had the impression that Savio’s actually great business idea was not clear to everyone. How do you explain that Savio didn’t end up further ahead? Was it a disadvantage that Julian presented in English?
Sebastian Sorger: Maybe. Not everyone speaks and understands English equally well. I had the feeling Julian also focused too much on the text of the slides. I’m sure if he had let his passion run more freely, it would have been more infectious. However, it was also not clear until the end who its participants in this “two-sided-marketplace” actually were.
You always pay a lot of attention to the founding team. What trends do you see there over the years? Are there generalizable trends?
Sebastian Sorger: They are often relatively young founders. That’s not bad at all. Often, experienced managers are brought in at a later stage to build structures and manage growth.
But I wonder when VCs / investors will realize that it can make a lot of sense to bring seniors on board right at the start. But then something has to change in the compensation model. “Only” enticing with many shares is then simply not enough.
What other start-ups would be a good fit for the Norstat Group?
Sebastian Sorger: All those who usefully complement us in the field services for qualitative and quantitative research. They have a technology and we bring the participants and organize the whole shebang. The important thing here is that the start-up brings the customer with it; we are not the sales channel. Then we are up for (almost) any fun, as long as we follow the rules of the stand. With regard to M&A efforts, we tend to focus on established companies.
Tucan.ai webinar “AI coding of qualitative studies” on July 6, 2012 on marktforschung.de
As we have discovered through projects already underway with clients in this industry, coding interviews and focus groups is an extremely costly component of market researchers’ day-to-day work. Tucan.ai takes care of the transcription, summary and coding of relevant content from conversations. The manual effort is reduced to a minimum by AI, without undermining the analysis and interpretation sovereignty of experts.
In this webinar, our key account manager Carlo Glaefeke will explain how Tucan.ai can help you reduce the time spent on qualitative studies by up to 80 percent. He will highlight the following points for you in detail, among others: Creating the guide, transcribing the interviews, coding the responses, and exporting the relevant data.
There are still some free places (it will be held in German, though)! Click here to register:
Article “Innovative AI tools for CX research” by our co-founder and CEO Lukas Rintelen
If you want to learn more about the specific benefits of AI in CX research, we recommend this guest post by our co-founder Lukas Rintelen for marktforschung.de:
