Funds for Competitor Reports Start-Up RivalSense

Latvian start-up RivalSense has secured funding for its AI-driven platform which aims to simplify competitor tracking, providing a weekly update of curated competitor insights including pricing changes, product updates, new hires, media mentions, new clients and regulatory issues.

The Riga-based company was founded by serial entrepreneurs and Techstars alumni Martins Vaivars and Arturs Prieditis, graduates of Oxford and Cambridge Universities respectively and with a background in machine learning. The firm taps more than 80 sources including competitor web sites, social media accounts, financial filings and business databases, and targets busy startup founders and executives.

Funds will be used to enhance AI capabilities and scale up user acquisition. The angel round was led by Change Ventures, with participation from Fiedler Capital and local business angels.

Quoted on www.arcticstartup.com , CEO Vaivars comments: 'Ask any founder, and they will say that properly following competition is a big pain and they would prefer not to do it all. But doing it is indispensable, since it helps with product direction, sales and hiring. We are creating a simple, appealing, self-service SaaS product out of a complex, expensive, enterprise-focused product category. Founders and executives can now be up to date with everything in their space while spending less than 5 minutes per week'. He adds: 'We are obsessive readers of tech and politics newsletters, and it made sense that a beautiful weekly e-mail or Slack update is the right way to deliver competitor insights. Executives and founders are extremely busy people, and the last thing they need is another app or platform to log into. The recent advances in AI enable us to not only notice competitor events but also to evaluate their business significance and deliver insights rather than a random list of keyword links'.

Web site: www.rivalsense.co .

Pictured: Vaivars above, Prieditis below