Romania’s Metabeta raises €500K “to create the next OK Cupid for all interested investors and startups founders”

Romania-based Metabeta is a company that brings together startups, investors, and accelerators, then gives them the data and tools needed to collaborate faster and smarter. The company claims to be the first data-driven startup investment platform in the EU.

In a recent development, Metabeta announced that it has raised €500K in its Seed round of funding from a VC fund and various business angels. The round was led by Neogen Capital (an investor in BestJobs, Clever Taxi, Vivre) and a group of 15 Romanian angel investors.

Capital utilisation

The company will use the funds to accelerate its growth into a marketplace that accurately matches investors and startups based on real-time and transparent data. It plans to do that by developing its platform using machine learning combined with expert reviews, in order to change the way the current European investment market looks like, collaborates, and makes decisions.

Pain point of the startup ecosystem

Vlad Bodi, co-founder of Metabeta, explains, “While a majority of investors use the same processes and tools that were used 20 years ago during the dot-com boom, there are clear signs of radical changes ahead – from leading investors developing their data/ AI proprietary tools to identify the best deals early; to evidence that machine learning algorithms perform better than humans by reducing cognitive, racial and gender biases; to VC funds shifting towards heavy investments based on a data-driven approach.”

According to Marius Ursache, co-founder & CEO of Metabeta, “The status-quo in the industry is mostly warm introductions and pitch decks, sometimes outdated Excels or CRMs. All these usually mean inaccurate or misleading data, which translates into investment decisions based on gut feeling rather than on real performance metrics.”

And this is where Meabeta steps in. 

“A data platform to manage early-stage startup investments”

Founded in 2019 by serial entrepreneurs Marius Ursache and Vlad Bodi, the company works as a data-driven investment platform that helps investors and startups collaborate better and more efficiently through the entire investment lifecycle.

With Metabeta, startups can create a detailed investment profile to share with investors, while investors (accelerators, angel groups, and VC firms) can configure dealflow forms, request various information, and evaluate startups using objective criteria and external diligence experts. The company uses both accurate performance metrics and human experts, to evaluate early-stage startups. 

A network of thousands of mentors and diligence experts are involved in evaluating the startup profiles by using weighted scorecards, while bringing data from integrations with analytics and financial sources such as Stripe, Quickbooks, Xero, Hubspot and other platforms. This helps them to accurately evaluate the traction and performance of the companies.

Moreover, post the fundraise, Metabeta also helps startups and investors to keep in touch in real time, by sharing metrics, reports, discussions and notes, all in one place.

Future developments

In a statement, Metabeta reported that it aims to become a SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) enabled marketplace by the beginning of 2022.

Ursache adds, “Also, we want to make Metabeta know-how available at a large scale for the EU, as data and AI have started being used in the investment process – but mostly remain the privilege of big VC firms that develop their in-house solutions. Instead, we aim to create the next ‘OK Cupid’ for all interested investors and startups founders.”