Riga-based RivalSense, a startup that enables users to monitor their competitors using AI, has secured fresh funding in an angel round led by Change Ventures, with the participation of Fiedler Capital and local business angels.
RivalSense will use the funds to enhance scalable user acquisition and integrate advanced AI features for deeper competitor insights.
Currently, the company gathers weekly updates from over 80 sources, such as competitor websites, social media, financial filings, and business databases.
“We are thrilled to support RivalSense, having followed this highly experienced and resilient founder duo for several years,” says Andris K. Berzins, Partner at Change Ventures.
“I have seen so many competitive intelligence solutions over the years. All ended up focused on enterprises, eventually becoming non-scalable consulting businesses. The RivalSense team’s vision to target SMBs with a scalable, cost-effective solution sets them apart in this industry.”
Monitor competitors of your startup
Founded in 2023, RivalSense enables users to monitor their competitors using AI. Users get a curated, weekly update featuring key competitor insights, such as pricing adjustments, product updates, new hires, regulatory concerns, customer relationships, vendor partnerships, technology stack, compliance obstacles, media coverage, and corporate documentation.
RivalSense targets startup founders and senior executives in established companies for its product.
Martins Vaivars and Arturs Prieditis, both Techstars alumni, founded the company. Vaivars, an Oxford University graduate, had previously worked at the data visualisation startup Infogram. Prieditis, a graduate of Cambridge University, had engineering roles at Qualcomm and HP Autonomy.
Co-founder Prieditis says, “In the first week after launch, our user noticed in an insight that one of their fiercest competitors has silently removed a key client logo from their website. The user immediately sent this to their sales team. In the next week, the same user saw an insight of how a senior engineer of his competitor has ended his employment term on Linkedin, indicating he is ready to be approached with a job offer.”
“That was a big “Aha” moment for us. We realised that what we are doing with these insights provides a lot of value.”
Co-founder Vaivars adds, “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.”
Vaivars continues, “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.”
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