Welcome to StartupRad.io, your podcast and YouTube blog covering the German
startup scene with news, interviews, and live events.
Hello and welcome, everybody. This is Joe from StartupRad.io,
your startup podcast and YouTube blog from Germany, welcoming becoming another
guest from Frankfurt in our series Tech Startups Germany with the European Enterprise
Network Hessen. Hey Max, how are you doing?
I'm fine, thank you very much for the invitation. Happy to be talking to you today.
Totally my pleasure. As I said, our enabler today is Hessen Trade & Invest and
the Enterprise Europe Network.
This recording was made possible by Hessen Trade & Invest and the Enterprise Europe Network Hessen.
These organizations have made tremendous contribution to helping startup businesses
succeed and thrive, providing a range of services from helping to find friends
to ongoing partnerships.
By taking advantage of these resources, startup companies can network and develop
innovative strategies for success on the international stage.
The dedicated support of HDI and the enterprise work HESN is paramount in providing
startup businesses with the tools for lasting success.
You can learn more or in the show notes down here below, wherever you're looking
at this or listening to this.
For everybody who's watching, sorry for the red eye, but allergy season is up on us again.
Now that we have everything out of the way, I'm sorry, that was a lot of initial stuff.
Maximilian, would you like to introduce yourself and how you,
an Austrian guy, ended up setting up a AI startup here in Frankfurt?
Yeah, sure. Thank you very much. So hi everyone. My name is Max.
I'm 26 and I'm originally from Austria and Vienna, as Sarah already mentioned.
And yeah, we came up setting Scavenger here in Frankfurt. Actually,
I was doing an internship already more than a year ago here in Frankfurt,
where I fell in love with the city and we got to know the props in this stage
to our very good lawyer, Dr.
Jan-Felix Kumker, who was of big help of all the bureaucracy that's going on
around founding a startup and who suggested us because we really trusted him
to set it up here in Frankfurt where he gave me of help the whole time.
So yeah, started here and stayed here.
As everybody can tell, not everybody from Austria need to have an accent like Schwarzenegger.
I have to admit right now, I do believe his accent is kind of an act that people
instantly recognize, oh, that's him, kind of branding stuff.
You studied in Vienna and Bocconi, but what I found very interesting,
you have been a professional athlete for some time, according to your LinkedIn
profile, which, by the way, we are also linking down here.
Can you talk a little bit about that, what you did here and what kind of sports?
Sure, of course. Very happy to. So, yeah, I was playing hockey from a very young
age, actually from four years on.
And yeah went through like on the
national level to an international level and was captain of
the austrian youth hockey national team here played a
couple of european championships one thing in
the end it was four championships of the austrian in the austrian level and
yeah it was a really great time looking back into it and yeah i miss it from
time to time and we're talking about here field hockey not ice hockey right
we're talking about field hockey for me it's always clear but for For someone
who didn't play field hockey, obviously, ice hockey is the first thing that comes to mind.
Okay. You did a few internships, including at Deloitte, where we did not meet.
And you have been at the Financial Times Challenge. What was this all about?
Yes, it was actually a very cool initiative by the Financial Times.
Back then, it was supposed to be in London. And luckily, obviously, it was COVID.
And I was doing it back from my living room.
Nevertheless, the challenge was really, really cool. It was for three days on
where you had to basically the Financial Times gave you the most pressing issues
of the time and you were supposed to build a startup around it that more or
less solves those issues.
So I would say it was totally cool. You were given experts and access to a lot
of knowledge from experts from the Financial Times and could build in a natural
startup in three days that then got accessed by Shoeis.
What was your startup idea? Our idea was actually back then because it was the
time a detector that detects particles in the air to make like an early detection
system for transmittable diseases like COVID.
I assume it will still be useful in the future. And then you started your own
company in January 2020.
Stopped that and started with Scavenger AI according to your LinkedIn profile.
Can you take us through this journey because you stopped one company and then
you instantly start with another in an AI company?
How did you meet your co-founder? How did you get started with the idea?
Definitely. So back then, my background is a bit of a different one.
I actually studied business law, which has way more of a law focus than a business
focus, which is also the reason why I worked first at Deloitte because I said
I wanted to get a bit of a background more into business. business and then
also started the first company, which back then was called Walking Art.
And it was my first steps into entrepreneurship, I would say,
together with a colleague of mine, what we saw during COVID that like the art
sector is struggling a lot because artists don't have access to art or exhibitions anymore.
And they're art fans. So we said, OK, we're more or less in a nutshell,
do an online art gallery where they can host online exhibitions and so on, which was very nice.
But then I joined because it was actually a case that was way more interested
in the business side and I joined Bocconi University in Italy to study management there.
And as then the work required a lot of personal meetings with the artists,
it was a local business focused on Vienna.
It was not possible anymore. But luckily in Bocconi, I met my lovely co-founder
Felix, who is leading the tech part at Scavenger, who I reached out to very, very early on.
And yeah, he was a fan of the idea. We talked We talked to it a lot.
And yeah. So over long nights and early mornings, we talked in coffee chats
at Bocconi University about it and in the end decided to fund Scavenger together.
I see. So basically, you're an Austrian guy and your co-founder is German?
Yes, my co-founder is German. He's from Aachen.
From Aachen and from Austria, and you end up setting up a company in Frankfurt.
That is pretty interesting.
How did you get started? Can we first talk about what Scavenger does and then
how you got the idea to do actually something like that?
Because for me personally, to have a business lawyer doing AI is quite a stretch.
Definitely. So Felix and me both, before doing our master's,
we worked in big corporates first.
And we were basically coming back from our summer internships where we worked
in big corporates before.
And we saw a problem that all of the companies say that data is super important,
yet nobody really likes to deal with it.
So you end up that all of the companies have tons of data.
They create more and more data every day. but they lack the
time and they lack the resources to actually draw any insights out of
it and that was a problem that i'm sure your listeners like also
know of that is really difficult if in a company you have to
take a decision but do not have the necessary insights into your data to actually
take that decision so yeah long story short we came back from that summer internship
we exchanged in that idea um and luckily you get very early on an initial funding
like i was still then working at my internship in frankfurt at a venture builder
we focused on software and i where Where I got more in touch with that,
Felix was working before two years as a lead in software development.
So he also had a bit of more experience in that field.
And so, yeah, Felix built a short POC overnight. We reached out to early investors,
got from Carteligent and Volker Feud and Ash Cowher, a very early investor early
on, that believed in the idea.
Where back then it was just Felix, me and the pitch deck and the POC that he built overnight.
And yeah, then we quit our jobs because we thought it might make more sense
to work on this full time than before work and after work. And yeah, here we are.
It is quite interesting.
If I wrap it up, my understanding is from what you guys are doing is you have
three distinct AI tools that help you analyze data you have from your own company,
cleaning up data, doing statistical analyzes, and,
generate an output in simple language.
In which languages is this available? And can you take us a little bit through the journey?
It's like two of those tools. Are they for cleaning, for aggregating data, or how does it work?
Yeah, definitely. So in the end, what we want to do is offer customers a one-stop solution.
So they can upload, as you mentioned before, they can upload any kind of data.
Any kind of data sounds generic, but it's on purpose. It is generic,
so you can imagine you can upload 27 excels, three PDFs, a word,
whatsoever, or connect your company databases to it.
Once you've done that, you can ask a very simple question. Like normally what
I'll use is asking something like, okay, how can I improve my profit?
From user perspective, that's everything you need to do. And then,
as you mentioned before, we in the back actually have developed three different
AI tools that are connected together in one workflow to solve the problem of
the user in less than 10 seconds.
But you can also only use one out of the three tools if you want to.
And yeah, actually very correct, as you mentioned before. The first tool,
it all starts with data cleaning, where we have a tool that automatically detects
anomalies inside the data sets, also does all of the statistical data cleaning
and separates numerical from textual data.
Second, we save the textual data. We forward the numerical data to the next
tool, which is more or less the key of Scavenger AI, which first has an algorithm
that detects based on the question you asked and based on the data that got
uploaded, what's the right mathematical numerical test to run.
But then we don't stop there. We don't run one. We run like hundreds of tests
simultaneously. Choose the one which has the highest statistical fit.
Also save that where already the textual data is waiting. And lastly,
we have an interpretation agent that enriches all of it with industry data,
looks at the question, looks at what outcome we have generated,
and translates all of it into a nice looking dashboard that answers the question
that the user asked before.
That is pretty interesting. How far along are you? You guys just trade but erased
by the way that was the trigger.
While we're talking today you raise 1.1 million euros in pre seed funding investors includes HTGF,
the high tech corner for by the way, everybody who liked to get to know the
CEO down here in the show notes,
we link our interview with him and calm storm
ventures from vienna um so
you're in pre-seed how far along are you and what kind of data can you work
with and how do your clients look like is it like the handyman from around the
corner or is it like the big international banks definitely so um both actually
all of the options you mentioned below.
So yes, all of them basically.
So the way what we say at the moment, we launched our first MVP back in November 2023.
And this MVP we're at the moment trying out and testing out with pilot partners.
Why are we doing that? Because we say, okay, we want to be as close as we can
in development to our potential and future customers while we already generate
from that value for them. So actually a win-win situation ideally.
How our customers look like I'm actually unluckily not allowed to do some big
name dropping here, but we're working with big enterprises.
So like the big ones that you actually know, too, like the classical SMEs in Germany.
And yeah, based on that, because in the end, the software itself is very, very flexible.
It's a very mathematical software that with the LLM layer that we put on top,
make it accessible for also people who don't necessarily studied statistics
or mathematics to understand it, which then I would say in big enterprises,
we always talk to head of departments,
and in smaller companies, SMEs, we always talk to the C-level executives.
And yeah, because you also asked before and I totally forgot to answer it,
like the software at the moment is available in English, but it's no problem to switch language.
It also works in Italian, German, French and Spanish, if I remember correctly
so far, but we're happy to add another language if the language barrier should
not be covered by that yet.
There is right now a lot of,
tools out there. There's like a sea of tools in data analytics and AI.
How are you guys different here?
Definitely. I mean, we are obviously in a blind. We do look at the competition
and we see that it's a very crowded space.
Yet one thing we've always tried to mention, and like we really want to live
by that, is that in the end you have a technology, like at the moment it's artificial
intelligence that you want to use, not for the sake of using artificial intelligence,
but to actually solve the problem of a user, which in the end is how you solve
it, the user doesn't care.
So the way that we say it is like, yeah, we've developed in the end, it's free.
I tools that I powered, which are at the moment the best possible way to solve
the problem for the user, but as described before,
we have developed this one step solution that is powered by the free tools where
the user doesn't have to do anything else than throw all of the data in,
ask the questions and we do all the analytics more or less like a consulting project for them.
You're not permitted to drop names, but can you drop industries and what kind
of industries are your customers right now working? Yes, definitely.
So we're working a lot in the food and beverage sector. We're working a bit
in the sports sector as well, because there's a lot of data available.
And we're working also with the classical,
I would say like German hidden champions, let's say it like that.
Scalability is often a challenge for AI startups. How do you guys plan to scale
in terms of operations and infrastructure?
Definitely. So in terms of infrastructure, Felix and the tech team here did
a really, really great job and set everything up in a very modular structure.
In tech terms, it's called microservices, which allows us to have a very,
very scalable approach of the software.
Also at the moment, which is one of the reasons why we get the cool investment
is that we're really set up for scalability and our costs in that case are very, very low.
So that's very nice. In operational levels, like always, it's something you
have to do with time. We are going to grow like with the investments, we're going to grow.
20 people because obviously operational load is getting heavier
but like we're also covered with the investment to um
to lift that definitely um talking
about investments after pre-seed it usually suggests
that you want to do a siege round what are you guys long-term goals and when
you go to the website you can basically register to be a test client do you
have any guesstimate when you'll be open to all clients out there?
Yes, that's a very perfect transition. Love to love to tease it out here at this point.
So, yeah, actually, at the end of Q2 2024, so like in end of June,
we're going to launch the whole software life.
So from then on, you can actually you don't need to be a test partner anymore,
which obviously also has its advantages.
So if you still want to be a test partner, happy to welcome you.
Yet from end of June 2024, the whole software is going to go live.
I see. I see.
What other plans do you have? We're now drifting a little bit into the Outlook
area in terms of geography.
But I would believe everybody from the European Union is pretty safe in throwing
your data into the analytics tool because you're based in the European Union.
Do you plan to expand for international clients?
Yes, definitely. First grade that you mentioned, at the moment,
which is very, very important for all our customers that we have so far,
is that all our servers, our databases are actually in Frankfurt in Germany
as well and are 100% GDPR compliant,
which obviously is huge.
So I would say like all the due to, as mentioned before, the language barrier
and because we're already set up very, very well in terms of data security,
which in Europe obviously is way more protected than when you look to the Asian
market or the American market.
And so I would say like also in case of those crucial issues,
we're already set up for expansion here.
Mm hmm. And you already have four investors.
I was wondering, and for most people who are listening to this are wondering,
are you open to talk to new investors?
Yes, definitely. I mean, like before the round, after the round and vice versa, I would say.
So we're always open to talking to new investors, actually, like straight after the pre-seed round,
straight after the closing, we already went into talks with new investors for the seed round,
which I mean still is far away like should be closed
at the end of 2025 um but it's
also always great to talk to investors and interesting people during
times where there is not the regular fundraising chaos so yeah
very happy to also get in touch now the regular fundraising chaos ah yeah I
see um usually a lot of people are out here uh looking for potential employers
are you guys also looking for new people out there, for new hires?
Yes, definitely. Always. We know that one of the key assets we have at the moment is great people.
And our product and our company is only as good as the people that we have on board.
So yes, 100%. We are actually trying to, as I said before, we're trying to grow
from 10 to 20 people this year, meaning that we have still 10 spots available, if you're hearing this.
Still, there is a bit of a focus on the tech team, yet we're also slow and steady
then you're trying to set up the business side.
So actually, no matter which background, we're always happy.
We also have a spontaneous application field at the moment on the website.
So always happy to receive application from bright people.
Everybody who'd like to talk to you, we do have the LinkedIn profile of you
linked in our blog post, as well as your career website in our show notes here.
Since this is an interview with Hessen Trade and Invest,
you would be, if you would like to address the decision makers here in the state
by like one question, one idea for improvement, something like that.
What would you say to them? What would be your wish for the future?
Definitely. So first of all, I think that actually there are a lot of cool things
going on right now in Frankfurt with the lately founded AI Hub,
the CAI Hub, and also has an AI and so on.
Yet I do think that especially in the early stage of a startup,
like the less bureaucracy you have, the better.
As also in the tech market, speed to market is absolutely crucial.
And I remember we as well, we were sitting in front of a lot of applications
that back then, like it takes a lot of time.
You're not allowed to be funded, like officially incorporated back then.
So I think those bureaucratic hurdles are quite steep at the moment still.
So reducing that and making it actually easier for startups to catch up with
competition as fast, because as mentioned before, speed is one of the most important
things during this phase.
I see. So get more speed. But I have to admit that would be something I say all over Germany.
Not sure what they can do about it here.
Maximilian, it was again a pleasure to have you here. Thank you for Hessen Trade
& Invest and Enterprise Year Network for sponsoring this podcast.
It was a pleasure to have you here. Thank you. Thank you very much for the invitation.
It was really fun. Thank you. Have a good day. Bye bye.
Thank you.
Music.