The Podim DX Pitching Competition Finals was also the final act of this year’s Podim DX. The Croatian startup Farseer with its intuitive Enterprise Performance management (EPM) convinced the jury, composed of investors, the most. The team is awarded with an all-inclusive trip to London and with the office space in TMRW, South London’s technology coworking and office space.
Matija Nakić, the founder of the Farseer, responsible for products, reveals what the feelings are after the victory as well as what impression this year’s Podim DX has left and also what the team’s plans for the future are.
Winning Podim DX Pitching Competition is a recognition of your work. What does it mean to you?
“It’s really a great motivation for the entire team, especially considering that the judges were representatives of most prominent VC’s and accelerators in this part of Europe. We are really gonna push on the gas now and take advantage of the momentum. Podim is a brand on its own, and it is already opening doors with potential clients and investors.”
What is it that Farseer does actually?
“Farseer reads bank statements and accounting data and allows companies to model finances and KPIs so they can budget, forecast, and simulate company performance.”
How did you come to this idea?
“Two of us from the four people founding team worked in telecom and used Excel for budgeting and forecasts with tons of sheets, formulas, and back and forth emailing. Managers and controlling departments were wasting a lot of time and hair to plan, yet the numbers were not really accurate and sometimes the forecasts took so long to create, that it would be overrun by actuals. We thought there must be a better way but then discovered how complex it actually is to solve this problem in a universal way. After that, we got even more motivated to solve it and to save managers from spreadsheet hell.”
Why is Farseer different than any existing Enterprise Performance Management?
“We strongly believe that the current EPM software is completely missing the point – users don’t want endless forms and elaborate adding machines, they just want a better spreadsheet and we’re here to give them exactly that. Farseer doesn’t need integrations or consultants, it is flexible and intuitive, so it can be up and running in your corporate environment within a week.”
What stage is your product current at?
“Version one is out and has beta clients. We are pushing improvements on a bi-weekly basis, and a UI redesign is coming at the beginning of summer. Philosophically, we went from adding as many features to cutting them out. We are trying to make a deep, not a wide product.”
What is the response from your beta clients?
“They are happy with the flexibility and the fact that they can plan and simulate everything from strategic financial assumptions to operative business cases. We also managed to save a lot of time that they were spending on manual work for financial planning and reporting. Of course, there are some things that needed improvement, so we are busy fixing those.”
How important is it to have a great EPM software, especially in times of uncertainty?
“As a company is growing, it becomes more and more important to keep track of the performance, and also – it becomes harder to achieve it in spreadsheets. After the COVID-19 impact, we noticed that the awareness for the need of such systems is on the rise.”
How big is your team?
“We are five people, four founders, and our first employee. We also have a small team of developers that we are working with, so we can scale as needed.”
How did you find out about Podim DX and what was the main reason to attend?
“We already knew about it from the industry. We actually applied to Tech boost program and participating in Podim was some sort of graduation after 8 weeks.”
How was the Podim DX experience?
“Very smooth actually. Kudos to the whole team. Although we missed the social component and that crazy adrenalin you get when you go out on the stage.”
What are your goals and target markets for the future?
“Our goal for this year is to contract 25 clients with a focus on regional companies, and a few international ones. For next year we plan to have the product and the operations set up in a way that we can implement to a company in say Iceland in a few days. Now we are going for validation and revenue, and after that, we will be busy with fine-tuning the growth machine and hiring more smart people.”
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This year’s finalists coming from 4 countries
BrainTrip (Croatia), eggXYt (Israel), Farseer (Croatia), Pixofarm (Austria) and Sunstone-RTLS (Hungary) were this year’s finalists of the Podjim DX Pitching Competition. These are the five startups out of 141 registered startups to pitch in this year’s competition, who convinced the jury the most and qualified for the finals.
The 16 semifinalist were pitching in front of Anja Bergant from Capital Genetics (Slovenia), Enis Hulli from 500 Startups (Turkey), Rune Theill from Rockstart (Netherlands), Alexandre Massart from Blend Ventures (UK), Grega Potokar from ABC Accelerator (Slovenia) and Amra Omeragić from EFSE Entrepreneurship Academy (Bosnia and Herzegovina).
Five best were then in the finals pitching in front of Cristobal Alonso (Startup Wise Guys, Latvia), Julien Coustaury (Fil Rouge Capital, Slovenia), Veronika Pistyur (Oktogon Ventures & Bridge Budapest, Hungary), Jure Mikuž (South Central Ventures, Slovenia), Jasmina Henniova (3TS Capital Ventures, Austria) and Andraž Tori (Silicon Gardens, Slovenia).
