14 Angelinvesting.it - From idea to Series A - Weekly Newsletter
NEW INVESTMENT- Synthetic data
3 Minutes to reflect
Dear fellow angel investors,
Today, I’ve invested in a promising pre-seed startup that could become the backbone of the generative AI industry. Clearbox.ai has developed a product that automates the creation of synthetic data using generative AI.
It could be a game-changer for companies that need large amounts of data to train their models.
As you know, AI models need a lot of data to function, and collecting and organizing real data can be time-consuming and expensive. Synthetic data, on the other hand, estimates the distribution of real data and generates fictitious data from it. According to Gartner, by 2030, more than 6 out of 10 data fed to AI models will be synthetic.
Clearbox.ai launched its commercial activity in Q1 2022 and in one year has sold 3 POCs to 3 of the main Italian financial institutions, has 10 ongoing discussions with leading Italian companies, 2 distribution partnerships with system integrators, and its on-cloud version (available online here) 20 new users register daily.
I committed to investing 10,000 euros in the pre-seed round, which will close on April 30th. There is still a small allocation available, so if you're interested in participating (write to me here).
What convinced me to invest were the 3 T's:
Team: The 3 co-founders have a strong technical background. The pitch immediately gave me the impression of having a lot of substance but lacking some commercial savvy. When I pointed this out, the co-founder was very open about the limitations of the co-founding team, and this honesty won me over.
Trend: The graph reported by Gartner, for me, vividly shows an opportunity. ChatGPT and other models need data to function, and Clearbox.ai can provide it. When the water in the sea rises, so does the boat.
Traction: For me, pilots with big companies are less exciting. 20 users registering daily from all over the world through their website are an asset on which a moat can be built.
To be honest…
Honestly, in my decision-making process, I relied more on my gut feeling than my head. I liked the entrepreneur, saw substance, the trend is hot, and there is some traction.
In a pre-seed round, we're buying an option, and I found the elements to make this decision. If you want to follow my gut, you can invest with me in this project (write to me here).
As always, please remember that angel investing is a high-risk, high-reward activity, and you should only invest what you can afford to lose.
Best regards,
Simone
This week, I wanted to try something different with the newsletter format. Starting from next week, we'll be returning to our usual style. I hope you enjoyed this week's experiment and found it informative.