How does an investor in new firms know where to put his money? Which of the vast number of startups has the best chance of success? New Israeli startup Zirra promises to help answer these questions and has just raised $1.6 million to do so.
The new funds will be used to open office space in New York and begin a marketing campaign in the U.S. A group of private investors such as Moshe Lichtman, a former VP at Microsoft and now a general partner at IGP, and Soma Somasegar, formerly the Corporate VP of the Developer Division at Microsoft Corporation and now a Venture Partner at Madrona Venture Group, led the funding. They were joined by AOL’s investment fund, Singulariteam Investment Fund, Ohad Shaked, Venture Club Ru and Michael Dolinsky (Co-founder of Aorato, sold to Microsoft).
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It had previously raised $700, 000 in seed funding in April, 2015. Zirra now sets its own valuation at as much as $6 million.
Venture capital firms have whole teams of researchers and analysts dedicated to searching for the next big thing and to reviewing a new company’s potential for growth. This is how they decide where to put their money? But what if you are an angel investor with no such resources at your disposal. This is where Zirra comes in.
Founded in 2014 by Moshit Yaffe (CEO) and Aner Ravon (CPO) , Zirra is in the business of providing insights on startup companies, including estimated valuations, lists of competitors, estimated time to exit, risk and success factors, as well as a rating of the team, product, momentum and execution.
The company sees its customer base as not only individuals, but companies as well. They already work with a number of VC firms and companies. And it says that what can take weeks today they can do in a matter of hours or even minutes.
Zirra promises to provide investors all over the world with the tools they need to “invest successfully in private companies.” The startup collects and assembles information from hundreds of public sources and uses this information to generate what it describes as proprietary and exclusive new data through targeted crowd analysis.
They have developed a Slack Box which compiles all sorts of information about a firm’s competition and other useful resources based on six different sources. All the work can be done in less than a minute, Zirra maintains.
https://twitter.com/bfsi_financial/status/789421519445209088
The company states that it will provide sentiment analysis using advanced machine learning. “We compute metrics and ratings, enabling meaningful comparisons. And to top it off, we have real human analysts curate the data and add exclusive insights, ” Zirra boasts. “A winning combination of services investors will not be able to find anywhere else.”
Customers can purchase a single spotlight report for as little as $49 dollars, or get a subscription for $299 per month. Currently the firm has between $30-50, 000 in monthly revenue.
They can tell you the potential of your own company and the strengths of your competition.
Moshit Yaffe, Zirra’s co-founder and CEO told Jewish Business News, “We are solving a need in the market when it comes to analyzing companies cost effectively. We can help you learn more about yourself as well as your competition.”
“There are currently no real tools to evaluate all of the unicorns that are out there right now. This is what we are doing.”
As for the future, Yaffee said, “We are bringing our service to the mass market as well as professionals. We expect to have revenues in the millions of dollars by the end of 2017.”
Moshit Yaffe is a an investment and management professional who founded a boutique investment banking firm that successfully raised over $70 million in venture capital for 15 clients. As CEO of Vigilant Technologies, she led the company through its IPO and merger.
