Investment in millions for the e-commerce scale of Salzburg, Findologic

(c) Findologic: The management team with Georg Sorst (CTO), Matthias Heimbeck (CEO) and Simon Reichel (COO).

Machine Learning was at the beginning of the e-commerce company of Salzburg Findologic. Founder and CEO Matthias Heimbeck, a well-studied programmer, came from a completely different area: cancer research. "At university, I made a breakthrough in the field of image recognition with endoscopic imaging in the diagnosis of colorectal cancer," says Heimbeck. He was taken to e-commerce by his father. "He did not find what he was looking for for Christmas gifts, so the question arose as to whether my algorithm can also be applied to products," says the founder. The answer was yes, it worked.

+++ Federal strategy for artificial intelligence: about a quarter of FFG resources flow to KI +++

1000 web stores in 23 countries as customers

In 2008, Heimbeck begins with Findologic – a derivation of Uni-Salzburg, which probably already has a special value because of its history. The SaaS company now has more than 1,000 Web stores in 23 countries as customers and is one of the leading providers in its field: Search optimized and browsing in online stores. Customers include Edeka, Expert, Penny, Book, Carrera and Adler. "And there are some bigger names that I can not name," says Heimbeck.

Average annual growth rate of 50%

After funding the first three years on its own, Findologic joined two business angels in 2011 with Orderman's co-founder Willi Katamay and Berger's chief industrial engineer, Fritz Berger. "Since then, we've grown organically," says Matthias Heimbeck. With an average annual growth rate of 50%, sales have come in the last six years. "We have been profitable from the start." However, now was the right time to take the next step toward stronger growth. "Most of our competitors have raised a lot of capital and gambled in the last few years. Now the way is ready," says Heimbeck.

Half-seven-digit investment in BE Beteiligungen Fonds

Beteiligungen Fonds, based in Munich, has already agreed to a seven-figure investment. "As a growth company like us, investors are very easy to find." We talked to many people on the one hand, the choice fell on BE because it fits very well with people. On the other hand, BE is also a partner with whom we can continue to grow strongly in the future. " They met in April last year. In fact, negotiations began in October. "So it was relatively quick until the deal," says Heimbeck.

Internationalization and Technology

Fresh capital will now flow mainly in two areas: greater internationalization and technology. "We still do about 70% of our business in the DACH area. As the expanding markets, especially the UK, France and the US, are exciting to us," says the founder. In terms of technology, it is currently changing a lot in the market. "The theme of the voice is not really understood, especially in Europe." But there are incredible growth rates and we want to be in front of it here.It can go very fast.We also had cellphone users five years ago in homeopathic quantities.Now they make up about 60% of traffic, "explains the founder.

Findologic: data scientists work on finetuning

Machine learning is still at the heart of search optimization. The algorithm used by Heimbeck in 2008 was no longer used. "We use deep learning and clustering structures today.The challenge is not the algorithm itself, but the vote in the data sets and the fine-tuning.That's why we employ many data scientists."

"Amazon can also come to us. We also have good solutions for you"

Heimbeck does not believe that e-commerce giants, like Amazon, are crippling their customers' online stores. "There are two types of e-commerce users, those who already know exactly what they want are in good hands with Amazon and Co. The other half wants to look, let it in. That makes it much easier to optimize specific stores," says Heimbeck. And also: "Amazon too can come to us. We also have good solutions for you."

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