• Outfindo raises EUR 1.2M in a Late Seed round led by Eleven Ventures and other investors
• AI-powered Product Guide simplifies complex online shopping by offering personalized recommendations
• The product is already available for 26 product categories across 10 countries and growing rapidly

This January, the well-known Prague-based e-commerce facilitator Outfindo announced closing its Late Seed round of EUR 1.2M. The lead investor of the round is the renowned Bulgarian VC fund Eleven Ventures (invested in Nestor, among others), and other participants include the famous Czech VC firm Lighthouse Ventures and Borovicka Capital.

Outfindo in Recap

Founded in 2020 by Jan Matějů, Ondrej Bouda, and Martin Chrz, the Czech AI technology startup Outfindo addresses a significant challenge in the e-commerce sector: the complexity consumers face when selecting intricate products online without expert guidance. This often leads to confusion, tediously prolonged decision-making, and abandoned shopping carts. Traditional online stores typically present products based on technical specifications, which can overwhelm customers who lack specialized knowledge. This complexity not only frustrates shoppers but also results in decreased conversion rates and increased product returns for retailers.

To tackle this issue, Outfindo has developed an AI-driven solution called the Product Guide. This tool integrates seamlessly into e-commerce platforms and guides customers through the decision-making process by asking intuitive questions about their needs and preferences. Based on the responses, the Product Guide narrows down the options to recommend products that best align with the customer’s requirements. This approach simplifies the shopping experience, making it more personalized and less overwhelming.

Philosophically, Outfindo goes beyond product recommendations by providing deep consumer insights that transform various aspects of e-commerce. Thanks to its proprietary AI, the tool doesn’t just analyze customer behavior within a single store—it provides an overall understanding of needs and shopping patterns across the entire online landscape. Thus, e-shops can see what customers truly want, independently of their current inventory, and align their offerings with actual demand.

In other words, unlike traditional recommendation engines that suggest products based on past behavior, Outfindo helps shops guide shoppers through an intuitive journey of informed decisions based on their actual preferences. As a bonus, such an approach generates high-value data that retailers can use not only for assortment planning but also for consumer-centric remarketing, ensuring follow-up marketing efforts are tailored to real customer needs rather than generic upselling tactics.

‘We come across a lot of companies trying to augment their business with AI nowadays, even though often it is not necessary. But Outfindo is at the right place at the right time, in an industry that is in need of such a solution,’ Roman Nováček, Presto Ventures’ partner and CFA at the time, underscored.

Recent Milestones

Outfindo’s previous funding round took place in summer 2023 as the startup raised EUR 900K from the celebrated Czech fund Presto Ventures alongside Patero and Bob Dohnal and Miroslav Vlasák of Longevity Fellows. Mr Matějů told ITKeyMedia the raised investment was meant for expanding the commercial team and R&D to enable Outfindo’s expansion to new geographies and scaling to more verticals.

Summarizing Outfindo’s progress since then, Mr Matějů mentions a 3x revenue growth since Q1 2024, demonstrating the increasing demand for our guided selling solutions. Naturally, Outfindo’s expanded reach—from operating in just two product categories in two countries to now covering 26 product categories across 10 countries—has also contributed to the growth rate. This expansion also reflects both the startup’s ability to scale and its growing recognition as a leader in AI-driven guided selling.

Another milestone has been the development and deployment of the two proprietary AI agents, Beacon and Diver, that enable Outfindo’s Product Guide to automate and scale the creation of guided selling tools across various product segments. Beacon specializes in customer insights, uncovering patterns in decision-making processes, and optimizing the guidance flow for each product category. Diver, guided by Beacon’s insights, works in real-time to extract product specifications directly from manufacturers, enhancing and structuring product data to ensure descriptions are always accurate, up-to-date, and engaging.

‘A brand-new vertical can now be launched in just one day, and with our new self-service process, customers can create their guide in 30 minutes for verticals where we already have a proven guidance flow. We’re also developing advanced customization to make the guidance flow unique for each partner, ensuring it aligns precisely with their specific inventory, brand positioning, and customer needs,’ Mr Matějů adds.

Additionally, Outfindo introduced a fully self-service onboarding process, enabling new partners to integrate Product Guide in minutes. All they need to do is provide their product feed, customize the look and feel to match their website, and insert a single line of code—without any need for manual product pairing or custom guidance flow development. Mr Matějů assures that Outfindo takes care of everything, ensuring a frictionless implementation.

‘Although it’s perfectly complementary to other other tools, such as regular search tools or chatbots, retailers should definitely prioritize guided selling, as it directly improves conversions and reduces returns by up to 70%. It’s seamlessly embedded into the product listing page, making it intuitive and engaging,’ the CEO comments.

Transparent Guidance

Transparency is a core principle for Outfindo, ensuring that customers always understand how their choices influence the product recommendations they receive. The goal is not to push a single product but to guide customers through an informed decision-making process where they remain in control. To achieve this, Outfindo shows the impact of each indicated need by the customer in real time by showing the respective available products.

‘Therefore, the guide experience never feels like a blackbox, suggesting a short list of products after answering a set of questions. On the contrary, the customer transparently sees which products fit which of their needs so they remain in control and gets to understand why certain products should be the best fit for them,’ Mr Matějů points out.

‘The promise of AI has always been to simplify the complexities of the world around us. Outfindo takes this further by not only streamlining the decision-making process but also tackling the biggest challenge in a shopper’s journey: the confidence of knowing they’ve made the right choice,’ Presto Ventures’ partner Vojta Roček adds.

Peeping into the Future of the Industry

Projecting perspective development of guided selling, the entrepreneur believes that product detail pages should be the next area of focus. These pages are often populated with product data either through complex PIM systems or semi-manually. Outfindo already offers a solution for this, and customers can appreciate the seamless integration of product data, as well as the added ‘customer-friendly’ language.

‘For many e-commerce retailers, product detail pages represent the first interaction customers have with their online store. This is largely due to a heavy reliance on formats like Google PLAs, which have increasingly transformed Google into more of a shopping gallery while also fueling unnecessary price wars. In the long run, this dynamic harms consumers, as smaller retailers are forced to operate with unsustainable margins, leading to market consolidation and reduced competition. For anyone looking to take on a new challenge with AI technologies or intelligent agents, solving this issue for e-commerce retailers could be highly impactful. The entire ecosystem would benefit,’ Mr Matějů suggests.

‘This industry sector is definitely going to be disrupted by AI—and Outfindo is in the best position to perform such a disruption. They already have the product and the customers, and they have the right skillset to perfect it with the right combination of state-of-the-art LLMs, well-tested convolutional neural networks, and robust legacy machine learning approaches. Unlike many newborn ‘GPT-prompt-kiddies’ out there, Outfindo really knows how to build a useful AI-based product,’ AI expert and consultant, AI startup founder Dr Jan Romportl concludes.

Eleven Ventures’ vision is that AI will reshape how shoppers shop and how they select the right products for their needs. The fund’s partner Ivaylo Simov is convinced that Outfindo’s value proposition is perfectly aligned with this tendency, as they allow e-commerces to continuously provide excellent user experience.

Seeing how the rapid pace of change, driven by fast-evolving technologies, is unlikely to slow down anytime soon, the Outfindo team realizes the need to keep pushing the boundaries of how effective guidance can be delivered with the latest advancements, balanced with the right investments in commercial growth.

‘A year ago, we would have struggled to believe that our technology could evolve this quickly, but here we are. That doesn’t mean we’re sitting back, feeling satisfied. We have bold visions, ambitious goals, and no intention of slowing down. There’s always something more to build, optimize, and conquer. So, are we happy with our progress? Sure. Are we satisfied? Not a chance,’ Mr Matějů sums up.