The post was originally published in Russian on Startup of the Day. Alexander kindly agreed to republish what we think is of great value to our readers.
Intermediaries for business sales deals are always an interested party. Formally, they can get paid by both the seller and the buyer, but they only get their bonus after the deal. Given this, the intermediary is always interested to ‘push’ anything – even if they were hired to look for pearls in dirt.
And all counteragents understand this, and it gets difficult to work like this – it’s hard to push something when your interest is apparent. Every intermediary tackles this problem their own way, Finquest – the Singaporean startup of the day – uses the approach ‘it’s the algorithms, not us.’
Its business is being a regular intermediary. It seeks out interesting purchase targets for corporations, it seeks buyers for SMEs. But – the difference is in science, big data, artificial intelligence. We won’t offer you just anything but only those selected by the smart algorithms – naturally, they are impartial. They won’t push, they are after optimized usefulness and not after the commission. Trust them, meaning us!
As a side result, such positioning allows the company itself to attract investments. Nobody would assess a simple agency by venture multipliers, and with an AI it’s already an IT business. Finquest got USD 5.5M in its recent round.
Translation: Kostiantyn Tupikov
Alexander made his career in Russian internet companies including Mail.Ru, Rambler, RBC. From 2016 to 2018 he was Chief Strategy and Analytics officer in Mail.Ru Group. In this position, he worked on M&A, investments, and new project launches. In 2018 he became Deputy CEO in Citymobil, a Russian Uber-like company that was invested by Mail.Ru Group and Sberbank (the biggest Russian bank), then he left the company to launch his own projects. Now Alexander is a co-founder of United Investors – the platform for co-investments in Russian early-stage startups. His blog #startupoftheday (#стартапдня) is one of the most popular blogs about startups in Russia.
