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.
The seller enters the data from an IT system into Excel, prints the bill, then scans it, and sends it as a pdf. The buyer squints to seek out the needed figures and reference details, enters them into their IT system, then it goes through the necessary negotiations, and then the money gets sent. This wasn’t invented by some evil aliens, it happens in real life.
Vic.AI, the American startup of the day, brings automation to this mess. Supposedly, the buyer uploads the invoice into Vic instead of their own internal systems. The startup’s smart algorithms recognize the necessary fields and, based on the sense and the amount of the bill, send it to negotiate with the needed managers without troubling anybody else.
At that, the essence remains the same – some print, others decipher, as if we were still living in the paper age and the internet is yet to be invented. Meanwhile, Vic.AI is already a big project, it boasts about ten thousand clients, and investors gave USD 100M+. Boat numbers are significantly bigger than those of Anchor, the startup that confronts the root of the problem instead of treating the symptoms.
#saas #megaround #tech #usa #ai
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.
