We've all seen them. An inspector with a clipboard walks through the building, checking to see if the fire extinguisher was last checked or if all the lights are working. They work in his TICC (Test, Inspection, Certification and Compliance) field and literally tick the boxes. And while that job may seem easy enough to do physically, it's a whole different ball game when it has to be done remotely.
After moving to Portugal, founder Ben Lambert realized exactly that he needed to run his wife's property inspection business remotely. “It's no longer easy to verify tests in the field and get reliable information. The final report could take weeks to complete,” he told me. Additionally, actually scheduling the test proved to be at least as big of a problem.
Lambert saw an opportunity and founded Checkfirst, an AI-powered workflow tools startup. This not only allows businesses to conduct remote inspections, but also allows them to schedule inspectors based on geographic location and qualifications. The result is less business travel, less environmental impact, and happier employees. The company has now raised $1.5 million in pre-seed funding led by Lisbon-based early-stage venture firm Olisipo Way and Hiero VC (sole GP firm). Notion Capital and angel investors from companies such as Source Point, Busuu, Swogo, and FaceIT also participated.
“as [the product] , we found that the biggest problem wasn't necessarily data collection, but the schedule that could make or break a company. AI is great for scheduling tasks, so it’s timely,” he said.
“The biggest problem in the industry is scheduling, and the great thing is that with AI you can schedule very easily,” he told me. “Say your inspector is in London but needs to be in Munich to audit a building. With AI, you can understand what they are doing and bring it all together. We create scheduling tools for all these large companies. It's not just about compliance. It's also about managing schedules. Compliance tools then make it easy to collect data that meets regulatory standards. It will be like this.”
It turns out that the TICC industry is constantly moving people around the world, Lambert explained.
“For example, today an inspector might be in London, but the company doesn't quite understand that they already have an inspector in London, so the company sends someone from Munich to London. If an inspector flies from Munich to London, all margins are immediately lost. With our tool, the person the company was planning to send from Munich no longer needs to come to London. , the company can save thousands of euros, if not more.”
Lambert said they “initially used a combination of open source and commercial AI models,” but are now building their own AI models “based on their own data for image recognition and scheduling.” He said that
In terms of competitors, Checkfirst will be up against major incumbents in the compliance space, including Intact Systems, Lumiform, Safety Culture (a unicorn) and Happy Co (focused on real estate management).
Lambert said the difference with Checkfirst is that it is an API-first solution, using AI for image recognition and automation, mass reporting summary creation, and scheduling.
The startup is working on proofs of concept with multiple clients, one of which it claims has 30,000 customers.
The co-founder team includes Lambert, CPO Oyvind Henriksen (who launched Poq Studio), and CTO Rami Elsawy. Lambert was previously at Nexmo and Agora.