Every business, large or small, needs to choose software, and the larger the business, the more complicated the task. Some businesses have in-house tools and processes to narrow down the list of potential vendors and make a final selection, while others turn to companies like Gartner or G2 to guide them through the process.
Taloflow, an early-stage startup and Y Combinator alumnus, believes it has come up with a better, software-driven way to help businesses select software by shortening decision time and lowering the overall cost of the process. The company announced Wednesday that it has raised $1.3 million in a seed round and will release an AI-driven collaborative notebook that lets customers create custom software evaluation reports.
“Taloflow replaces the homegrown technology and software selection process that can take weeks or even months,” Louis-Victor Jadavji, CEO and co-founder of the startup, told TechCrunch. “Unlike Gartner and G2, which offer mostly general insights, Taloflow creates reports customized for your specific use case,” he said.
The company used public information and the help of industry experts to create a series of base reports in various categories such as ERP, cloud cost management, etc. Users select a category such as cloud cost management, then narrow down to a more specific subject such as FinOps, and Taloflow generates a report in the form of a collaborative notebook.
However, the basic report is just a starting point: the notebook functions like a Google Doc, allowing multiple participants to edit, comment, and modify requirements, as well as weight requirements based on their importance. These weightings can influence the final selection.
Taloflow notebooks allow multiple users to edit and comment on reports. Image credit: Taloflow
The report includes the rationale for your selection and can also generate a request for proposal outlining your vendor requirements.
It's worth noting that AI plays a role in these reports: Taloflow has built large-scale language models that sift through publicly available information and reduce the time and cost of generating a basic report.
Founders Jadhavji and Todd Kesselman (along with now-departed Jason Kim) realized the need for such a solution while they were in the YC W21 batch: “We interviewed about 70 CTOs and engineering managers and found that decisions about technology stacks, like vendor selection and buy vs. build decisions, were becoming increasingly complex and time-consuming,” says Jadhavji.
They found that such processes were often time-consuming and left them unable to find a solution that met their organization’s goals and requirements. “We decided to build a product focused on the specific needs of enterprises by expanding our research with the LLM and ultimately developing collaborative notebooks.”
The company claims to have hundreds of paying customers, including three companies in the Fortune 500. It currently has just five full-time employees, but Jadhavji says it is hiring, primarily for analysts.
Today's funding was provided by Wonder Ventures, First Check Ventures, and a number of industry angel investors, including the founders of Hootsuite, Opendoor, and Sacra.