Dashmote secures €2.5M in funding to analyse the visual web using AI

A group of American and Chinese investors enables Dashmote to accelerate their global growth

AMSTERDAM - The AI technology company Dashmote has secured €2.5 million euro (US$2.8 million) in funding from a group of American and Chinese investors. Such resources will kickstart a long term plan that will allow the Amsterdam-based scale-up to bring its data and image analytics solutions for enterprises to new and larger venues. The funding round includes investors from SP Investment Associates (SPIA), Three Curve Capital (TCC) and Gaomei Yunjing Investments.

Retrieving data from the visual web

Dashmote’s mission is to lead people and companies through an A.I. and data-driven world. Every day, around 3 billion images are uploaded to the internet. Dashmote’s artificial intelligence technology is capable of analysing these images and gain valuable insights. With its SaaS-solution, Dashmote is already helping companies such as Heineken, Coca Cola, Unilever, and L'Oreal to understand their audience and the market they move into. 

Large companies that operate in consumer electronics, food and beverage, and cosmetics use Dashmote to sharpen their marketing efforts and upsell capabilities. Data analysis is used to discover market trends, operate an effective segmentation of the offer, and measure the audience engagement and sentiment.   

 With the new funding, Dashmote heads towards a bright future. "We are very pleased with the international group of investors. They are a great fit to our ambition to solidify our position in existing markets and to roll out to new markets," said Dennis Tan, CEO and co-founder of Dashmote. "With SPIA and Three Curve Capital, we not only receive funds to grow our business but we will also benefit from their experience as venture and growth investors and their vast network. It is important for us that Gaomei also joined this round, considering our current footprint and  plans in the Chinese market."

 Experienced, international investors

For Gaomei, a Chinese VC, this is the first investment outside their home country of China. "Dennis and Stefan have proven even before we came along that they had a clear vision on how to enter Asian markets,” said Ning Gu, founder and general partner at Gaomei. "They have done so successfully with their own strategy of local culture and approach with an international push." Both SPIA and TCC have deep networks in the U.S., Europe and Asia and bring decades of experience in scaling fast-growing companies, including those with global ambitions similar to Dashmote’s.

Scaling up and expanding

Dashmote is already profitable and will use the funding exclusively to rapidly scale up. The company will double the number of employees from the current 45 to 90. The New York and Shanghai offices will increase in size, and opening of new offices in the U.S. and Asia are foreseen for the near future. 

 The company will also use the fresh capital to expand its product portfolio. Dashmote's AI technology is now predominantly serving image analytics for trend, brand, and location intelligence services. In the near future, though, the company wants to unlock information in online video material - another potentially inexhaustible source of insights for companies. Together with a new way to visualize the gathered information, this will offer companies even more possibilities to understand data and leverage it for marketing, strategy and sales purposes.

About Dashmote

Dashmote was founded in 2014 in Amsterdam, The Netherlands by Dennis Tan (CEO), Matthäus Schreder (CPO), and Stefan Tan (CFO). Together they set out on a mission to lead people and companies through an A.I. and data-driven world. The company headquarters is in Amsterdam and has offices in New York, Vienna, and Shanghai.

Amsterdam-based AI startup wins Digital Top 50 Award by Google, McKinsey, and Rocket Internet

Dashmote, a Dutch Artificial Intelligence startup that helps companies analyze visual data to discover trends and gain valuable market insights, yesterday won a Digital Top 50 Award in the category B2B startups.

Google, McKinsey, and Rocket Internet joined forces with Tech Open Air Berlin, held from June 19 – 22, for the 2018 edition of the Digital Top 50 Awards (DT50). Ten Top 50 nominees battled in each award category during this year’s edition of the festival.

Dashmote ensures that B2C companies in FMCG, fashion, food & beverages, and consumer electronics are on top of their game thanks to its proprietary technology based on Artificial Intelligence offering visual trend analysis and market intelligence. With the help of Dashmote’s visual analytics platform, companies can discover trends and market insights much faster, which in turn expedites product development and marketing.

Dashmote, founded in 2014 by Dutchmen Dennis Tan (CEO), Stefan Tan (CFO), and Austrian-born Matthaeus Schreder (CPO) currently serves well-known companies as clients, namely Coca-Cola, Heineken, Unilever, and Philips, from its headquarters in Amsterdam and satellite offices in Vienna (Austria) and New York (US).

“For us, this award is the acknowledgment of all the hard work we’ve put into Dashmote in the past three years. With our business model for the past year and a half – discovering trends and market insights with visual data – we have been quite successful, securing large clients and growing the team to 20+ employees. We, as a team, feel that this award is an homage to all of our supporters, clients and the growth of the European entrepreneurial ecosystem”, Dennis Tan, CEO, and co-founder, comments.

“With Dashmote, we have a great winner in the B2B startup category of the Digital Top 50 Awards. What we as the jury liked from a broader perspective is that Dashmote aims for new frontiers in the field of marketing, trying to bring analytics, AI, and images together. We believe Dashmote is reaching for a very interesting, scalable market at the right time, with the right technology, and a great team,” says Karel Dörner, leader of the McKinsey Digital Labs Europe.

Dashmote is Heineken Dragon's Den Winner

Dashmote had the honor of being invited to the exclusive Dragon's Den hosted by Heineken and the Innovation Summit in Utrecht. It was an evening of startups pitching their ideas for innovation scouts from Heineken IT/Supply Chain and commerce department. It was a 2 minute pitch followed by a 5 minute Q&A and was described by Stefan Tan as "a great way to participate and talk about the innovation that we can bring to Heineken."

Dashmote participates in Xplore US

Dashmote – a group of high tech innovators that bring Artificial Intelligence to image analysis for Marketing Intelligence – was recently selected by the Dutch Government to participate in the Xplore US scale up expansion contest. The contest – from RVO and commissioned by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs – gives innovators the opportunity to pitch their US scale up business plans and expansion strategies to a Jury to win participation in a ten-day accelerator programme. The programme is hosted by kTeams (an MIT spin-off for international companies) and includes accommodation in Boston and travel from the Netherlands to Boston and back.

Congratulations Dennis and Dashmote Team. I am convinced you will be on your way to become the next Instagram and more!

Dashmote wins 2017 OI Forum Pitching Competition

The Open Innovation Forum Food and FMCG Pitching Competition is an annual competition that provides an opportunity for innovators to pitch their ideas to senior leaders of major companies across the whole value chain in the Food, Drink and FMCG sector. Run by the University of Cambridge’s Institute for Manufacturing (IfM) knowledge transfer arm IfM Education and Consultancy Services since 2013, this year’s event was hosted by the Heineken Experience in Amsterdam.

Finalists of the 2017 Open Innovation Forum Food and FMCG Pitching Competition.

The winner of this year’s Open Innovation Forum Food and FMCG Pitching Competition, start-up company Dashmote, was established to solve this exact problem. They saw potential in being able to unlock these online image resources by combining visual recognition data and AI. By using visual recognition technology, patterns can be identified from across global markets and then narrowed down into regional insights. Since starting in 2015, Dashmote has worked with a number of companies from various food and beverage categories such as coffee, beer, snacks and spirits.

Dashmote co-founder Stefan Tan (left) and Pitch Competitiion coordinator Dominic Oughton.

Dashmote co-founder Stefan Tan, says traditional market research methods such as interviews, observations and surveys are often very time and labour consuming. Stefan also states, “putting together a thorough marketing intelligence report can take months, which is inefficient given how quickly consumer preferences shift, especially in the food industry. With the help of innovative methods such as AI and visual recognition we are able to perform research for a fraction of the time and by using raw information sourced directly from customers, we can provide quantifiable results.”

Dashmote’s proprietary technology analyses billions of images and data that is publicly available on Internet platforms to identify and predict future consumer trends. By using consumer-generated information, such as photos from social media sites and blogs, Dashmote gains direct and unfiltered insights into people's tastes and preferences. This gives Dashmote’s clients a reliable and data-proven picture of what customers need and want, allowing the company to communicate appropriately with their customers and to then provide their consumers with the products that they want.

TUI & Dashmote, Travel The World Through Images!

They say "an image is worth a thousand words" and at Dashmote we took this literal and try to go beyond simple images and get the perfect insights from every pixel. 

We are not the ones to look back because we believe that in order to innovate you always have to think about the future but today we had the chance to see the finished work with one of the biggest travel companies in the Netherlands TUI.

Our project took us through 80 different travel destinations and after more than 10.000 images selected, we are proud to see the end output come through the hands of the very talented design department of TUI.

The project provided us with a very concrete example of how insights can be transformed into images and vice versa. We are certain that the images selected by us have a positive impact on the TUI customer experience and glad that we managed to collaborate with a company that takes visuals to a superior level of professionalism. 

Through the initial analysis of the brand style of TUI and input of the imagery guidelines of the brand, we were able to create an algorithm that helped in the selection process of the images. The selection algorithm helped surface the perfect TUI image for each of the travel destination, enabling our team to cover a variety places around the globe from Mexico to Thailand and others.

Dashmote, turning images into insights!

Dashmote partners with PostNL

Partnerships between big established companies and startups are not that uncommon but providing innovative solutions is something that is very hard to achieve.

Nonetheless, we are excited to announce that we have partnered with PostNL to offer to the customers of the innovative Drukwerkservice access to over 300 million stock images. The users of Drukwerkservice can now create their offline promotional campaigns from idealization to the final delivery in the post box of their target audience on one platform. 

The Dutch national Post is known for its appetite to build innovative solutions and this why in a time when all the attention is focus on digital advertising, they have created a tool that focuses on offline advertising. An area which is less crowded and traditionally was available only to big players with big budgets. 

Druckwerkservice offers to small and medium companies an alternative to reach out to prospective customers and experiment with new acquisition channels. 

Give it a try here and select the perfect image on the special dedicated Dashmote page. 

Amsterdam based Dashmote launches cognitive power image search on Product Hunt

Dutch startup Dashmote ends Product Hunt day with more upvotes than Beme

Amsterdam, 3 May 2016 - Amsterdam-based startup Dashmote launched on Product Hunt their open beta after being unexpectedly “hunted” by Uber Developer Experience lead and ex-Googler, Chris Messina. Competing against Beme -- an app founded by Youtube sensation Casey Neistat, which holds $2.5M in funding, and more than 50000+ on Google Playstore and iTunes downloads -- Dashmote put up a fair fight. Although Beme was ranked number one at the end of the day, Dashmote finished the day with the most upvotes, receiving more than 650 upvotes.

Product Hunt, founded in 2003 by Ryan Hoover and backed by Y-Combinator, is a website which enables users to share and discover new products. With approximately 6.6 million monthly visitors and more 150.000 registered users Product Hunt has become an integral part of any startup’s marketing strategy due to the strong community of early adopters and like minded people.

The Dashmote team is proud of their ability to turn the situation into something positive and ultimately finish the day with 680 upvotes, the highest of the day. Dashmote founder Dennis Tan says “Product Hunt is an important validation for any tech startup. We are excited to be given the opportunity to showcase Dashmote and happy that our product was received so well by the community.”

Update

As of 5th of May 2016 Dashmote has received 800 upvotes surpassing, fellow dutch startups Revue 2.0, Blendle and Bundle which received 752, 562 and respectively 399 upvotes.

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About Dashmote

Founded in december 2014 by Dennis Tan, Matthaeus Schreder and Stefan Tan Dashmote is on a mission to make sourcing the visual content as easy as possible by bringing together free & paid high-quality images from the largest visual content providers and delivering them to you in one easy-to-use platform.

Contact: Adrian Alexandru, Dennis Tan

www.dashmote.com - adrian@dashmote.com      , dennis@dashmote.com      

presskit.dashmote.com, www.producthunt.com/tech/dashmote

Pointers

·         Reached Top 10 most upvotes Dutch Startups on Product Hunt

·         Picked up by Japanese blogsite www.nelog.jp (http://nelog.jp/dashmote)

·         More upvotes then Dutch Startups Blendle, Revue, Bundle

·         Dashmote 1th time on Product Hunt

·         Dashmote ends up with most upvotes of the day

·         Dashmote Blogpost “We just got (Product) Hunted. Now what?”

·         Live Streamed the day. (Stream Videos on Facebook Page)

Dashmote is selected as the Second Team to Join The International E-Commerce Programme at Startupbootcamp

AMSTERDAM, 12 October 2015 - Dashmote was selected out of more than 700 applications to join the e-commerce accelerator program at Startupbootcamp Amsterdam. Over the upcoming 3-months, we will collaborate with 150+ mentors, partners and investors to build a world class product with the ultimate goal to become an industry leading sustainable company.

A great opportunity, as Dennis (CEO and co-founder), said: “We are joining because of the unique mentor network and we intent to grow the team skills and our business at lightening speed. Startupbootcamp will accelerate our growth as we could have a thriving environment to bring our business & team to the next level.” This pressure cooker and network will allow us to improve the product and give our consumers instant access to all visual content in an even faster speed.

Startupbootcamp started in 2010 and now operates globally with 13 accelerator programs and 10 locations in e.g. Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Istanbul, Singapore, Miami and New York. With 305 startups, €650,817 average raised and 72% funding rate,  the accelerator program will provide us among other things:

• Extensive mentorship from +150 entrepreneurs, investors and partners

• €450K+ in partner services

• Exposure & connections with 200+ Angels & VCs + clients in Europe and beyond

• Invitation to the SBC global alumni network and alumni growth program

• Pitching at 22 January in front of over 200 investors

As Patrick de Zeeuw, co-founder of SBC, said: “As long as you are open and willing, together we can shorten your road-map and accelerate your business”. And that is what we at Dashmote are totally ready for to start doing now: bringing our customers a search platform where they have access to all visual content.

About Dashmote:

Founded in 2014 with a rebellious spirit and a lofty objective by Dennis zs. Tan and Matthaeus Schreder, Dashmote is on a mission to combine the best sources of visual content. By combining together in one platform the best micro, macro, and authentic stock image providers, they are able to deliver a comprehensive search and collaboration tool for the creative world and not only.

About Dennis s.z. Tan:

An entrepreneur since the age of 15, Dennis z.s. Tan has participated in the creation of over 25 companies and is an international public speaker. He is the co-founder of multiple entrepreneurial groups including Dutch Entrepreneurial Communities, Erasmus Centre for Entrepreneurs Student Association and involved in various European organizations such as Think Young, the European Confederation of Junior Enterprises and FACE Entrepreneurship.

Dashmote Announces API Partnership With INGImages

AMSTERDAM, 07 October 2015 - Dashmote signs first official partnership with INGImages, giving its users access to another 4 million carefully edited professional royalty free images. Consumers now save time, money and find more relevant images.

A great start on the road map of Dashmote. Stefan, CFO Dashmote and responsible for partnerships: “INGImages is excited to work with Dashmote because they believe we will disrupt the visual content market by having an unique technology capable of growing the complete market which will benefit both parties”. It works as following: Dashmote is building a smart search with an so-called elastic search, that is connected with the APIs of the image suppliers. This is done through building an API-wrapper around their partners system to be able to call in the images.

Dashmote operates in a market estimated at $4 billion where 500 million images are sold on a yearly basis. Images have a different meaning for different people, this is why Dashmote strides beyond regular keywords and simple visual recognition. Using a mixture of deep learning algorithms and a library of more than 120 million high-quality images, Dashmote is creating a platform which not only recognizes concepts and emotions, but combines them with user information, to generate highly personalized results. The current partnership brings Dashmote closer to it's goal of targeting each stock market segment, starting with the microstock images where INGImages is our first proud partnership. In the upcoming weeks another four partnerships are in the pipeline to be closed.

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About Dashmote:

Founded in 2014 with a rebellious spirit and a lofty objective by Dennis zs. Tan and Matthaeus Schreder, Dashmote is on a mission to combine the best sources of visual content. By combining together in one platform the best micro, macro, and authentic stock image providers, they are able to deliver a comprehensive search and collaboration tool for the creative world and not only.

About Dennis s.z. Tan:

An entrepreneur since the age of 15, Dennis z.s. Tan has participated in the creation of over 25 companies and is an international public speaker. He is the co-founder of multiple entrepreneurial groups including Dutch Entrepreneurial Communities, Erasmus Centre for Entrepreneurs Student Association and involved in various European organizations such as Think Young, the European Confederation of Junior Enterprises and FACE Entrepreneurship.

€4.5 Million Valuation For Dashmote, Debuts First Feature By Bundling Internet Services, Dashmote Reinvents the Way People Browse the Web

AMSTERDAM,  25  March  2015 –  Dashmote,  an  Amsterdam ­based  tech  startup  that  integrates specialized  services  and  bundles  that  information  for  its  users,  announced  today  the  company valuation and beta launch of its image search feature. Four months after its start, the company raised €450.000  of  pre-­seed  financing,  with  a  post­-money  valuation  of  €4.5  million  allowing  Dashmote  to launch its first feature and start development on its mobile application.

Dashmote is on a mission to bring inspiration and simplicity into everyday routines. By transforming the way people use the web, Dashmote unlocks creativity and cultivates curiosity.  The search feature allows you, the user, to be inspired and connected. With the image search feature, users can search for a theme, compare all images on one webpage and share selected photos instantly.  There is no need to browse different image sources any longer.

Key features of the image search include:

• Direct access to multiple image sources

• Browse sources simultaneously  

• Capture photos and create unique mood boards based on selections

• Interconnected with social channels

Dashmote’s  current  partners  include  major  parties  such  as  Getty,  Fotolia,  iStock,  Pixabay  and Dreamstime. In the coming months, Dashmote expects to add niche services and tap into new social media  image  sources  such  as  Instagram,  Pinterest,  Tumblr  and  Flickr,  who  recently  joined  as  a partner.

With the addition of three employees in March, Dashmote now has a creative and experienced team of  11  working  in house  and  four  supplemental  freelance  developers  located  around  the  globe.

Currently in its validation stage, the company is able to realize long term plans and features.

“The  Dashmote  team  is  passionate  and  ambitious.  The  creativity  and risks  being  taken  to create  a  product  that  inspires  its  users  have  allowed  the  company  to  expand  beyond  its valuation.” – Dennis z.s. Tan, CEO, Dashmote

To  join  Dashmote’s  beta  testing,  please  visit  http://beta.dashmote.com.  For  more  information  about  Dashmote, visit http://presskit.dashmote.com.

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About Dashmote

Dashmote is an intelligent, intuitive interface that gives you smart access to the web. Dashmote integrates specialized services and bundles that information for its users. Everything you need in one place. Founded in 2014 in Amsterdam, it is the brainchild of two curious rebels. For more information, visit www.dashmote.com.

About Dennis z.s. Tan

An entrepreneur since age 15, Dennis z.s. Tan has participated in the creation of over 25 companies and is an active speaker among the community. He is the co-founder of multiple entrepreneurial groups including Dutch Entrepreneurial Student Communities, Erasmus Centre for Entrepreneurs Student Association and involved in various European organizations such as Think Young and the European Confederation of Junior Enterprises. He is a board member of Lobulu Holding, KAJE Notebooks and ECE Students. Dennis studied Economics, Fiscal Economics and Public Administration at Erasmus University Rotterdam and studied abroad in both Asia and Northern America. He is an active philanthropist having participated in a 120km peace walk across Maasai Land, Africa. In his free time, Dennis enjoys music, art, food and all-things entrepreneurial.