We’re excited to officially announce the launch of our powerful new AI-Enhanced Startup Research functionality, a transformative upgrade to our Q-scout tool that gives you the power to harness the global startup ecosystem directly in your innovation funnel. Designed to support a holistic technology scouting process, this capability allows you to identify startups with unparalleled precision, easily migrate them into your innovation pipeline, and engage stakeholders across your organization to commercialize the solutions across your business.
The foundation of this new capability is a robust database of over half a million companies, initially sourced from Crunchbase. But we’ve gone beyond simply providing access to this data. Using advanced AI algorithms, each profile is enriched with comprehensive insights about a company’s technologies, products, clients, and industries, offering you smart and highly contextual search capabilities. With this enriched intel, your team can make faster, better-informed decisions and identify startups that align perfectly with your strategic innovation needs.
Our New Technology Scouting Capabilities
AI-Powered Vector Search
Revamp your search experience with our new vector search capability, which employs advanced machine learning for intuitive, free-text queries, ensuring highly accurate and relevant results at light speed.
Comprehensive Enriched Data
Dive deeper into every startup’s potential with up-to-date information, including technology stacks, industry focus, product offerings, and key clients, all enriched by our proprietary AI-powered crawlers to ensure you have the latest insights.
Advanced Filtering and Clustering
Easily narrow down results with familiar filters like location, industry, and company size. Take it a step further with AI-driven clustering that highlights connections between profiles, technologies, and needs—helping you focus on the startups that matter most.
Global and Localized Insights
Whether you’re scouting for global opportunities or focusing on a specific region, tools like our interactive map and radar visualization provide actionable insights. For example, prioritize local startups in Central Europe or identify global leaders in your niche markets.
Seamless Ecosystem Integration
This functionality is fully integrated with the Qmarkets platform, enhancing the Q-scout platform business value. It supports comprehensive innovation management processes, including needs identification, idea management, trend forecasting, portfolio management, and more – all connected via one intuitive interface.
Covering the End-to-End Technology Scouting Journey
Step 1: Identifying and Prioritizing Startup Opportunities
Imagine this: you’ve identified a new trend or theme you want to explore, such as warehouse drones for improved inventory management, and you’re ready to dive into your research. With this new functionality, you can easily collect and prioritize business needs from across your organization, search for relevant startups, and refine your results using advanced clustering. From there, you can compare startups side-by-side to evaluate their technologies, clients, and alignment with your vision.
Once promising startups are identified, you can seamlessly add them to your portfolio, initiate collaborations, and manage their lifecycle with built-in workflows. With every step, Q-scout keeps you organized and focused, ensuring no opportunity slips through the cracks.
Step 2: Collaborative Scouting and External Engagement
The tool doesn’t just help you find startups—it also enables startups to find you. Publish online challenges and invite startups to engage directly with your organization, allowing them to pitch solutions that align with your innovation strategy. With features like AI-assisted pitch writing and tailored submission forms, the process is easy for startups while providing you with all the data you need to assess potential partnerships.
Step 3: Prioritizing and Evaluating Startups
After identifying potential startups, prioritize them by involving relevant experts from your team. Utilize our powerful evaluation tools such as customizable scorecards and workflow automations to involve the relevant stakeholders in the process at the right time. This stage ensures that the most promising startups are advanced for deeper collaboration, setting the stage for impactful innovation partnerships.
Step 4: Insights and Reporting at Your Fingertips
Scouting success doesn’t stop at discovery. With Q-scout’s enhanced reporting capabilities, you can track every startup in your portfolio, measure their progress, and generate impactful reports for stakeholders. Whether it’s visualizing progress across different innovation horizons, assessing market readiness, or comparing startups by key metrics, this functionality ensures your scouting efforts translate into measurable results.
See It in Action
We’re thrilled to see what you can do with this game-changing technology at your fingertips. If you missed our recent webinar, where we showcased this new capability in its full capacity, don’t worry! You can still explore how this functionality can transform your scouting process by watching the video on demand. Alternatively we would love to discuss this with you in more depth through a short call with one of our product experts, you can learn more about Q-scout and book your free demo by clicking here.
