Investing in Detail

It’s never too early. This is what we always say to the founders. Once we have built conviction that the opportunity fits our investment thesis and that the founders have the ability to execute on the product vision, any lack of proof points doesn’t stop us from investing.

A recent example is Detail. Detail wants to help creators produce high-quality, engaging live video experiences that looks and sounds amazing, without investments in equipment, software, or technical skills.

We invested in the company at formation: pre-incorporation, pre-prototype, pre-team, pre-MRR. All we have to assess was its amazing founder Paul Veugen, a thoughtful deck, an opinionated product vision.

All what matters for us is backing a product we believe in, built by people we want to work with.

I was introduced to Paul by Tom Carrington Smith.

Tom is a long-time friend of Connect, we invested in his first company CharlieHR in 2016. Tom is a very talented product leader with a great eye for product talent. And he is a good matchmaker. He knew that I was looking at SaaS platforms to empower the passion economy. He knew well that product founders like Paul fit at Connect, since we are a product-centric investor who does care and value the products that founders are crafting.

When he found out that Paul intended to raise from a restricted network of trusted angels and not from a VC, he made a case for Connect and convinced Paul to speak to us. We met, we clicked, we leaned into. We were in.

We led a $2m preseed round, alongside product-minded founders and angel investors close to Connect such as Alexander Ljung, Tony Jamous and Sten Tamkiviou. Techcrunch covered it.

The product is very opinionated. Not really in terms of the pain point. Since Zoom (and its mee-too product) is designed for corporates and business meeting, creators must fit their live events into videoconference software. This is a problem in plain sight.

Detail’s opinionated stance is rather axed on their solution, which can be summed into three bold positions:

1. Camera-first. Detail picks a singular, different starting point to everyone else: a camera software which outperforms specialised camera hardware. The camera software is the first thing that requires fixing in order to give creators new superpowers and to produce better live video experiences for their viewers. Detail’s camera software gives creators the same live video quality as an entire professional studio camera crew. For creative entrepreneurs, changing the UX by replacing expensive hardware with software is a very compelling sell.
2. The video infrastructure layer is now commoditised. Live video platforms are widely available and are getting better and better. A stable connection and reliable video delivery are table stakes and no longer enough to be associated with a great UX.
3. A purpose-built UX for immersive and intimate live video is missing. Online video from the consumption side hasn’t changed in over 15 years, since Skype. Everything is designed as a conference call — sync-only calls, with a single camera POV. Detail is taking the camera from our phones, getting deep into its guts to create an amazing experience for both creators and their audiences.

There is no doubt Paul is a product-first founder and a product crafter. He built the first alpha himself without waiting for his engineering team. The rest of the founding team is 100% composed of product builders who know what it takes to create extraordinary experiences, and how hard it is to scale them. Furthermore, he cares about making creators successful. Detail will empower them to run their micro-businesses on its platform and will align with them.

The potential for Detail to be a product that people love is very high. It will be a user-centric SaaS designed around both creators and audiences’ needs. Detail will in fact enable creators to fully express their passions and creativity while enabling their viewers to fully experience the event for which they are paying. Creators will eventually run their events on Detail’s platform which will become a central part of their lives.

Here are a few points-of-view and themes that helped us believe in Detail’s immense potential for adoption:

• Video is the next big thing: screening (video) and streaming (live) are eating the event world.
• Unbundling Zoom & co: the current leaders are SaaS tools designed for enterprises and business calls, and they are not nearly good enough for anything else. Plus, they have no lock-ins.
• As events are moving online, creative entrepreneurs are numbered in the millions, growing fast and seeking SaaS tools to run their business and make money.
• The increasing value of consumer spending on asynchronous events. What used to be spent offline in certain categories (fitness, entertainment, education) has moved online, mostly in the form of asynchronous courses. Detail will claim a percentage of that.

Detail has an opinionated product vision to solve an untapped gap in live video, and a team with the right product mindset to execute it. We look forward to seeing the power of Detail in action. Creators will run 10x more immersive and 10x more engaging live video events. Creators will use SaaS tools provided by Detail to take control over their own community, strengthen the relations with their fans, and monetise their passions. Detail will become one of the best CSaaS. Once adopted by creatives categories, we envision that Detail could become the go-to solution for even more use cases.

But one step at a time. Detail’s beta is in active development and the test is going to start soon. Paul got the band back from Human and Mapbox, with Laurier and Fredrik joining as co-founders. And for my part, I’m really enjoying working with such an amazing team.

Watch this trio!