Competitive research co Watchful raises $3m

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The Israeli company's platform, which researches rivals, is already being used by some of the world's biggest consumer mobile apps to give them an information edge.

Israeli product strategy intelligence solution company Watchful came out of stealth today and announced that it had raised $3 million in seed funding led by Vertex Ventures Israel together with prominent Israeli angel investors. Watchful's platform, which researches rivals, is already being used by some of the world's biggest consumer mobile apps to give them an information edge.

Watchful founder and CEO Itay Kahana detected the need for competitive research at his previous startup Any.do. At the popular to-do list app, Kahana had to devote expensive R&D resources to developing new features, but without a full picture of what else was happening in the market.

He recalled, "I didn't know what my competitors were doing, and if it was working for them or not. We were forced to make business decisions in the dark. I realized there had to be a better way, and that's how Watchful was born. Competitive intelligence is stuck in the 1990s; we're enabling companies to know about major changes their competitors are planning, months ahead of when these innovations would become public".

Vertex Ventures Israel general partner Yanai Oren said, "Existing competitive intelligence solutions mostly track external metrics like website traffic, downloads or active users. Watchful's approach is unique, delivering in-app insights that enable companies to really understand what their competitors are building, testing and planning."

Watchful provides product strategy intelligence solution, giving leading companies detailed internal information about their competitors' applications to enable them to make informed product decisions. Using a combination of techniques borrowed from cybersecurity, including differential analysis and AI-powered recognition tools, Watchful uncovers hidden features buried inside the app's code, A/B tests, upcoming changes to the app's design, internal user flows and even performance information like startup times and battery usage. The platform also provides this same information about a company's own app, giving large enterprises visibility into what other teams are developing and allowing benchmarking with competitors.

Watchful already has a team of 25 people and several Fortune 100 clients including household names.

Published by Globes, Israel business news - en.globes.co.il - on June 3, 2020

© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2020

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