Munich Startup: Who are you and what do you do? Please introduce yourselves!
Leon Zucchini: I’m Leon (CEO) and am originally from South Africa. As an economist, I worked in consulting, research and digital transformation for 15 years before Curiosity. Rafael (CTO) is from Brazil and is an aeronautical engineer. Before Curiosity, he did research in applied mathematics and AI for just shy of 10 years. We met at Airbus and then realized that we lived on the same street. That turned into friendship and now Curiosity.
Munich Startup: What problem does your startup solve?
Leon Zucchini: Can you remember how frustrating it was the last time you couldn’t find a file? Curiosity solves that problem. We all work with many clouds and apps, and it’s becoming more and more difficult to find the information we need. Curiosity performs a major search that goes through all files and apps. That saves time and lets you concentrate on what’s important.
Curiosity has already been available for teams in companies for a while now. The desktop app just recently came out so everyone can install and use Curiosity. It can be downloaded for free at curiosity.ai.
Data deep dive
Munich Startup: But that’s nothing out of the box!
Leon Zucchini: Surprisingly, it is. “Enterprise search” systems have been around for a long time, but they are so elaborate and expensive that they are only worthwhile for big teams at big companies. Then there are search apps for individuals, but they only search through file names (not content!) and a lot of them send your files to the cloud.
Curiosity is the only search that is easy to install but still dives deep into files and email attachments. And the files always remain secure on your computer (or in the company).
Munich Startup: What have been your three biggest challenges so far?
Leon Zucchini: Bootstrapping with a team of four was not always easy…and then corona came on top of that. We’ve definitely had some sleepless nights, but we’re quite pleased now.
Focusing was an issue for us for quite a while: we wanted to keep all doors open, which made the product and sales complex in nature. We really had to force ourselves to toss features and use cases, but having a stronger focus really helped us.
Counter to the trend, we finally brought the team together in Munich. We started with remote work, but the communication gaps were just too big.
Tapping into new target groups
Munich Startup: How is business going?
Leon Zucchini: Well! We’ve been working with corporations like Airbus and Telefónica for a long time now. Now we’re excited about being able to help individuals and small teams with their searches with our desktop app.
Munich Startup: What do you think about Munich as a startup location?
Leon Zucchini: Munich is great – we never wanted to be anywhere else. We feel very much at home in the startup scene here and value the communication with other founders. We’ve also benefitted from the broad range of support offered – for example from Werk1 and Wayra.
Munich Startup: Home cooking or takeout?
Leon Zucchini: Home cooking: We both like to cook and like to cook a lot.