Streamlining Investment Insights

While many sectors within finance have embraced advanced technology, investment professionals continue to grapple with vast amounts of unstructured data. Sorting through this information manually is not only time-consuming but also inefficient, impacting productivity and driving up costs.

Desia aims to overhaul this process. By leveraging AI, the platform extracts critical insights and data related to potential investments, automating the analysis to free up valuable time and resources for professionals.

The concept for Desia emerged from the personal experiences of co-founder and CEO Raffaele Terrone, who faced these challenges during his career in investment banking at Goldman Sachs and Barclays, and in private equity at ICAMAP Investments.

Raffaele Terrone, Co-Founder and CEO at Desia, says: “I recall regularly sifting through data and information until the early hours during my time at Goldman Sachs in order to make fully informed decisions and strategies. With Desia the whole process would have been more efficient and successful. I wish it was available back then.”

Meanwhile, co-founder and Chief Product Officer Alessandro Amaro, along with Chief Technology Officer Mehmet Öner Yalçin, were spearheading the development of AI solutions for the investment team at Advent International, encountering similar challenges.

The three founders initially created Desia as a tool to help Raffaele optimise the analysis of his angel investments after his success with BNPL unicorn Scalapay. However, as the project progressed, they recognised its broader commercial potential. This realisation led them to pursue external funding to accelerate Desia’s growth and expansion.

Terrone continues: “This initial funding round is a major step towards developing the system for more structured and complex investment analyses”.

Ross Mason, Founding Partner at DIG Ventures, said: “Desia's founding team, marked by their impeccable execution and deep market insight, is perfectly positioned to address an essential challenge within the financial industry. This reminds me vividly of the formative days at MuleSoft, where we similarly targeted a critical inefficiency in the market. Their innovative approach to automating data analysis leveraging AI promises substantial advancements in productivity for finance professionals.”

The team headcount is currently 11, of which four are from Advent International, with experience in building and launching successful products at the intersection of technology and finance.

Alessandro Amaro, Co-Founder and CPO at Desia says: “We are privileged to have a team of brilliant people on board to help in our mission. We are tackling a tough problem that has challenged investment professionals for years. The complexity of unstructured data and inefficiencies in data processing are significant challenges, but the potential value we can deliver to our users is massive. With our experience in the investment industry and in building great products, we are well equipped to solve this problem and bring about meaningful change to the industry.”

A Return to the Start Line

Desia marks Raffaele Terrone’s return to entrepreneurship following the major success of his previous venture, Scalapay. In February 2022, Scalapay raised $497 million in a Series B round, achieving a valuation of over $1 billion and earning the title of Italy’s first unicorn.

With Desia, Terrone steps into the role of serial founder. After a brief break from the fast-paced world of startups, he is now fully committed to growing Desia, focusing on both the product and building a strong team.

The $3.3 million pre-seed round was led by Dig Ventures, with additional backing from prominent venture capital firms such as 2100 Ventures, Exor Ventures, and Octopus Ventures. Angel investors included Niccolo Maisto, Founder of FaceIT, Mark Ransford, Senior Advisor at CVC, and Massimo della Ragione, former Partner at Goldman Sachs.

Desia is already in use, with live users on the platform, and the team is targeting expansion in the UK, US, and across Europe. The long-term ambition is to revolutionise financial services by leveraging AI to automate data extraction and analysis, ultimately reshaping how investment professionals work with information.