In 2020, Kathryn Wu, a product engineer at Pinterest, launched a milk tea company called OhTea.
Her goal was to connect with local grocery stores and gift shops to stock her tea. However, she quickly discovered how challenging it was to locate potential retailers and their points of contact. This fragmented market ultimately contributed to OhTea's downfall.
"I failed to reach product market fit," Wu told TechCrunch. "It’s just very hard to find that retail information. I needed to pull from several tools, pull up a big spreadsheet and I thought maybe I should just solve my own pain point."
This experience inspired Wu to co-found Openmart three years later. Openmart, an AI-driven alternative to Zoominfo, aggregates data from public business filings, maps, customer reviews, and other sources to create a comprehensive database of local businesses. Users can input prompts specifying the types of businesses they want to sell to, and Openmart generates a list of potential sales leads, complete with business owners' names and contact information.
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Wu co-founded Openmart with Richard He, a fellow Pinterest intern and member of an Asian entrepreneurship community. The duo bonded over their dogs and shared entrepreneurial spirit. They realised that large enterprises also struggled to navigate local business sales, prompting them to focus on building a product for this market segment.
"Our core focus is still local business," He said. "We know it is a huge pain point. We are confident this AI agent can generate all outbound sales as we grow into more sectors."
Openmart, a member of Y Combinator’s W24 cohort, recently raised a $2.75 million seed round from investors including Y Combinator, Rebel Fund, and Afore Capital. The startup plans to focus on enterprise clients initially, with plans to develop a tier for medium-sized enterprises in the future.
By leveraging AI, Openmart aims to revolutionise how enterprises connect with local businesses, making the process efficient and effective. Wu and He are committed to maintaining their focus on small and medium-sized businesses, ensuring they remain the go-to experts in this niche.
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