AI-Focused Recommendation Tool Adds Human Touch

Morning Report: Siftery adds a human touch to its data-centered process.

Siftery, a San Francisco-based startup that has raised just over $4 million according to Crunchbase, has a counter-trend product out that caught our eye.

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Before we get into what’s new, however, what is Siftery? As a product, Siftery reminds me slightly of Wakoopa, a Dutch tool that (voluntarily) tracked your app usage over time. It was super neat. Siftery does something slightly similar, with a focus on giving out software recommendations at the company-level.

Tell Siftery what your company uses, and it will tell you apps that you might want to give a spin. Some of it is obvious (Slack and Google Analytics are popular!), but the firm has tens of thousands of pieces of software in its system, so it should be able to help most people find something new to, at least, test.

But aside from recommendations, what’s new from the startup? The company has announced it is launching reviews for the software it recommends. The software reviews will be limited to 250 characters, as longer reviews “aren’t conducive to efficient consumption and knowledge transfer,” according to the company.

But regardless of whether software reviews are short or long, the move into human-generated, usage-based reviews struck me as notable.

To understand why, here’s what Siftery has to say about itself on its homepage. See if you can spot the buzzword du jure:

Tell us what software you’re using and we’ll automatically give you tailored recommendations.

Our smart AI is powered by data on 40,119 products used and recommended at over 380,238 companies.

The correct answer: “AI.”

AI — along with crypto and self-driving tech — is a white-hot startup trend. Siftery, however, is foregoing appending AI technology onto human-built recommendations. Instead, it is sticking humans onto AI-built recommendations.

2017 really is the Upside Down.

From the Crunchbase Daily:

Pre-seed is the new seed

• As seed and Series A rounds have grown increasingly larger, a new category of funding has emerged: the pre-seed round. Industry observers say seed rounds today closely resemble what Series A funding looked like five to 10 years ago. So, it’s probably safe to say that pre-seed capital is what seed funding was a decade ago, Crunchbase News reports.

Chipmaker Marvell buying Cavium

• Consolidation in the semiconductor industry continues. In the latest deal, Marvell Technology Group, a maker of chips for storage and communications, has agreed to acquire Cavium, a San Jose, Calif.-based developer of networking microprocessors, for about $6 billion in cash and stock.

Deliveroo raises $98M

• Deliveroo, the London-based restaurant meal delivery service, has added another $98 million to its recent Series F, bringing the round total to $480 million. T. Rowe Price led the round, which values Deliveroo at more than $2 billion.
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