Tamar Gomez and Wiem Gharbi: Cofounders at Ankar on raising $20m!

0:00Wiem Gharbi:Hello and welcome back to the Scaling Europe show. I'm Seb Johnson. I'm here with two great founders, Wiem M Tamar, who have founded Anka AI and who've got a very exciting announcement that they've just made. I understand that you've just raised a$20 million Series A led by Atomaco. That's amazing news. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you, Seb. How are you feeling today? How does it feel to kind of get the news out there?

0:23Tamar Gomez:Well, we're super energized for us. It's the right time as well, just before the break, kind of getting out, you know, get it out to our customers, get it out to investors as well, to all the prospective hires that we want to make and get the message out that we're building the best team out there in the field of AI and innovation.

0:42Wiem Gharbi:Amazing. So you built Ankar in the kind of the patent IP industry, but can you just like give a bit more detail or flavor for people who may not have heard of you guys?

0:52Tamar Gomez:Yeah, absolutely. So what we're really building is kind of the backbone of innovation in enterprise. So the goal and the vision is any team that will be working on breakthrough ideas, be it a druggable target or an electrical engine for an airplane, will be opening ANCAR and it will be sitting at the interface between the knowledge that's out there, papers, patents, and the internal knowledge of their organization. And teams like R &D teams, IP teams, patent teams, external, internal will be collaborating on the platform to get from an idea that's in the head of an inventor to a bankable asset that an enterprise can leverage to kind of like dominate their space technologically, basically.

1:37Wiem Gharbi:Amazing. How did you two get into this world? Like, you know, this is, I don't know, it's an interesting industry to be in. how did you what was your journey to this to this place yeah so um so we met we and i met at

1:50Tamar Gomez:palantir actually we were both working at palantir um and on my side i was um as part of my last role at palantir after deploying software i'd got in governments and large organizations and enterprises i was put in charge of making sure uh we were actually harvesting the innovations that we were working on inside the business before the ipo of the company and and kind of building them towards patents and so realized that the tools to kind of track these inventions and make sure and and give them value were really super legacy or actually non-existent and the processes were completely broken which meant that you were spending years actually getting your invention to a patent and that was like breaking the flow of innovation in general um and and worked with wm who was on the inventor side uh on this problem and we thought wow this is a this is a massive problem to go after So it's about the innovation economy, which is a trillion dollar economy.

2:42Tamar Gomez:And so we kind of ran for it.

2:45Wiem Gharbi:Amazing. And, you know, when you were at Palantir, was it always the ambition to kind of build your own? Was that always, I don't know, like a stepping stone to being founders?

2:56Tamar Gomez:Palantir is an amazing company and it's an amazing kind of training ground for becoming a founder. And I think after Palantir, it was clear that the next challenge that we could take on is building something from scratch and solving a problem that we felt engaged and passionate about, but also that we kept some form of exposure to while we were at Palantir. And I think what is unique within this culture that we continue to bring to what we are building at Ankar is this idea of like extreme high agency environment that I think becomes a factory for founders to some extent, which you can find in a lot of other places because most kind of companies encourage people to stay within specific lines.

3:43Tamar Gomez:but there's like a bit of like chaos at Palantir and a bit of like decentralization of like decision making and like frontline kind of product development that leads people to think about whatever part of the platform they're building on to become their own and kind of becoming entrepreneur after this becomes a kind of almost the natural kind of next thing.

4:06Wiem Gharbi:Yeah I mean it's I've spoken to a few ex-Palantir founders now it feels like there's especially even here in Europe, there's a really strong cohort of people who started the create Palantir and are now building their own. Is that helpful in investor conversations to have that sort of brand on your CV?

4:22Tamar Gomez:It definitely helps. I think there's obviously kind of all of the excitement around like what Palantir is doing these days. And like now also kind of what was a bit of a contrarian view in the past, like this FGE kind of motion that is becoming more and more kind of adopted today that leads to investors believing in what founders that come from this factory can achieve.

4:47Wiem Gharbi:And so you raised, you know, you raised, I think,$3 million earlier on this year from index. It's a relatively short timeframe to go from a$3 million seed from index to a$20 million led by Atomica, but still index are doubling down. What's happened in between those two rounds that enabled you to kind of go bigger yeah three million pounds by the way three million pounds

5:12Tamar Gomez:and yeah it's um we basically with this um with this seed investment we were able to um you know kick start the product build the first version of the product patent drafting patent prosecution infringement detection so kind of like attack the patent angle angle of this innovation life cycle and start kind of like putting out there putting it out there in front of our customer in front of our prospects and who became customers. And we've seen like, you know, basically PMF, we've seen like a lot of traction, a lot of adoption and fundamentally underpinning all of that, that it brings a lot of value to our users.

5:49Tamar Gomez:And this value is concretely making this whole process of going from an idea to a patent, just a much more efficient, faster and high quality process, which is kind of changing the whole way innovation is captured fundamentally. Well, that's kind of the goal. And so we thought we have to double down basically, because we're seeing this, you know, we're seeing this inflection point and we have to capture that moment.

6:13Wiem Gharbi:And when you, I think you mentioned two things that I want to go a bit deeper on. You said like the traction, finding product market fit, and then you also mentioned like your customers are seeing the value. So can we just touch on like the traction so far, kind of, you know, what's that been like? By traction, what do you mean? Is that kind of not just, you know, getting the sales get getting your foot in the door but also expanding within clients and people knocking at your door are you seeing strong market pulls can you touch a bit on what's that traction looked and

6:40Tamar Gomez:felt like the the strongest um kind of signal of um traction for us has been our ability to not only penetrate but also expand within enterprise companies um the likes of like value one of the leading suppliers in Europe, L 'Oréal, one of the kind of leading companies in the world, Vaurice, kind of top law firm in the US. All of these are household names that don't typically buy experimental tech. They buy category-defining companies. So not only are they buying the product, but also they are coming back for the next challenge and the next pain point. And we're going to them with, hey, these are the other things that we've built and we would love for you to engage on where this enthusiasm from these leaders that haven't been using a lot of software in the past.

7:35This space of patents deserves better.

7:40Tamar Gomez:It's been very shallow from a software point of view. And such a critical kind of component of innovation hasn't been served today. And we wanted the additional kind of ammunition for us to go faster and deliver more for these customers and beyond.

7:55Wiem Gharbi:And on that, you know, one of the things that I hear from a lot of European founders is a reluctance from enterprise companies. You know, people like L 'Oreal that you mentioned, who are very huge companies, very kind of traditional household names, brands across Europe. There's a reluctance from companies like them to try new innovative tools. And that, you know, one of the things that separates us from the U.S. is that in America, they're much more willing to take risks and bet on young startups. How have you found that? Because you have signed some amazing clients who fit that bill of sort of like huge organizations, but very traditional.

8:28Tamar Gomez:I think we're like, this is one of the inflection points that we've seen is a, when we started, you know, back when we started with the company, talking about AI tools and talking about deploying these tools in the innovation process would lead to conversations in your in our, you know, in especially in Europe around like data security, which are very valid and super valid concerns, by the way. but as we've you know as we've as the journey has gone we can now see that there's a definite push and mind mindset shift from like um you know is it going to replace my job to wow this is actually if for in order for me to remain like uh competitive we need you know i need to adopt that so there's been this like tailwind of adoption fundamentally and of like awareness that these tools are critical for these companies to stay like relevant fundamentally.

9:21Tamar Gomez:And then I'd say, actually, these leaders, these technological leaders in automotive, in pharma, in consumer goods that are European are leaders for a reason. And it's because they're incredibly innovative and they're actually quite risk taking and strategic. And I think that's something that we've seen in our conversations with them is like they actually are quite open to trying these new things if it if there's an ROI like if there's a business case and if it's going to make them better fundamentally that's amazing to hear yeah it's great to hear I mean it's it's one of the

9:53Wiem Gharbi:things that I think is yeah we need more more of that you know we need more companies taking the chances and being willing to use this like amazing technology to kind of yeah stay competitive or even get ahead um and then like on that second part talking about value you know like how are you able to sort of see and track value for your existing customers on on on that point sub we we work with um a lot of like top law firms specialized in in patents

10:22Tamar Gomez:and leading kind of innovators enterprise companies um and they have a responsibility towards their boards to ensure that they are spending their dollars on value adding tools so as part of like how we engage with our customers ultimately we're helping them transform their business it's not like we're not selling features we're not selling like incremental technology like we're helping them kind of lean into AI and the potential of like LLMs by creating like specialized platform for like patents and like for innovation more broadly and the helping build that like business case is part how we engage is we spend time with them on the ground.

11:08Tamar Gomez:We have parts of our team who go on site, sit next to them. It's ultimately kind of a human emotion kind of piece of like helping them see the value out of these tools and actually do work. So we help them draft patent applications. We help them draft invention disclosures. We help them find potential infringements, respond to office actions and see how the the tools is accelerating actual work on actual examples of like things that they're engaged in. And then that, that helps us like work hand in hand with them to build like what, what is the business case here? What is the potential kind of ROI if we were to deploy this like more largely within, within your team.

11:49Wiem Gharbi:Amazing. And, you know, going back to the round, you know, as I said, this is like, you know, like seven or eight months is being between the two rounds and dramatically larger, I guess. Why did you decide to raise that much right now, as opposed to, you know, waiting a few months or doing it earlier? Like, why was now the right time and why was 20 million the right size?

12:11Tamar Gomez:I think on the so under on the right now, I think it's clearly that we've we felt a clear inflection point in the market. Like everyone is ready. Like, you know, you obviously have a curve of early adopters and so on and so forth. But like most of these top law firms, most of these like Fortune 500 companies are now looking at tools and are thinking about, OK, how can we how can we improve this process of ours? And so it's now is the time to go and, you know, and grab that land fundamentally. So that's very clear. And then the side of the this size of round is we need the war chest and the ammo to go in like on this campaign.

12:48Tamar Gomez:And this is the right of mind to do so, to go and solidify our European lead and then go and conquer as well the US market fundamentally, which is, as you said, a market where people adopt tools very quickly as well.

13:05Wiem Gharbi:And so have you got clients live in the US now or is that something you're just starting to do? Can you touch a bit about that?

13:11Tamar Gomez:we already have um clients live in the us today um and are engaging with like several other kind of um companies for potential partnerships um and this like initial kind of penetration has giving us confidence that we should kind of go and double down with the presence there and what does that

13:32Wiem Gharbi:presence look like are you thinking boots on the ground a hub somewhere in new york san francisco

13:36Tamar Gomez:So, yeah, definitely boots on the ground. Again, because of this kind of approach of being very close to our customers, which we think will be critical in building the best product out there. We need people who can physically drive adoption, partnership, engagement.

13:55Wiem Gharbi:Will that be one of you, both of you? How are you seeing it between you two?

14:00Tamar Gomez:We'll start by having one of us leading the team there. All of that will be defined by how much

14:12Wiem Gharbi:goes. Are you thinking New York or San Francisco?

14:18Tamar Gomez:You will be surprised by the answer Seb. It could be neither. Interesting. Okay. No, because, you know, our industry is is is an industry of like manufacturing companies and patent law firms that are they are some in New York and there are some in San Francisco. But there are also a lot in Washington, in Atlanta, where the USPTO is in Austin in the manufacturing belt. So East Coast might be our first point of landing, but but it might not be New York, basically.

14:50Wiem Gharbi:Interesting. OK, sounds cool. And when you think, you know, you've now got this sort of like war chest to deploy, to expand and to grow. You're obviously going to be hiring people in the US. How else are you thinking about expanding the team and expanding the product? Yeah. Like what roles are you hiring for whereabouts in the UK, across Europe as well as the US? What does that look like?

15:09Tamar Gomez:So we're going to use this kind of war chest for us to be able to expand our product. So we want to take what we've built today to the next level to make it transformational. Ultimately, we want to help kind of pave the path towards the future of patents and ultimately the future of innovation. So we want to double down on what we've built, but also expand the breadth and depth of our platform to serve more of the pain points that we're seeing from our customers. So that means we're going to recruit a lot of engineers. Usability is an important piece for us. So we're also leaning into product design.

15:55Tamar Gomez:We believe that LLM-based tools can only lead to value if people are actually using them and if there's widespread adoption. So how can we make it as seamlessly integrate with the workflows of our end users and make it very intuitive for them to see that this is kind of an assistant, a tool for human augmentation as opposed to kind of complex tools that are very, very difficult to engage with and adopt. And then ultimately, great product without great distribution doesn't matter. So we're going to double down on the distribution piece. So we're hiring in our kind of go to market function with a mix of specialists that can bring kind of empathy to the patent kind of process and the intersection between patents and like how LLMs can be value adding in the space and our product can be value adding in the space.

16:47Tamar Gomez:But also more kind of a consultative kind of athlete type of sales approach to help bridge the gap between that. Like this is where we are now and this is where we'll be in the future. Yeah.