Vidya Peters: CEO of DataSnipper - the fastest growing company in the Netherlands

0:00Vidya Peters:Hello, and welcome back to the Scaling Europe show. I'm Seb, and we have got an amazing lineup today. But before we do, I want to say a quick shout out to my sponsors, Gabba and Checkout.com. Gabba is an amazing platform for other startups to come and find vetted service providers, and Checkout.com is, of course, one of Europe's leading fintechs. Today, I'm joined by Vidya. Can you quickly just introduce yourself, who you are, what are you building? Yeah, absolutely. First, thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be on this podcast. I'm Vidya Peters. I lead Data Snipper. We are headquartered in Amsterdam, and we like to make the lives of auditors and finance teams just a little bit easier by taking the grunt work out of it and making the job fun again.

0:40So super excited to chat with you today. Thanks for having me.

0:43Vidya Peters:Amazing. It's great to have you. Super interesting company. You're doing really, really well. One of the Netherlands' fastest-growing companies. I actually spent six weeks doing an audit internship I ended up not pursuing it full term I ended up doing management consultancy at one of the big four and then doing strategy consultancy at one of the big four so I'm very familiar with that world are you able to give a bit more detail or flavor as to how you're helping that industry and how you're helping to kind of take take care of some of that work for them your experience is the experience of many people aspiring for a profession or a career in audit and finance.

1:23What they often do is start off in an internship and they picture themselves advising clients, taking the 10 ,000 foot view on the business, where the risks are and how best to advise their clients to navigate them, to mitigate them. And instead, the reality of the day-to-day job that they find themselves in is extremely manual, very, very detailed oriented, error prone work that's mind numbingly boring. And that's the inspiration behind Data Snipper. So we built Data Snipper because we had an auditor in KPMG. His name's Alwyn. And his picture actually to this day is in our lobby as a source of inspiration.

2:01But Alwyn was meeting with the founders of Data Snipper and he talked about how much he hated his work, how this was not the role that he thought he was going to be having for the rest of his life. and the founder said, well, what is it about this job that makes it so painful? And he said, look, my job is to check and verify transactions to ensure that people are truly saying what is true about their business. And while that sounds perfectly reasonable at the highest level, the day-to-day reality is you're looking for a needle in a haystack. You're looking through mounds and mounds of paperwork, trying to isolate a transaction and verifying it down to the scent.

2:37And what that means is it's a lot of searching and finding. It's a lot of matching and then providing that information back to your manager so that they can verify that you did your work accurately. And it's an enormous amount of time and it can be quite, quite boring to get through. And so that's the problem that the founders of Data Snipper set out to solve, which is how can you automate this? How can you use technology? How can you use AI to do this as rapidly as possible and then make that job fun again? So you are in the seat of advising your clients. So you are looking at the business more holistically and not just doing the job of searching and finding.

3:15Vidya Peters:And I saw recently that you talked about using agents and agentic technology in this world. Can you talk a bit about how you're hoping to leverage agents to solve this problem? So DataSniper has been on a journey of how can we automate more and more with technology. So the earliest version of the product was simply about bringing data in with a click and drop, which is where the inspiration for the name Data Snipper came from, which is how do you snip data and create a cross-reference, create an audit trail. The next version of that was how do you build algorithms to pattern match and to match data between what you're looking to verify and the hordes of documents you're looking to verify them with?

3:54Or how do you use algorithms to find anomalies in financial statements and documents you're looking to audit? The third level of automation was how do you use Gen.AI to actually gather data and find insights from documents. It was a very typical rag solution to an age-old problem, which is find me the answers to this question. Now we are on the evolution of being able to build agents with Gen.AI, which is, hey, imagine you have a junior level analyst on your team and you would give them a set of tasks to do that are quite routine. And it could be, hey, agent, go into this database and pull out all of this information, extract these key fields for me, match them to the sample, create a cross-reference for me.

4:38And imagine all of those tasks are immediately done for you. Now you actually feel like you've added a resource to the team and you have now used the next level of automation to do an entire set of tasks that would take someone hours to do.

4:54Vidya Peters:Amazing. Yeah. Based on my limited experience and just, I think, the culture in the big four, it always felt like that there was such an opportunity to automate so much of this work that there's so much of it really was almost like box ticking you know like it really could be done by an agent which i think is amazing i wanted to ask about your experience selling to the big four i mean you sell to you know big accounting firms like that but you also sell sort of in-house as well it looks like what's that process of selling new and innovative technology to i guess like very traditional industries or maybe like traditional departments inside bigger enterprise clients?

5:34We are very fortunate to have global agreements with the big four. So we count KPMG, EY, Deloitte and PwC as our global customers. We serve them across dozens of countries globally. But we also serve all of the largest external audit network firms as our customers. And additionally, as you mentioned, we also serve the internal audit and finance teams of large Fortune 500 companies such as Barclays, Morgan Stanley, Hilton Hotel, Siemens. And there's one thing that is common across all of these, which is it's really important to go bottoms up and ensure that you're reaching the users, the actual users of the product and giving them access to your offering and ensuring that they're getting as much value and time savings out of it as possible.

6:21When you do that well, they become the change makers within that organization. It's how we were successful with the big four is reaching the users first, winning them over and having them be your biggest advocates within the large procurement organizations, within the large decision making rooms in order to make those global contracts work.

6:42Vidya Peters:Amazing. How would you get those initial users on board? I imagine, you know, in the big four, that might be the more junior members of the team, maybe like managers, associates, senior associates. How are you able to get them both using the product and then act as advocates? It starts with starting local. So some of our earliest users, such as Alwyn here at KPMG Netherlands, we started working with local teams in the regions where we had access to them. And we would give them access to the product to use, to actually share with colleagues. And then there were two ways it would go. One is either they had very productive feedback for us on what we could improve on the product.

7:21And that's phenomenal. That's immediate product research that we could then take to improve the product. Or they love the product. And then they would pass it on to a colleague and say, hey, this saved me a bunch of time. You should check it out. And we allowed the virality and the word of mouth to help that product create more awareness within the department. And then suddenly you would actually find that, hey, you had the senior people going, what is the software that's being used? We really need to vet this. But by then, you'd created a groundswell movement among the users that made it easier for you to have a conversation with the decision makers about how they're using the product, what value it provides.

7:58So we think of it as a combined bottoms up and a tops down motion to really make this happen. And it's a formula that we use even today. So we always offer a free pilot for users whenever they're considering data snipper. and we discuss with them the ROI of the savings that they saw during the pilot of the product, because the product is architected in a way where you can see every action that's performed and the potential time savings from that action that was taken. And so it becomes very straightforward to say, hey, within two weeks, you were able to save this many hours of work. And here's the impact that that drove for you as a team.

8:33And so it's a model that has served us well till today.

8:37Vidya Peters:Yeah, amazing. It's, yeah, it's like very, yeah, I think bottom up grassroots is, yeah. And I think once you get in with people and those users who really love a product, then it does just spread. And especially a place like somewhere like the Big Formulist, huge communities of people who all know each other and work closely together. I also wanted to touch on working from the Netherlands, building from the Netherlands. You've been the fastest growing company in the Netherlands for the last couple of years. An amazing tech company. You've reached unicorn status, raised money from some of the biggest VCs across Europe.

9:10Vidya Peters:What's it been like building a tech company from the Netherlands, especially Amsterdam? Amsterdam's got a vibrant tech community, but it's not quite the size and the scale that you might see in Paris or Stockholm or London. What's that experience been like? And have you ever considered moving somewhere else? I think Amsterdam is a fantastic city to be headquartered in such a great central location. you have access to enormous amount of local talent here, tech talent. That is a real privilege to be building a company in. I would also say the time zone is quite an advantage because you can wake up in the morning and you can sell to Asia and Australia, New Zealand.

9:50And in the afternoon, you can wake up and serve customers in the US. And a lot of people don't fully appreciate that time zone advantage because I spend most of my career in the Bay Area and the Bay Area is great as long as you're selling mostly to the United States, but it offers very little overlap with other major markets, which is why you tend to see most Bay Area companies start and have a majority of their revenue still be highly US-centric. Whereas if you start in Europe, you start with a very global mindset and you really think of the world as your addressable opportunity, you think of customers globally.

10:26And I think that's tremendously important. The other advantage that I have seen us be able to have is hire talent that's truly international. When you're based in the Bay Area, you're fairly limited to talent that's already in the Bay Area. And it's going to be very challenging for you to hire diverse language speakers, whereas it's very, very feasible for us to hire German speakers, French, Spanish, English, native speakers, all here in Amsterdam to serve a very global client base. We even have Japanese and Mandarin speakers right here in our office, which allows us to serve those unique markets.

11:03People don't realize that it's incredibly challenging to hire international talent in the Bay Area with those diverse language skills, not to mention that visa sponsorship has always been challenging, but got even more challenging in the last couple of months. It is very straightforward in comparison in the Netherlands to be able to sponsor people for a visa when you can show that they have a unique skill set that you require to grow the company. And so we have employees from dozens of countries. I think our employee base represents between 65 and 75 different countries within the company, which is, I think, a tremendous asset when you're trying to build a truly global product.

11:41Vidya Peters:That's amazing. That's super interesting that I guess when you're building in a smaller market, you have to just think global initially, right from the get go. Did that change your product roadmap at all? Did you have to think about a product that would work in 170 countries versus just the Netherlands? And how does that vary for kind of the products that you've built? That's actually a really great observation because inherent to Data Snipper is that we have solved the problems in audit and finance that are most country agnostic. So we don't dabble in country-specific regulation on how things are unique to China or Japan.

12:17We focus on the audit problems that are truly universal. And it's why we have been able to expand and grow globally as rapidly as we have. So today we have customers in over 170 countries, and we focus on the audit workflows that are the same for an auditor in Tokyo as they are for one in Rio. And from the beginning, we have focused on being able to identify and work in multiple languages. And so we can identify a document written in Mandarin as well as we can that's written in Thai as one in French. And so it has helped us really think of a very global opportunity from day one.

12:54Vidya Peters:Yeah, it's so interesting. And I'm curious, you've set out to build a global product from day one to solve problems that you're seeing across all 170 countries that you operate in. Have you seen different pulls from different markets, either for specific use cases or problems, or just overall, perhaps some of these problems that are global in nature are even more prominent in local markets? Have you seen different kind of push and pulls from different places? We absolutely do. Every day we're faced with nuances that are specific to a market. So for example, in Japan, Nissan can be written apparently in four different ways and still mean Nissan.

13:36We find that in Australia, it's not just prior quarter or prior year financial comparisons that matter, but also prior period because they could do six month comparisons, which is very unique to what's happening in Australia. we find that commas and decimals are differently used based on which country or market you're operating in. And the biggest question we grapple with is, do we feel like this is an important enough problem for us to solve for? And in all of these examples, we decided they are because we have to be able to identify Japanese characters effectively for us to serve our customers there adequately.

14:14and there are things that we decide we are not going to focus on because it's such a niche issue that it becomes very challenging for us to scale our product in a way that we're solving the most and the biggest important problems for the customers rather than focusing on the niches and that's a constant trade-off and sometimes we get it right and sometimes we don't.

14:36Vidya Peters:What's your framework or approach when you're having these product discussions? Is it okay the size of our clients in these countries? Is it okay? We think this is a really painful issue if we don't solve it. What kind of things are you kind of weighing up to decide? There are two aspects if I were to whittle it down. One is how big is this problem? And second, what is our ability to solve it? And can we solve it now versus later is almost like a part B of that. And so on the first part, it is, for example, in our customer base, how big is this problem? Because it's not just, and I want to be really mindful, It's not just about the opportunity we can get.

15:12It's about doing right by the customers that we already have within our base. And that's more important is learning and earning to keep the business we already have rather than just focusing on what's the new business we can go get. And so, for example, the question of the period or the comma was a no-brainer because that is fundamental to how Europe counts as numbers versus the U.S. And there's no way we would say that's not enough of a problem for us to solve. So that was a clear yes prioritization. prioritization. B, are we well positioned to solve this? Because there are times when we feel like, hey, we have hit the limits of how well we can solve this given our capabilities, given the algorithms.

15:55And sometimes it will take you an inordinate amount of resources to get the next 1 % improvement in that product. And then there's a part B to this, which is, hey, could Gen AI solve this better now? Because we have more tools now in our toolkit. And this is a question that we started to ask ourselves two years ago when Gen AI came onto the market and helped us solve more problems in a more innovative way than we could have before. And so it's usually a combination of these where we really kind of put these issues through the filter to see what we would prioritize and bubble up. And by the way, Gen AI is not a blunt instrument for everything.

16:34And there are problems that come up where we feel, you know what, even with Gen AI, this is not going to be

16:39Vidya Peters:solved as well as we would like interesting okay yeah and i imagine the the kind of the advance of jenny i was quite transformative for your business and probably enabled you to do things that you couldn't have done when you were you know founded seven eight years ago i'm also curious to see like how has this changed the way that you're approaching like fundraising or broader market dynamics you obviously became a unicorn only last year um but right now things are very hot the market is crazy hot you're building at this amazing intersection of you know very verticalized AI, Gen AI, agentic tooling for an industry that really desperately needs it.

17:15Vidya Peters:It feels like now, given how hot the market is, you could probably raise again at a big evaluation. Are you thinking about this? Are you looking at the market dynamics and thinking, okay, well, how does that change how I need to capitalize my business? Or are you just still thinking, well, we're well capitalized, but just heads down building the product. I'm just curious to hear your take as the CEO, having a look at how crazy the market is. there's no doubt that gen ai has accelerated our product roadmap and our ambitious even more what would take us months to build we can get a prototype out in weeks now it's also made our immensely productive as it comes to fundraising there's a huge misnomer that european companies are at a disadvantage because we're not in the valley and i don't think anything could be further from their truth if anything technology has been a great equalizer there is no you know zoom call or teams call that a European can set up that someone in the Bay Area is specifically suited to set up.

18:10And it's a lesson that I took dear to heart because I moved here from the Bay Area and I realized that fundraising is not happening in some mythical coffee shop. You just need to reach out. You need to set up that call. You need to have people know who you are and make the case for a race. So I just want to encourage all European companies to not think of distance as a barrier, to not think of access as a barrier. And you'll be surprised at how many VCs are thrilled to meet with more European companies because they do like to diversify their portfolio and make bets globally. So I just want to make a little plug there on fundraising.

18:41As for Data Snipper particularly, we've always been profitable. And so the fundraise was never about the money. We've always been well capitalized. To me, the question was, who do I want to add to our board that could bring us expertise, who could bring us access, and who could bring us more awareness and connections than we would have on our own? And that's why we were thrilled to have inside partners and index ventures on our cap table, because it wasn't about just the money. It was really about what they brought to the table to help us be more successful for the future. And for me, I'm not looking to fundraise again because that was never the goal.

19:19We're profitable. We're well funded. And we feel like we have the right thought partners with us around the table on that journey of growth.

19:27Vidya Peters:Amazing. I mean, that's the perfect position to be in, you know, profitable, growing strongly, well capped. as the great partners. But look, I'm conscious we're out of time, but thank you so much for joining me. I've loved chatting. It's a great business that you're building and I'll be following along. It's a pleasure. Thanks for having me. Thank you. Bye-bye.