Based out of Stockholm, Quartr aims to bridge the gap between stakeholders and companies with an investor-relations app. Now, the Swedish company has secured $2.6M funding in an extended seed round, taking the total to $7.1M.
The round was led by existing investors The Öhman Group, with participation from Flat Capital (the investment firm of Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski) and Centripetal Capital, in addition to existing investors Michael Batnick, Josh Brown, and Barry Ritholtz. To date, the company has raised a total funding of $8.7M.
As the company closed its extended funding, we at TFN had an interview with Sami Osman, Quartr CEO and co-founder, to know more about the origin, fund utilisations, product launches, and much more.
According to Osman, Quartr will use the funds to scale its development team and additional products, including a B2C app and a B2B desktop solution. Currently, the company employs around 42 people.
Fundraising can be challenging when the market is in a downturn. However, Quartr has managed to navigate these turbulent times successfully. Talking about meeting the investors, Osman shares, “Many of our investors have started as users of the product and experienced the exact friction points that we’re solving.”
Numerous analysts and experts already use Quartr’s app at financial institutions, including BlackRock, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Carnegie, EQT, and more.
Emphasising on Flat Capital, he says, “Hanna, Sebastian, and Nina all felt the problem our MVP was solving and know how important it is for companies to get their narrative heard. They also understand that market participants need to be able to find the information they’re searching for within seconds.”
Available as an app on both iOS and Android, Quartr enables users to access company information – such as earnings calls, investor presentations, PDFs of the transcripts, and earnings reports from the likes of Apple, Meta, Spotify, Moderna, as well as all other publicly listed companies.
The platform was built to centralise all investment information in one easy-to-use app and transform investor relations at both ends. Further, most of the content on the platform was taken from hard-to-navigate IR (investor relations) websites.
” By having all company transcripts in one place, our AI timestamping allows users to transition between audio and text on the exact sentence from the company call,” he says.
How was Quartr born?
After Sami Osman graduated from university, he got a job as an accountant, but unsure of what he wanted to do, he quit and decided to begin day-trading while looking for something more appropriate and established a community of like-minded investors on Twitter.
While day trading, he was a bit frustrated with how challenging it was to access earning calls. In addition, finding investor information often required scouring company websites. Hence, Osman decided solving this problem would be his new job. In 2020, he launched Quartr with four other founders he’d met on Twitter, including Oliver Hamrin, who had 30,000 followers on the platform, and Oscar Kuntzel, a former kindergarten classmate with whom he had reconnected on Twitter. The other two founders are August Nordström and David Dag.
“I wanted to start Quartr to solve the unfair way information is distributed and to bring investment into the 21st Century,” notes Osman.
Markets and features
Used by both investors and companies, the Quartr has over 2,500,000 played events from over 5,500 companies in 19 markets. Since its inception, the app has had over 300,000 downloads in over 160 countries in its first year. “55% of our user base is US & Canada, while the Nordics and UK stand for about 30%,” adds Osman.
In terms of features, the company recently launched a “Search For Anything” feature, where all company transcripts worldwide on the platform are included in the same search engine, timestamped to audio so users can scroll to key moments.
The company also launched Embedded Player that allows companies, including vaccine pioneer Moderna, LeoVegas, and Westwing to embed their presentations on websites, blog posts, or articles.”
Quartr also planning to launch the ‘Company Insights Page,’ where it will show the most important numbers from 10K’s and annual reports in a digestible format.
“This will allow investors to truly understand the company, its financials, and where revenue is coming from,” notes Osman.
What makes Quartr unique?
According to Osman, it takes a user, on average 2-3 seconds to find the call or data point he or she is looking for. He adds, “One of our internal mantras is that you should always find what you’re looking for in less than 5 seconds. If you do not, the feature is too complex and will not find be useful to the majority of users.”
He concludes, “Not many had thought about centralising companies from all markets on one platform and having the platform open to everyone. By solving problems on both ends, we are building a true ecosystem where more stakeholders are willing to take part.”
Johan Malm, CEO at The Öhman Group, adds: “Quartr is revolutionising the investment process at both ends, reshaping the communications and decision-making of both companies and investors. The company is providing a truly unique service to the investment world, and it’s been exciting to be a part of it. We have been so impressed with their growth and leadership so far and are delighted to continue our journey with them.”
