Superface, which connects applications in a fraction of a second via APIs (Application Programming Interfaces), has raised €2.6M (CZK 65M) in a seed investment round. Tera Ventures of Estonia, represented by Eamonn Carey, led the charge. Caesar Ventures, Quantum Angels, Startup Istanbul, and angel investors Nicolas Mohr, Michael Vath, and Siim Teller are among Superface’s new investors in this round. Furthermore, the startup has received new funding from 42CAP and Tensor Ventures.
Investment in technology
With the fundraise, the startup intends to hire up to 20 more people next year, primarily in technology, product development, online marketing, and commerce. Superface intends to focus on automation in the future by integrating open APIs that will be searched, connected, and managed by algorithms and AI in the digital world. The AI will be trained on Superface’s current database, which was created in collaboration with a global community of 1,200 developers.
Seed round funding
Superface‘s new target market, as a result of this recent seed round, is mid-size and large businesses. These typically have a high level of technical debt in the area of integrations and are passed on between internal teams. Superface saves them time and money on integrations because it acts as an intermediary rather than a middleman and does not charge fees to call APIs. One such example is Superface’s collaboration with Crowd.dev, which records approximately 2 million executions per week.
Superface, founded in 2020 by Radek Novotny and Zdenek Nemec, currently employs 14 people, all of whom are senior developers specialising in API development, integrations, and design. This team focuses primarily on public APIs.
In addition to 42CAP and Tensor Ventures, Superface received EUR 1.3M (CZK 34 million) in pre-seed funding from the Czech freelance development studio Applifting.
“The investment will help us focus on product-market fit and increase market traction. Along with the investment from Tera VC, we have also received capital from 42CAP, Tensor Ventures, and other expert angel investors interested in technology and marketing. Our thanks also go to Applifting for their continued support. At the moment, we are prioritizing integrations, with strong demand coming mainly from advanced startups. These startups often have more than a hundred API integrations on their roadmap, while the cost per integration can range from a thousand to tens of thousands of euros, depending on the complexity. Using Superface, startups can save significant amounts of money and work which can then be utilized for innovations in other areas,” says Radek Novotný, CEO and co-founder of Superface.
“This year, we want to focus primarily on tuning the product for external integrations. Our ambition is to create the largest catalog of all public APIs — a kind of ‘Google of APIs‘. Developers will be able to search through our database based on an API’s purpose, selected parameters, and their connection in a few clicks. Developers won’t have to do complicated searches for specific APIs in the documentation and perform many days of analysis. On top of this, we can also help large companies internally. With Superface, companies will have a clearer idea about the various APIs they use,” adds Zdeněk Němec, CTO and co-founder of Superface.
“The amount of time, effort, and money that companies spend on the search and integration of APIs is enormous. After meeting the Superface team, I immediately fell in love with the idea of eliminating all the complexity behind the process. The team’s vision of employing AI for autonomous integrations represents a pleasant change needed by founders and developers all around the world. Superface is creating something that will radically simplify the work of developers, and we are happy to take part in this journey,” says Eamonn Carey, general partner of Tera Ventures.
