About

Linked Business transforms noisy and complex open data into market intelligence solutions for professionals seeking either live and targeted B2B sales leads or holistic Know-Your-Customer (KYC) predictive information. Businesses over time face several unchanged fundamental questions: to whom can I sell? where are my customers? who are indeed my (potential) customers? What is the credit-worthiness of my customers? Nowadays, there is a plethora of diverse data ranging from open government data (e.g. company beneficial owners and public contracts) to internal enterprise data (e.g. detailed customer transactions from different applications). Consequently, an emerging crucial demand for modern businesses is how to transform this data into useful information which will enable them to provide optimal answers to the aforementioned questions and grow their business in a calculated-risk manner.

Solution & Product

Linked Business provides market intelligence solutions that blend open with enterprise data. Our products have a dual aspect. (1) Sales and Marketing: we assist businesses to discover new customers in specific industries based on metrics such as business survival rates at specific locations and to update their BI (e.g. CRM) with fresh and detailed corporate data. We also help them run targeted marketing campaigns in selected market segments that can be enriched with high value information such as locations and customer preferences extracted from royalty programs. (2) Know-Your-Customer (KYC): starting from reports about changes in the company profile (e.g. status, address, filings & management), we extend market intelligence by introducing metrics to assess systemic risks based on detailed business networks and associated persons. Provided services include corporate asset tracing, AML, Due Diligence, Compliance, Β2Β campaigns, Digital Onboarding, Master data cleansing & Internal audit controls.

Innovation & Scalability

Linked Business innovative characteristics are based on the implementation of diverse AI and Big Open Data technologies on complex and inconsistent data sources. Its pioneering approach enables the collection, validation, enrichment and orchestration of open and enterprise data in a common platform which is the corner-stone for the provision of end-to-end products and services. Scalability potential depends on efficiencies, as well as overall supply and demand. In terms of supply, 750.000 active company profiles, in various forms and delivery channels, form the base for all commercial services. In terms of demand, the common data model (knowledge graph) has been developed on international standards, enabling the horizontal expansion in any business open dataset globally. At the same time, vertical expansion is feasible through integration to internal business processes and Business Intelligence (BI) systems such as CRM.

Traction & achievements

Several pilot projects have been completed, while at the same time MVPs in key product families are under development. The current user-base exceeds 1000 users in land-mark customers. Some examples include: •tVodafone Business Maps: holistic solution which includes software application and data that a network of more than 900 business sales executives use daily, aiming to grow the business and win new business clients. •tNational Bank of Greece – Business Onboarding: holistic solutions with includes software and data aiming to improve the business customer experience by enabling the opening of new business accounts digitally. The core infrastructure backbone will be enriched with components for campaigning, cross-selling and preliminary KYC activities. •tNon-performing Exposure Servicers: holistic solution providing valuable intelligence regarding business activities, participation in public tenders and subsidies, auctions, as well as outstanding debts and public fines.

Team & Why Us

Michalis Vafopoulos (linkedin.com/in/vafopoulos), founder and CEO, is a leading expert in data science. He is involved to a series of research, business and policy projects. Indicatively, his team at the Knowledge Engineering Laboratory of the National Center for Scientific Research «Demokritos» contributed to the flagship BigDataEurope project. He has worked as an expert for the “Analysis of methodologies for using the Internet for the collection of information society and other statistics” for Eurostat. In 2019 he was appointed a member of the Board of Directors of the Hellenic Land Registry in charge of digital transformation and data issues. George Stergiou (https://www.linkedin.com/in/george-stergiou), General Manager, is an ex-Thomson Reuters senior executive with more than 20 years of diverse general management experience, including business management, international business development in FinTech, Business Intelligence services and Banking. Andreas Batsis (https://www.linkedin.com/in/batcic), Digital Strategist, is a physicist with great expertise in Web and Social Media Marketing and Smart Web applications. The +37-person LB team is composed by scientists and professionals from diverse domains. The core part of AI experts has been enriched with digital marketing and sales executives to deliver a mix of innovative market intelligent services. We aspire to disrupt the business information market initially in Greece and then expand internationally. We use cutting-ed

Funding Needs

No current funding needs given the synergies in place due to our strategic minority investor.