Superface founders Zdeněk Němec and Radek Novotný. Image: Superface
Led by Irishman Eamonn Carey, the Tera Ventures investment will help Superface to build its API integration platform.
Czech software start-up Superface has raised €2.6m in a seed investment round led by Irishman Eamonn Carey representing Estonian VC firm Tera Ventures.
Based in Prague, Superface is on a mission to help developers speed up their work. It aims to do this by building the world’s largest catalogue of APIs, or application programming interfaces, which help computer programmes communicate with each other.
Superface said it has developed an AI-powered platform that helps developers connect APIs in “a fraction of a second”. This approach could make it possible for developers to replace weeks of work with three lines of code.
Carey, the former managing director of Techstars London who joined Tera Ventures as a general partner in March, said that companies spend an “enormous” amount of time, money and effort to search for and integrate APIs.
“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,” he said.
“Superface is creating something that will radically simplify the work of developers, and we are happy to take part in this journey.”
Tera has previously invested more than $67m in tech start-ups such as e-commerce payments service Montonio and business management SaaS Scoro.
Saving cost and time using Superface
Superface CEO and co-founder Radek Novotný said that the latest investment will help the company to focus on product-market fit and increase market traction – with strong demand for its integrations coming mainly from advanced start-ups.
“These start-ups 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,” he said.
“Using Superface, start-ups can save significant amounts of money and work which can then be utilised for innovations in other areas.”
Joining Tera in the investment round are new investors Caesar Ventures, Quantum Angels, Startup Istanbul, as well as angel investors Nicolas Mohr, Michael Vath and Siim Teller. Existing investors 42CAP and Tensor Ventures also participated.
Superface CTO and co-founder Zdeněk Němec said that the start-up has an ambition to create the largest catalogue of all public 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,” he said.
“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.”
The start-up, which currently employs 14 people, plans to recruit up to 20 more staff next year.
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