Proofcheck raises a €500K pre-seed!
Summary
Other round participants included the European super angel fund Angel Invest, overseen by partner Mara Larson-Richard; Austrian entrepreneur and business angel Gernot Singer; and American technologist Kyle Kosic, an early OpenAI engineer who worked on ChatGPT and recently co-founded xAI with Elon Musk.Founded in Vienna in 2022 by American husband-and-wife team Tara Wickowska-Merrigan (CEO) and Alexandre Paris (CTO), Proofcheck has created an AI-powered software platform that centralizes fragmented content workflows and enables creators to efficiently prepare and perfect high-stakes content like books, white papers, and corporate reports.Our platform not only establishes a high-quality editorial baseline that streamlines designed content workflows but also meticulously maintains an audit trail of work, says CEO Tara Wickowska-Merrigan, who previously worked in book, magazine, and academic publishing, including at the global media company Cond\xe9 Nast. By consolidating and automating disparate tedious tasks, Proofcheck ensures a substantial return on investment through unparalleled efficiency gains and time savings.Proofchecks product currently brings visually aware, pixel-perfect AI proofing to designed PDFs, the de-facto file format for the mass distribution of professional content. During the investment process, we were captivated by their intelligence, humility, complementary skill set, and extensive network within the publishing and AI industry, said Philippe Bernet, founding partner at BackBone Ventures. With very limited resources, they have crafted an astonishing product already recognized by industry giants who reached out to Proofcheck solely based on a short press announcement. Most importantly, Proofcheck has found a powerful recipe for building high-quality software Taras vision and industry knowledge intimately paired with Alexs world-class engineering abilities.With the pre-seed funding, the startup will accelerate the development of its AI-powered platform and expand its functionality to service the entire corporate content creation lifecycle, including the editing and design phases.