Munich Startup: Who are you and what do you do? Please introduce yourselves briefly!
Leon Zucchini: I, Leon (CEO), am originally from South Africa. As a business economist, I worked for 15 years in consulting, research, and digital transformation before Curiosity. Rafael (CTO) is from Brazil and is an aeronautical engineer. Curiosity He has spent almost 10 years researching applied mathematics and AI. We met airbus and then discovered that we lived on the same street. This blossomed into a friendship and eventually Curiosity.
Munich Startup: What problem does your startup solve?
Leon Zucchini: Remember how frustrating it was the last time you couldn't find a file? Curiosity solves that. We all work with multiple clouds and apps, and it's becoming increasingly difficult to find the information we need. Curiosity offers a powerful search across all files and apps. This saves time and lets you focus on what matters most.
Curiosity has been available for corporate teams for some time now. A desktop app has recently been released so anyone can install and use Curiosity. It's available for free at curiosity.ai download.
Data Deep Dive
Munich Startup: But that's been around for a long time!
Leon Zucchini: Surprisingly, not. "Enterprise search" systems have been around for a long time, but they're so complex and expensive that they're only worthwhile for large teams in large companies. Then there are search apps for individuals, but they only search file names (not content!), and many send your data to the cloud.
Curiosity is the only search that's easy to install yet scans deep into files and email attachments. And the data stays secure on your computer (or your company).
Munich Startup: What have been your three biggest challenges so far?
Leon Zucchini: Bootstrapping with a team of four wasn't always easy... and then COVID hit. There were a few sleepless nights along the way, but today we're very satisfied.
Focus was a long-standing issue for us: We wanted to keep our options open, which led to complexity in our product and sales. It took a lot of courage to eliminate features and use cases, but the sharper focus helped us a lot.
Finally, bucking the trend, we brought the team together in Munich. We started remotely, but found the frictional losses too great.
Reaching new target groups
Munich Startup: How are things going?
Leon Zucchini: Great! We've been working with companies like Airbus and Telefónica for a long time. Now we're excited to be able to help individuals and smaller teams with their searches using the desktop app.
Munich Startup: How do you rate Munich as a startup location?
Leon Zucchini: Munich is great – we wouldn't want to be anywhere else. We feel very comfortable in the startup scene here and value the exchange with other founders. We've also benefited from the wide range of support options – for example, Plant1 and Wayra.
Munich Startup: Cook yourself or have it delivered?
Leon Zucchini: Self: We both like to cook a lot.
