At a glance

skim is building fully autonomous AI Agents working 24/7 allowing it’s customers to win more government contracts. 

• Helping customers find, manage and bid on government contracts.

• Find government tenders, AI RFP writer, quality tenders and support project management.

Quick fire details

• Headquarters: London, UK

• Employee count: 2

• Business model: Subscription SaaS

• Backed by: >£300,000 from four angels

• Funding amount: Raising £1M

The founders

• Cofounder & CEO, Justin Cesman: Early employee at joindaisy.com in AI Product & Sales (AE). Previously sold sneakers and watches to $165,000 in revenue.

• Cofounder & CTO, Vittorio Halfon: Second-time founder. Built an online tutoring agency (Velasca Tutors) for IB students, accumulating 115+ tutors and 450+ students generating $115,000 in revenue. 

• Silent co-founder (engineering)

The market

• With Ireland and Italy being the initial target markets and expanding to the rest of Europe later, the annual EU contract value is €2.45TN. Growing 11.2% CAGR.

This startup is solving one key problem:

• There are just under 200,000 participating companies bidding for contracts all battling European public procurement rules that are time consuming and expensive to abide by.

  • Repetitive RFPs, strict adherence to specifications and costly proposals.

Traction metrics

• Launched 5 months ago, bootstrapped from zero to multiple paying customers (e.g. eTenders, Esercito, AW Solutions etc)

• 35.1% MoM revenue growth

• $10k ARR bootstrapped

• €90K ARR currently in trial, including 2 public $1B+ companies listed on the NYSE

• Selected as 1 out of 95 applicants to pitch at the AWS Summit in Tel Aviv (placed second)

Competitive landscape

• stotles, tengo, inventive AI (YC 23) and sweetspot AI (YC 23)

  • skim is vertically integrated. Most government tender tools only cover one piece, like searching or writing proposals. Skim brings it all together: search, tracking, collaboration, and AI-powered proposal writing.

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Our Take

Appeals

• Proactive Tender Alert System: Turns over 800 EU procurement portals into one central platform—powered by AI. The system scans and matches tenders to specific needs in real time, never missing an opportunity.

• Vertically integrated: By building across the entire value chain to be the one platform for the full tender process and provide the most value, skim becomes a 'sticky' solution.

Risks

• Dependence on Government Data Feeds: Without control of proprietary data sets skim run the risk of over dependency on thirds parties.

• Platform Risk: Building AI Agents to automate such admin heavy tasks is expensive. Managing cash flows while scaling becomes hugely important with such large CapEx.

• Team dynamics: Despite solid founder backgrounds, the team would benefit from strong advisors onboard with 10+ years experience of tender consulting.

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