Openmart: The AI Alternative to Zoominfo for Local Businesses
In 2020, Kathryn Wu, a product engineer at Pinterest, had a challenging experience trying to connect her milk tea company, Ohtea, with local retailers. She struggled to locate potential retailers and find the right contacts at each place. This fragmented market contributed to the company’s failure to achieve product-market fit. Recognizing the pain point she experienced, Wu decided to solve this problem by founding Openmart, an AI-powered platform that aggregates data on local businesses.
Openmart differentiates itself as the AI alternative to Zoominfo. Using AI technology, the platform scrapes data from public business filings, maps, customer reviews, and other sources to create a comprehensive database of local businesses categorized by type. Users can input their desired target businesses, and Openmart generates a list of potential sales leads, complete with details such as business owners’ names and contact information.
Wu co-founded Openmart with Richard He, whom she met while both were interns at Pinterest. Their shared passion for entrepreneurship and love for their respective dogs brought them together. He expressed interest in joining Wu’s startup venture, and together they embarked on building Openmart.
While Wu’s initial motivation came from her struggle to connect her milk tea business with local retailers, Openmart’s mission evolved. Through their research, Wu and He discovered that large enterprises also faced challenges in selling to local businesses. This insight prompted them to focus on developing a product for this target group first.
He emphasized that Openmart’s core focus remains on local businesses, acknowledging it as a significant pain point. As the platform expands into more sectors, their AI agent aims to help with outbound sales, particularly tasks requiring lower intelligence and logical reasoning.
Founded in late 2020, Openmart joined Y Combinator’s W24 cohort. During the beta phase, the startup attracted several paying customer trials, ranging from Fortune 500 companies to Series B and C startups. Their fellow YC founders became some of their first customers. Initially, Openmart will concentrate on providing enterprise clients with high-quality leads, with plans to develop a tier for medium-sized enterprises in the future.
Recently, Openmart successfully raised a $2.75 million seed round and has officially exited beta mode. Notable investors include Y Combinator, Rebel Fund, Afore Capital, and various VC firms. He mentioned that the company was cautious in setting a reasonable fundraising goal, rejecting investors who pushed for an oversubscribed round. Following the advice of their YC group partner, Gustaf Alstromer, Openmart aims to maintain 50% ownership through the Series B.
He explained their mindset, stating that they aim to dilute as little as possible and raise enough capital to survive until the next round. With AI increasing engineering productivity, Openmart can focus on maintaining a small, efficient engineering team rather than extensive hiring.
While Openmart currently focuses on aggregating data on local businesses, He revealed plans to expand into other areas in the future. However, the company will carefully consider which areas to enter, as established players like LinkedIn Sales Navigator and Crunchbase dominate sectors such as B2B software.
Despite their future expansion plans, Openmart remains committed to their roots: small businesses. Wu emphasized their desire to be recognized as experts in finding contacts for small and medium-sized businesses. By providing high-quality sales leads and exceptional service, Openmart aims to become the go-to platform for businesses in need of targeted sales outreach.
