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Future 5 start-up winner Prewave talks risk intelligence and the role of social media

12/14/2020 By

Prewave, a risk intelligence platform, has taken a unique approach to supply chain risk management by monitoring social media, news media and third-party data feeds and was recently named a Future 5 start-up by Spend Matters.

For those who aren’t aware, the Future 5 list represents five of the most exciting procurement start-ups in the world today according to our analysts. Many procurement technology start-ups move from early-stage to market contenders quickly, so each company was vetted by the Spend Matters analyst team to meet the following criteria:

  • Be less than 5 years old, with ideally less than 2 years in market (official product launch)
  • Have 5+ customers
  • Have an innovative, interesting application of technology
  • Have clear momentum and staying power
  • Have under $10 million in revenue

Prewave monitors news and social media accounts in more than 50 languages to predict supply chain risk. Essentially, it analyses news events, and other sources, with advanced machine learning technology and can extract numerous categories of events, indicating potential risks, and then predict the likelihood of impact on a supplier and a supply chain that relies on it. Prewave works primarily with large automotive and electronics companies to keep track of risks across global supply chains.

Spend Matters’ Chief Research Officer and managing director, Pierre Mitchell, said of the company: “Prewave is a great example of a ‘Future 5’ provider because it doesn’t just sell another technology tool, but rather a business capability to support clear business objectives…with quick time-to-value. In this case, the capability is curated supply market intelligence that is explicitly mapped to a company’s multi-tier inbound supply chain to help identify threats to critical supply lines and improve supply chain resilience. This digital service can be stood up quickly with a freemium business model — and then scaled up in lockstep with the needed level of protection.”

We chatted with Prewave’s co-founder and managing director, Harald Nitschinger, to learn more about the solution and to get a first-hand understanding of just what it means to be selected as a Future 5 start-up.

Topics
Future 5