Pickzen is raising funds via a Crowd SAFE at an $8.3 million valuation cap with a 20% discount. This reasonable valuation and discount rate led to a price rating on the higher end of the spectrum. With just over $130,000 in revenue for the most recent fiscal year, the company also has a high revenue multiple.

In 2020, the global low-code development platform market was worth $13 billion with a compound annual growth rate of 22.1%. Pickzen primarily targets domestic e-commerce companies, and recommendation engine development only accounts for a portion of that total addressable market. Regardless, this massive CAGR is reflective of public sentiment and general industry trends propelling the personalized e-commerce customer experience. Collectively, this makes for an impressive market score.

CEO Brendan Medeiros and CTO Isidro García Hernández founded Pickzen in 2017. Medeiros has no industry background aside from Pickzen, and he has no prior entrepreneurial experience or exits. Some of his most recent experience was with ClinEdge, a clinical trial management company, as the associate director of clinical operations. Medeiros holds degrees from the College of The Holy Cross and Universidad Complutense de Madrid.

Most recently, Hernández served as a freelance consultant and engineer for the Spanish government and MTP. In 2012, he founded a learning platform called Edapty. He holds two degrees from Universidad de Málaga. 

It appears that Medeiros is the company’s only full-time employee. Other than the two advisors on board, this is the entirety of the team. If Pickzen is to scale, the company will need a bigger team to fill the expertise gaps. Thus, Pickzen’s team score is its lowest by far.

Pickzen has very few direct competitors. Zoovu appears to be one of the closest with $14 million in funding. Zoovu undoubtedly has market dominance with customers like Amazon and Bose. However, this is not necessarily a winner-take-all market. Additionally, Pickzen prides itself on being a conversational, advice-driven solution, versus more mature chatbot alternatives like Drift and Algolia. 

Pickzen has no patents at this time, and its overall defensibility is relatively low. As this market continues to expand, new solutions are likely to start cropping up. But despite this, Pickzen’s lack of direct competitors and its conversational approach gives it a high differentiation score. 

Pickzen is among the 6% of companies in the KingsCrowd database that are profitable. This is quite impressive for a company at this stage and drives the high performance rating. Though the company had just over $130,000 in revenue for the most recent fiscal year, low capital intensity paired with high margins make for very healthy financials. The company ended last year with just over $35,000 in net income and does not report any long-term debt on its Form C. The company also appears to be largely bootstrapped — that is, built from nothing but personal savings — with no outside capital raised prior to this round of crowdfunding.

Overall, Pickzen’s risk is relatively low. At least one founder is fully dedicated, the product is operational, the likelihood of legal issues is virtually nonexistent, and the valuation is reasonable. Despite there being no early bird discount, the discount rate  makes for investor-friendly terms as reflected in the price score. Aside from this, the only other risk factor is the lean nature of the team, something the founders are likely to fix as the company scales.

Pickzen is run by two founders with next to no experience in the no-code B2B software space, and neither has significant entrepreneurial experience or any prior exits. The team lacks sales and marketing members and needs to expand significantly if the existing members want to see continued growth. 

Additionally, competition in this space, though few and far between, is well-established and well-funded. Zoovu already has $14 million in prior funding and services companies like Amazon, L’Oreal, Whirlpool, and Bose. It’s also unclear how strong of a moat Pickzen can build around a single decision tree solution, especially with no pending or secured patents. 

Finally, though bootstrapping a company can be viewed as a positive, it should be noted that the company has no known prior investments and is not backed by any venture firms or notable angel investors.

Pickzen exists among few competitors in a massively growing market. If the company can carve out a niche and bring on some big-name customers, an exit or acquisition play is not out of the question. The terms for this round are also incredibly reasonable. The high price score is reflective of the appropriate valuation and applied discount, and it takes into account existing revenue.

Risk for the company is also relatively low. The company’s business-to-business, software as a service solution is not at all capital-intensive and results in high margins. It’s also in excellent financial health. Pickzen has bootstrapped its way to profitability, which shows the company is lean and maximizes its spending. It also has zero long-term debt.

Finally, consumer trends are driving an already large market that has the potential for global penetration.

Pickzen is a business-to-business guided e-commerce solution that allows businesses to easily integrate decision tree algorithms for customers to receive personalized recommendations. The no-code platform allows non-technical team members to help implement guided search and recommendation tools to improve the e-commerce experience. In addition to providing a more personalized end-user experience, the platform provides businesses with actionable insights on metrics like user engagement. 

The bootstrapped company is already profitable and now needs to expand the team beyond its two founders. With a viable product already launched and generating revenue, overall risk is relatively low. The high score generated by the Merlin algorithm is driven by the company’s strong early performance, its large and growing market, and its reasonable valuation. Few direct competitors exist in the increasingly popularized no-code space, but those that do are well established and have received significant funding. An acquisition play is the most likely exit for a company like Pickzen and certainly not out of the question. In fact, Google recently acquired no-code application building platform AppSheet.

For these reasons, Pickzen has been rated a Deal to Watch by the KingsCrowd investment team.

For questions regarding the KingsCrowd staff pick or ratings for this company, please reach out to support@kingscrowd.com. 

Analysis written by Olivia Strobl.