Presize
That’s never happened at DHDL: Facebook buys startup from “The Lion’s Den”
Presize founders Leon Szeli and Tomislav Tomov present their idea in “The Lion’s Den”.
© Bernd-Michael Maurer / TV Now
Success for Presize: As the first startup from the start-up show “Die Höhle der Löwen”, the Munich-based company was bought by a global tech group. Meta secured 100 percent of the shares.
At the end of 2020, Leon Szeli and Tomislav Tomov presented the idea behind their company Presize on the Vox show “Die Höhle der Löwen”: a digital size advisor. The user records a video of himself/herself with a smartphone, and an AI then determines the correct clothing size in the respective online shop.
The concept convinced investor Carsten Maschmeyer in the start-up show: The lion secured 15 percent of the start-up for 650,000 euros. Other investors also pumped money into the app, according to CEO Leon Szeli it was a total of two million euros. Now Presize is taking the next big step: As the business portal “Gründerszene” reports with reference to an entry in the Munich commercial register, the Facebook parent company Meta has taken over the startup.
Known from “The Lion’s Den”: Presize merges into Meta
This means that the brand name Presize will soon disappear from the market. According to the “Gründerszene” report, Meta has taken over 100 percent of the company. There was initially no information about the purchase price. According to “Gründerszene”, Meta is primarily concerned with the technology behind the tool. Of the approximately 50 Presize employees to date, it is primarily the developers who will continue to be employed.
This is the first time a start-up from the start-up show “Lion’s Cave” has succeeded in being bought by a global tech company. Szeli founded the startup in 2019 with Tomislav Tomov and Awais Shafique. The trio met while studying. According to the website, the consultants and investors of the start-up from Munich have included Maschmeyer, Heiko Schäfer (COO of Hugo Boss) and Chris Brenninkmeyer, whose family owns C&A. The body scanner tool Presize is integrated directly into the pages of online shops and, according to the founders, should be able to determine body measurements 55 percent more precisely than comparable offers from the competition on the market.
Sources: “founder scene” (1) / “founder scene” (2) / Presize
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