CAN YOU DIG IT? Insights on our investment in Lana Labs
About two years ago Process Mining has been intensively discussed in the German startup ecosystem after the first startup in this space got funded. I do recall that many venture capital investors including myself have evaluated the sector following this financing round.
I invested some time in order to understand the application and its value for enterprise customers, the underlying technology, as well as the market. Back then it seemed to me that Process Mining was all about ERP data and mainly related to a small handful of processes in the SAP system. My immediate conclusion was that Process Mining solely on SAP data seems rather limited compared to the methodology’s possibilities. I was pretty sure this company would be able to grow but would it get really big? Would it be built to last or would SAP just buy the company after a while?
Fast forward to today — We led the Series Seed in December 2017 and I joined Lana Labs’ advisory board. The company has launched their solution in early 2017 and has already signed first well-known large enterprise customers.
We met the founders of Lana Labs in late summer of 2017. At first I thought the company is just a direct competitor of the startup which I have described above. But after the first pitch it was obvious that Karina, Rami and Thomas (the three founders) are up to way more than just Process Mining on SAP data.
Lana Labs has developed a Process Mining Platform which will work with a lot of different systems, e.g ERP, CRM, MES (Machine Execution Systems) as well as Banking Software. This means Process Mining won’t be limited to SAP and ERP systems.
The Product
LanaLabs’ product offers — compared to the other products we have seen — a quick on-boarding as well as an easy to use interface. The tool is built process-agnostic analyzing all sorts of process data which potentially goes well beyond the regular order-to-cash data. The next versions of Lana will include many more standardized connectors to plug into existing IT systems without having trouble to extract corresponding data.
The Team
Thomas and Rami got their PhDs at the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam, Germany. Their thesis are about Process Mining. Karina studied Innovation Management and worked in consulting within the automotive sector in a top tier consulting firm.
Yes, being active in the enterprise market means that the founders and their team need to deal face2face with buying centers of large corporations — and we are very confident Rami, Thomas and Karina are ready for it ;-)
Wildlife Reservation
By the way… meet Lenny! Lenny is a Magellan Penguin — the species is listed as near Threatened by the IUCN. Lenny is one of LanaLabs’ adopted penguins. Success in business is one thing but giving back is a thing some successful people tend to forget about. The Lana-Team has committed to adopt one penguin for every new customer. Well, not only for each new customer — Capnamic Ventures is godfather of Lenny since our investment and we are proud to support Lana Labs’ project. So stay tuned for a whole lot new Magellan penguins!
