Capricorn Digital

Get to know Trensition

Get to know Trensition

Trensition is a B2B AI-driven strategic intelligence company that has built a platform fuelled by big data and in-house AI models to provide tailored trend insights to corporate clients, government entities and consultants. Since its launch in 2019, Trensition has continued to grow its platform and international customer base, providing AI-driven trend insights.

In September 2022, Ageas and the Capricorn Digital Growth Fund have invested € 1.8 million in the Belgian start-up company Trensition, allowing the company to scale up its Trendtracker platform towards a worldwide SaaS offering.

Thinking back to the start of the company, what triggered the creation of the company ?

Founders Trensition: We have officially launched Trensition in November 2019, but we were already doing a lot of AI research and product/market fit testing for about 2 or 3 years under the radar. Trensition started as an idea to visualize the way trends evolve over time using big data and AI. This idea gradually became a value proposition with a bold vision of how to support strategy and innovation, which is the core of Trensition today.

What’s unique about the Trendtracker platform & how does it work?

Founders Trensition: Trensition’s unique Trendtracker platform for strategy and innovation managers offers a high-level overview and key insights on important upcoming trends. It also allows them to zoom in on specific regions and sectors to study the evolution and impact of these trends for different use cases.

Trendtracker is 100% AI-driven, which allows users to get a personalized take on how their world is changing, fueled with insights that matter to them. It provides trend insights in a real-time, always-on and proactive way.

The AI algorithms collect big data from a variety of trustworthy sources and use this information to monitor, analyze and predict trends. They study the life cycle of trends based on the data sources they occur in: from a research and development phase (academic research, patents, start-up information,…) to business adoption (business news, blogs,…) and societal adoption (popular media, review blogs,…). The maturity of the trend can be extracted by following the evolution of its occurrence in these data sources.

We appreciate the explainability of the AI solutions implemented and the broad sector-agnostic potential of the TrendTracker platform, including trends in sustainability
Marc Lambrechts, Director Capricorn Digital
What are the next challenges and goals for the next phase of Trensition?

Founders Trensition: Finding the right balance between product development, expanding the team, introducing new customers, and supporting existing ones.

It is needed to support more and more organizations to become future-proof. That is why we need to expand the team. In addition to full-stack developers, we are also looking for people who can commercially market the platform, such as marketers and business developers. To support our international customers we are also looking for project managers and strategic consultants who can help our clients with a better understanding of the evolution of trends, future research and strategic planning based on the data insights from Trendtracker.

How important is the use of explainable AI for the TrendTracker platform?

Founders Trensition: Explainable AI is of course an important topic for us considering that we are using AI on a strategic level. It is important that our customers fully understand how the AI models work and, more importantly, trust the insights and forecasts of these models. Educating users is key here.

Trensition in a nutshell:

  • Located in Ghent

  • Founded in 2019

  • Active in finance, insurance and media sector

  • Customers: Ageas, BNP Paribas Fortis, P&G, Pepsi Co and many more.

Why did you decide to have Capricorn and Ageas, jointly invest in Trensition?

Founders Trensition: Ageas was one of our first customers and we have been co-creating and fine-tuning the way an organisation can inject AI-driven insights ever since. They are not only a customer but also a partner who is willing to co-innovate together with a startup, and who trusts the value that we can bring to their business. The fact that a customer of that size understands what we do uses the insights at a strategic level, and, moreover, is willing to invest in the growth of our business, proves the value that this partnership is bringing to both parties.

Capricorn Partners is for us a good and solid partner in the phase of the growth and maturity of our business. They have a solid track record as credible VC investor in early-stage companies. Furthermore, they get good feedback from the founders of their portfolio companies. Also, the fact that they have the Capricorn Digital Growth Fund that is looking for investment opportunities emerging from turning data into actionable insights using AI among others, made it clear to us that there was a clear alignment of the focus area of investment and our core value proposition.

A joint investment was a sustainable growth option for us since, this way, we get the best of both worlds: a solid VC partner and a customer/investor active in different ecosystems that will help us reach the next step.

A joint investment with Capricorn Partners and Ageas was a sustainable growth option for us
Vincent Defour, CEO Trensition
What are the reasons that drove Capricorn & Ageas to invest in Trensition?

Marc Lambrechts, Capricorn Partners: Trensition fits perfectly in the ‘from data to actionable insights’ investment thesis of the Capricorn Digital Growth Fund. We appreciate the explainability of the AI solutions implemented and the broad sector-agnostic potential of the TrendTracker platform, including trends in sustainability. The insights provided are ideal to benchmark with ideas from within the organization of the customer and can avoid internal biases.

Ben Coumans, Ageas: Trensition has been a reliable, long-term partner of Ageas in its internal strategic foresight process, which, in combination with the global, industry-agnostic rising attention for strategic intelligence through AI tools, makes Trensition a very attractive investment opportunity.

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