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His name is known in the industry: Marc Funk founded the start-up Getnow in 2015, which brought home purchases from Metro branches within an hour and a half.
At that time it was still considered a lightning delivery service.
His experience and the investor network also help the Berliner with his new venture.
With Frontnow, Funk is trying to find ideal trading partners for food start-ups.
Be it the small neighborhood shop around the corner or the big Edeka.
He knows the problems from a retailer's point of view, says Funk in an interview with “Gründerszene”: Markets have to offer an innovative range in order to set themselves apart from the competition and attract buyers.
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The Frontnow founding team also includes his childhood friend Bernhard Lihotzky, who with his food start-up Healthcube has developed nutritional supplements against skin aging.
Lihotzky, on the other hand, knows about the difficulties of getting items into retail stores.
He sold his Munich start-up to a private equity firm, and he is also the brainchild of Frontnow.
Third in the team is Cedric May, former CTO of the discount portal Dailydeal.
Frontnow: "No threat to the GDPR"
“We generate statistical images of our customers,” says Funk, explaining the principle behind his tool.
The Federal Statistical Office provides sociodemographic data for every neighborhood: age, gender, political orientation, media use, vehicle ownership of the residents and much more.
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This is how Frontnow recognizes what interests and habits people have.
"We are not a threat to the General Data Protection Regulation," emphasizes the founder.
The values are freely accessible and anonymized.
Frontnow is given target groups by the food start-ups that use the service.
Funk and his team use the specifications to find the right neighborhoods and shops there.
As soon as at least three products fit a market, Frontnow sends the owners a tasting box with the respective food.
If the dealers like the offer, they can log into the tool and use it to place orders.
The algorithm also recognizes how the neighborhood and with it tastes change and continuously adapts the target groups.
The start-up helps manufacturers get a listing faster.
The markets should in turn remain attractive for their customers.
Frontnow has already raised venture capital
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The service is free of charge for merchants.
The food start-ups are supposed to pay for the process later.
At the moment, Frontnow is still free for them.
One customer, for example, is the Berlin beer brand Brlo.
The founding trio started their portal in April and first want to generate attention.
However, the entrepreneurs are not yet in agreement about what the payment model will look like.
Although Frontnow will not generate any sales in the coming weeks, the Berlin start-up has already collected venture capital.
The Munich tech investor Patentpool and business angel Markus Sutor, Managing Director of the B2B VC Opera Ventures, joined in a pre-seed round.
Funk doesn't want to say how much money was raised.
But he is currently working on a seven-digit seed round.
Frontnow wants to finish its Series A before the end of the year.
The start-up apparently needs a lot of money.
In his three years as Getnow CEO, Funk raised around 15 million euros. After leaving the company in 2018, the delivery service received another money from a holding company that was involved in the Wirecard scandal. As a result, Getnow slipped into bankruptcy and was sold on to a stake in the Rossmann family a year ago.