We’ve all seen them. The inspector with a clipboard, walking around a building, checking off the last time the fire extinguishers were checked or if all the lights are working. They work in the TICC (Testing, Inspection, Certification and Compliance) space, and they literally check boxes. And even though the work may seem simple enough to do physically, the situation is quite different when it must be done remotely.
Founder Ben Lambert realized that after moving to Portugal, his wife’s property inspection business needed to be managed remotely. “It was no longer easy to verify on-site inspections and obtain reliable information. A final report could take weeks,” he told me. Additionally, inspection scheduling proved to be at least as big a problem.
Seeing an opportunity, Lambert founded Checkfirst, an AI-driven workflow tools startup, which, in addition to enabling remote inspections, allows companies to schedule inspectors based on geographic location and qualifications. This results in less travel, a reduced environmental footprint and workers end up being happier too. The company has now raised a $1.5 million pre-seed round led by Olisipo Way, an early-stage venture capital firm based in Lisbon, and Hiero VC (a solo venture capital firm). Notion Capital and angel investors from companies like Source Point, Busuu, Swogo and FaceIT also participated.
“As (the product) grew, we found that the biggest problem wasn’t necessarily data capture alone, but that companies were making or losing money at the planning level. This is timely because AI is perfect for planning tasks,” he said.
“The biggest problem in the industry is planning, and the cool thing is that with AI you can plan very easily,” he told me. “Let’s say an inspector is in London but needs to be in Munich to audit a building. With AI, you can understand what they are doing and put it all together. We’re creating a planning tool for all these big companies. It’s not just about compliance; it’s also planning. Then, the compliance tool allows them to easily collect data to meet regulatory standards.
It turns out that the ICT industry is constantly moving people around the world, Lambert explained.
“For example, an inspector might be in London today, but the company would send someone from Munich to London, because they don’t really understand that they already have a guy in London. If an inspector then takes a flight from Munich to London, he immediately loses all his margin. Thanks to our tools, the person the company was going to send from Munich no longer needs to come to London. This saves the company thousands of dollars or more.
Lambert said they “initially used a mix of open source and commercial AI models” and are now building their own “based on proprietary data for image recognition and planning.”
In terms of competitors, Checkfirst is up against some large legacy players in the compliance space, such as Intact Systems, Lumiform, Safety Culture (a unicorn), and Happy Co (focuses on property management).
The difference with Checkfirst, Lambert explains, is that it is an API-based solution and uses AI for image recognition and automation, generating report summaries and planning.
The startup is working with several clients on proofs of concept, including one that has 30,000 customers, the company says.
The co-founding team includes Lambert, CPO Oyvind Henriksen (who started Poq Studio), and CTO Rami Elsawy. Lambert previously worked at Nexmo and Agora.
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