Showcase Ventures
AI-Powered Deal Sourcing for a Media & Consumer VC
Built Spotlight and Spyglass — two internal tools that use AI-powered enrichment, multi-source web scraping, and real-time collaboration to transform how a VC firm sources and researches deals.
Scope
Spotlight — investment sourcing platform
Spyglass — retail intelligence hub
AI enrichment pipeline design
Real-time collaborative data infrastructure
Tech Stack
The Challenge
Showcase Ventures invests in Seed and Series A/B media and consumer companies — music, entertainment, film, digital media, beauty, hospitality, and more. Researching potential investments meant hours of manual Googling, scattered notes, and no structured way to enrich, grade, or track companies across the team.
The Approach
Built Spotlight — a full investment sourcing platform with AI-powered company enrichment using Gemini, multi-source web scraping via Bright Data, and real-time Firestore collaboration
Designed a multi-phase enrichment pipeline: domain discovery, content scraping, AI analysis, social link extraction, and follower count retrieval — all with consensus scoring for data quality
Built hierarchical theme management with drag-and-drop, an interactive dashboard with ROI tracking, and a brand extractor for bulk CSV imports
Built Spyglass — a retail intelligence hub where analysts upload store walk photos and Gemini AI automatically detects every brand and SKU on the shelf, enriches with manufacturer data via web search, and visualizes findings on an interactive map
Key Features
Multi-phase AI enrichment: domain discovery → web scraping → AI analysis → social data → consensus scoring
Four concurrent background processing queues for parallel enrichment
Hierarchical theme/folder management with drag-and-drop organization
Interactive dashboard with ROI tracking and sourcing grade distribution
Brand extractor for bulk CSV imports with automated domain discovery
Store walk photo analysis — Gemini AI detects every brand and SKU on retail shelves
Two-pass retail enrichment with Google Search grounding for manufacturer data
Interactive Google Maps view with intelligent markers per store location
A/B/C/D company grading system with pipeline tracking
Real-time Firestore listeners — all users see data updates instantly
The Results
Company research that took hours now happens in seconds through automated AI enrichment
Multi-source validation ensures data quality — no single point of failure
Real-time collaboration lets the full investment team see enriched data instantly
Structured grading and pipeline tracking replaced scattered notes and spreadsheets