Minimist raises €1M pre-seed to bring offline resale inventory online with AI
What's the deal? Vienna-based startup Minimist has raised €1M in a pre-seed round led by Tilia Impact VenturesDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, with participation from unnamed angel investors and family offices. It builds AI software that turns a single product photo into a full online listing in under 30 seconds.
The company targets a key bottleneck in secondhand retail, where 93% of inventory never reaches online marketplaces due to the cost of manual listing. Its tool enables retailers to publish products up to 10x faster across platforms like eBay and Shopify.
Why now? The secondhand market is expanding, but operational inefficiencies limit scale. Manual listing makes it difficult to digitise large volumes of unique items.
At the same time, AI tools are improving in automating workflows such as pricing and product descriptions. This creates an opportunity to bring more inventory online.
What could go wrong? The product depends on consistent AI performance across highly variable items, which may be hard to standardise. Errors in pricing or descriptions could reduce trust.
Competition is also rising in AI-driven e-commerce tools, while some retailers may prefer in-house systems or manual control.
The signal: Investors are backing AI applications that solve operational bottlenecks in fragmented markets. In resale, unlocking supply — not demand — is emerging as the main challenge.
Minimist reflects a broader shift towards using AI to support the circular economy, where efficiency gains can reduce waste and increase inventory liquidity.
Source:
EU Startups
A.M.
