Factory Workers Still Learn From Paper Binders

01 /The Concept

Squint just closed a $40M round, pushing its valuation to $265M – not bad for a company whose entire trajectory has been one clean upward line: $2.5M in spring 2022, $3.5M in spring 2023, $13M in fall 2023 (when Startuping [first covered it](/review/700-millionov-chelovek-kotorym-obychnye-platformy-ne-podojdut)), and now $40M.

The product is a mobile app that turns any factory worker into an expert. Point your phone's camera at a machine – any machine – and you instantly get a step-by-step video instruction for whatever operation you need to perform or problem you need to solve. Instructions are deliberately simple: find this knob, turn it clockwise, make sure the clamp isn't slipping.

Under the hood sits an AI engine you can feed with equipment manuals, work instructions, videos, and any other relevant materials. The AI ingests and structures all of it, so that when a worker needs guidance, the right procedure surfaces immediately – standardized, clear, no guesswork.

When the canned instructions don't cut it, workers can ask Squint questions exactly like they would ChatGPT – except Squint's AI has vastly more precise, current knowledge about the specific equipment on that shop floor.

Team leaders and floor managers get a dashboard showing what questions workers are asking and what problems keep coming up – giving them real leverage to improve training programs and schedule preventive maintenance before things break.

Squint's client list includes Pepsico, Schneider Electric, Michelin, and Volvo, plus hundreds of other factories. One client cut production time by 50% using brand-new hires. Another generated $4M in additional profit in a single year at a single facility. Worker satisfaction surveys showed 91% of floor staff found the app genuinely helpful.

02 /Why It Matters

Manufacturing is an enormous market. The scale is hard to ignore.

In the US, manufacturing accounts for 10% of GDP – supported by 15 million factory workers.

In China the numbers are even more striking: manufacturing is 26% of GDP, employing roughly 200 million workers.

And yet, as Squint's co-founder put it in Fortune: "For some reason, manufacturing has been abandoned by the tech world. Even now it's nearly impossible to gather a roomful of founders building manufacturing startups, because there almost aren't any in Silicon Valley. So when we talk about our main competitors – they're not other startups. They're binders of paper instructions. "

It's worth noting that Squint's founders first met at Yahoo, where one of them landed after selling his e-commerce startup Polyvore to the company for $230M. His read on the opportunity: "Tech people focus on building digital products for digital white-collar work. But the physical world is much bigger – it literally produces all the hardware that digital work runs on. Technology has barely scratched the surface of what real manufacturing needs. I believe the next great tech companies will be the ones that go deeper into the physical world."

That said, the space isn't completely empty.

DeepHow ([covered here](/review/63-milliarda-dollarov-na-700-millionov-uchenikov)), which takes a similar approach, has raised $37.1M. Zaptic ([related review](/review/programmirovat-nuzhno-ne-kompjutery-a-ljudej)) has raised $19M. Perry ([covered previously](/review/peresadka-golovy-kak-vostrebovannaja-biznes-model)), a Dutch startup applying the same concept to equipment installation and repair technicians, was founded in March of this year and has already closed a €1.6M seed.

And in February, XOi ([related review](/review/tema-v-kotoroj-mozhno-i-horosho-zarabatyvat-i-horosho-prodatsja)) raised $230M for a nearly identical mobile app built for field service technicians – point your phone at the equipment and get a diagnostic and repair walkthrough.

The pattern is hard to miss: there are large, lucrative markets that most tech founders consider too boring to enter – and that's precisely what makes them interesting.

1. A well-known investor once said he loved a logistics tech platform for an unexpected reason: because on that market, "everyone is dumb"

2. He didn't mean that literally. He meant it's a deeply conservative field where everyone still plays by old rules – which means fresh ideas stand out immediately and decisively.

3. That same logistics startup was valued at $8B in 2022. Today it's "only" $4B due to broader market corrections and some internal turbulence. But its founder is actively working to turn things around – and making progress.

4. Which raises the question: why do so many founders rush into fiercely competitive spaces where smart, well-funded rivals are already entrenched?

5. The better play is to go where things are "dumb" and conservative – because there, you get to be the smartest person in the room. Not necessarily because you're brilliant, but because everyone else is still using paper.

6. Are there really no boring markets left to disrupt?

03 /Opportunities

The takeaway from today is simple: for a tech startup, it's often smarter to go where no one else is going rather than fight for space in an already crowded arena.

That means: building technology for manufacturing, field service, and other large but "boring" markets.

In those markets, as Squint's co-founder put it, your main competitors aren't other startups – they're binders of paper instructions. And it's a lot easier to win against paper than against a dozen well-funded teams with the same technology and the same ambitions.

As a side note: when Startuping's editor launched a price comparison platform years ago, its tagline was "Easier to click a button than dig through a pile of papers" – because the main competitor at the time was a printed price directory. It was already obvious to some that paper's days in that niche were numbered.

The startup worth building next is the one where your main competitor is still a binder of paper instructions. Those markets exist everywhere – the question is which one you're willing to go find.