How Djef Rifamole is revolutionizing product development with eyva.ai

Robin: Thanks for joining us Djef. Could you tell us a bit about yourself and what you're up to right now?

Djef: Sure! Well, firstly,  I was born in northern Germany, but I'm half Indonesian. I’m one of two co-founders at eyva.ai, and we have a pretty diverse team. My background is more on the business side—I studied business economics. After that, I worked for about a year and a half in Jakarta and Singapore as a board assistant at Allianz AG. During that time, I was already very close to forming my own company in Indonesia. However, my network and family advised me to first pursue something more substantial before venturing into my own business in Indonesia.

I ended up going back to Germany. Becoming a consultant was never my goal, but I found myself going for an interview, and somehow, it worked out—even though I wasn’t fully prepared for corporate life. I spent six years at PwC, mainly working with consumer goods companies like Beiersdorf and Johnson & Johnson. Pretty early on, I knew I didn’t want to follow the typical consulting career path. During my time in consultancy, I kept noticing the same patterns in these companies, especially when it came to product development and innovation. Big teams, lots of manual work, and hefty blocks—all of which surprised me given how critical products are to a company’s strategy.

For me, this was one of the first triggers to think about how to solve these issues with a more data-driven approach. I had an idea for leveraging data and AI, but I was missing a crucial piece of the puzzle. That’s when I met Wilhelm Raider—he was working on his PhD in rocket science, but unfortunately, he ran into some political issues during his studies. While on a trip to Indonesia, we decided to start a business together. Three months later, I quit my job, and he left his PhD program.

That’s a real leap of faith from both of you – how did it go?

Yeah, it really was. Our hypothesis was straightforward: how can we develop and innovate products in a data-driven way? But getting to a “Software as a Service (SaaS)” model took a while. For example, before we arrived at this business model, we tested two other ideas. Our first model was more of a proof of concept—we used our early technology to try and develop a physical product. We collected millions of data points from various platforms, though it was semi-automated and involved a lot of manual input into Excel sheets. Eventually, we had this massive Excel sheet filled with product ideas.

How did you use that Excel sheet to get to where you are now?

We traveled all over the world—Shanghai, Vietnam, Portugal—visiting big manufacturers. Our approach was, "This is what the data is telling us, and we want to produce a product based on that." In the end, we developed sports compression socks made from recycled nets, which was pretty unique. It turned out to be successful; we sold around 5,000 pairs, and that was the first bit of bootstrapped money we made.

Afterward, we had to decide - whether we should become a brand company or focus on technology. Ultimately, we decided to focus on technology and built a second business model in the consulting space. For around three years, we worked with big consumer brands to help them utilize data. It was during this time that we realized it’s not just about collecting data - it’s quite complex to make decisions based on that data. We had gained enough experience to see what needed to change in the market. The main issue is that departments within companies often operate in silos, without a unified data structure to support decision-making across different stages of the product lifecycle. We developed a platform that seamlessly connects consumer, market, and product data, enabling smarter portfolio decisions—whether it’s developing new products, optimizing existing ones, or phasing out underperforming items.

How do those silos impact innovation and how is eyva.ai tackling that issue?

Well, what we’ve seen is that each department works in silos, meaning they use different tools and a lot of manual processes. The problem is that these tools aren’t domain-specific; they’re designed for multiple industries, which means they often lack the depth needed for specific sectors. Honestly, even in large companies, we still see this issue—there are big teams but no unified data infrastructure. That’s one of the reasons we wanted to build eyva.ai.

At first, it was all about the data. Of course, data is still the foundation, but the real focus shifted to how we connect different types of data.  We’re talking about consumer, market, and product data, and we asked ourselves “How can we use this data to empower stakeholders throughout the product lifecycle?”

That’s essentially what we’re doing today. Our vision with eyva.ai is to create a standard for product development and innovation in the CPG industry. We started with beauty and personal care as the first blueprint to prove we can build a solution that empowers different teams along the product lifecycle. So far, we’ve had good results—we have around 15 clients, 350 users, and various cohorts of product managers, marketing managers, and R&D managers. Leading brands and manufacturers, including Beiersdorf, Babor, and Mibelle, are already leveraging our platform

Could you tell us about some of the challenges you’ve faced in getting to this point?

Yeah, we definitely needed money in the bank, especially with all the challenges we’ve encountered. Honestly, at each stage, we questioned whether we were on the right path. But looking back now, it’s interesting how everything connects. My time in consultancy, developing our own product, and trying to empower companies in a more data-driven way have all led us to where we are now with our software as a service model. Yeah, I think this was a challenge.

It’s been a rollercoaster. For example, in one of our internal workshops, we were asked what the core value was that helped us through all the challenges. I would say it’s grit—a mix of passion and perseverance. That’s been key. Another big factor is the diversity in our leadership team. My co-founder is very tech-focused, while I come from a business background, and I think that’s been part of the magic in what we’re doing. I think it’s one of the secrets of why we are where we are right now.

Can you tell us a bit about your background? What was it like growing up in Germany while also having strong ties to Indonesia?

I think growing up between two cultures was super helpful for me. I got to experience my dad’s culture because we spent a lot of time in Indonesia, but I also experienced Western culture. For me, this was always valuable when it came to having the right perspective, especially in tough times. I got good at putting things into perspective.

In particular, when it comes to building a company, I’ve always seen it as a privilege. I never feared losing everything because I didn’t connect my existence to my business. I know what it takes to have a happy life, and sometimes, to be honest, I'm questioning myself: is this the right way to go in terms of creating happiness? Because I see a lot of people in Indonesia who are happier with far fewer things than we have here in Germany. So, growing up in a multicultural environment helped me keep things in perspective.

Growing up was also interesting because I was in a very performance-oriented environment. In my family, education and performance were emphasized a lot. For example, I played soccer, and there was always this push - maybe I should join a bigger club, or maybe I should focus only on soccer. There were a lot of expectations in my childhood.

This all led me to realize that founding a company is almost like the perfect playground for all the triggers from your childhood and life. You get triggered daily - whether it’s through interactions with clients, investors, or teammates. In a way, it’s also been really helpful for my personal development.

So, you’ve mentioned that you’ve struggled to know whether you’re living a happy life or not. What helps ground you?

I started working at 25, so I’ve been working for almost 13 years now, and it’s always been about hustling. Starting in a consultancy firm, then founding my own company, and shifting through three different business models—it’s always been about striving to achieve more and get to the next step. Naturally, there are times when you question if it’s worth investing so much of your life into it.

But what’s funny is that since founding the company in 2016, I’ve only had maybe three to five days where I’ve questioned if it’s the right path, if I’m unhappy, or not motivated. So on the flip side, I feel like it’s a complete privilege to do what I do. Building a team, having investors who believe in you, being flexible with your work life, creating something with a real purpose, and helping companies make a genuine impact—that’s a privilege. I think that’s what keeps me going and why I’m still so passionate about it.

Of course, we’ve had hard times, especially during the bootstrapping phase, which was really tough. But, looking back, I don’t regret the decision at all. It’s all about perspective—if you can zoom out and think about what role work should have in your life and what it gives you, that’s a big question.

So eyva.ai was launched at the end of 2022, right? Now that you’ve been operating for about a year and a half, what have been some of the biggest challenges since launching?

I’d say one of the biggest challenges was building the first version of the platform. We were pretty confident that it would address the clients' pain points, especially since we had learned a lot from our consultancy work in product management. However, building the first software-as-a-service platform while also creating the initial go-to-market strategy with such a small team was a challenge. We had to bring together product development and go-to-market strategies at the same time.

At that point, we were only three people. Even at the beginning of this year, we were just four and a half people, but we were already managing 15 clients and 300 users. So it was a challenge managing everything and such a small team. Another challenge was finding focus by identifying the perfect use case for our application. Instead of trying to solve pain points across multiple departments, we decided to focus on mastering one use case to perfection before expanding to the next.

Was it hard to balance solving multiple issues at once?

We were tackling a lot of things in parallel. In the early stages, it also wasn’t clear which direction we wanted to go. For example, we were wondering whether we should go horizontal, and serve multiple industries. Or, go faster to different verticals, or if we should focus on one industry and try to build a vertical solution.. I think building a vertical SaaS was the right decision because it allowed us to convince clients more effectively. Many existing tools are horizontal, solving pain points on a higher level across many industries, but they’re not specific enough for the complex needs of product development and innovation.

How did you decide to focus on the beauty industry as your first vertical?

During our consultancy phase, which spanned about three years, we worked with a variety of companies across different CPG industries— from beverage, food, beauty and personal care. We noticed that the beauty and personal care sector had a more mature approach to working with data compared to other verticals.

From a data perspective, there’s a lot of dynamic and interesting information in beauty. For example, you can analyze consumer insights from platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Google, and product reviews. At the same time, you can track market trends—what’s happening in different categories, and what new products are being launched. Then there’s the question of what I need to build the products. What kind of ingredients do I need? This combination of dynamic data and the industry’s maturity in working with data made it an ideal first focus. In contrast, industries like the beverage industry still question whether it’s even worth working with data at all. Those were the main reasons we chose beauty.

Is it still difficult to convince big companies to work with data?

Not anymore. If we had launched this kind of platform that solves multi-department problems two or three years ago, it would have been much harder to sell the solution. Everyone is aware of the importance of efficiency, so the perception of how essential data and AI are has completely changed. There’s no longer that barrier where you need to convince companies that they need to work with data and AI. We were fortunate with our timing because a few years ago, it would have probably been more difficult due to concerns about change management within companies. So, the timing was really helpful for us.

eyva.ai claims to be a SaaS platform specializing in AI-driven product portfolio development and optimization.. How does AI work within your offering?

The key part is that we developed an AI methodology—what we call the AI Matching Engine. It begins with our Portfolio Benchmarking and Gap Identification algorithm, which continually uncovers portfolio gaps, identifies opportunities for new launches, optimizes existing products, and phases out underperforming ones. In the second step, it accelerates product decisions through Opportunity Evaluation, leveraging market, product, and consumer data to provide actionable insights

For example, we can link consumer data from TikTok, Instagram, and Google with product data from e-tailer like DM or Douglas. Then, we can connect that with specific databases, whether it’s an ingredients database or in the regulatory space. What our AI can do is match all this data in milliseconds. For instance, if you type in “I want to develop a 50mL face cream with retinol,” our AI immediately pulls every relevant data point in context. The problem before was that clients used separate tools for consumer data, product data, and market data, but they weren’t connected. That’s where the issue lay with our application. Our AI matching not only connects these datasets but also focuses on data quality. Since we’re domain-focused, we ensure that we have a lot of data, but also that the data is high-quality.

You’ve just closed your seed round with €2.7 million in funding, what are your immediate goals?

The goal right now is a mix of expanding our go-to-market strategy and refining our use cases to make the platform truly unique for different user personas. It's about fine-tuning product-market fit while also working on go-to-market motions, which is a challenge because we have to balance both.

What inspired you to start eyva.ai?

I think the drive to start a company has always been with me. Entrepreneurship might just be in my DNA. My dad was a true self-made entrepreneur. Growing up on the streets of Indonesia, he taught himself English by reading newspapers with a dictionary by his side. With relentless determination, he built a small school in Jakarta, which he eventually expanded into a large language school. Later, he moved to the UK, where he started another school while continuing his own studies, before eventually settling in Germany. His journey instilled in me a deep appreciation for hard work, resourcefulness, and innovation.

That entrepreneurial spark showed up early in my life. When I was 13 or 14, a friend and I started earning money by renting DVDs from video rental shops. We’d rip them and sell them online—my first business model. It wasn’t exactly legal, but it taught me a lot about business, market demand, and creative problem-solving. Looking back, it was the first glimpse of my entrepreneurial drive.

Later, my time in consulting gave me exposure to a variety of business models and industries. It taught me to approach problems from a process-oriented perspective, which has been invaluable in my entrepreneurial journey. Each of these experiences shaped how I approach building and scaling businesses today

What gets you up in the morning? What excites you about life?

I’d say it’s the connections I make with different kinds of people. This is one of the reasons I feel privileged—because I get to work with and learn from such a diverse range of humans. For me, a big motivation is giving people the opportunity to develop and grow, and being part of that journey. Having a positive influence on someone's life through what I do in business is what keeps me going. To be honest, that motivates me much more than any financial goal.

Thanks so much for sharing your story, Djef.

Thanks, Robin. It was a pleasure talking with you. Looking forward to what’s next!