Heatseeker
Techstars '24Bundall, AU · Founded 2023 · 23 employees on LinkedIn · 5 known investors
Find your way into Heatseeker
1,412 people in our graph share verified history with the Heatseeker team — schools, employers, funds. One of them is your warm intro.
René Kuijtenunlockedknows Rutger Coolen · together at Utrecht University (overlapped)
×3knows the team · via Techstars
×4knows the team · via Vlerick Business School
×3knows the team · via University of Leeds
knows the team · via Australian Institute of Company Directors
Heatseeker is a platform that combines synthetic personas built from first-party customer data with live in-market experiments to validate messaging, pricing, and go-to-market strategies. It serves marketing and product teams seeking to understand actual customer behavior through real ads and experiments rather than surveys.
Founders & leadership
Heatseeker was founded in 2023 by Rutger Coolen.
RC
Rutger CooleninChief Product Officer & Co-FounderRutger Coolen spent two decades in product roles, including building Nimbuzz mobile to 100 million users and leading mobile innovation at Atlassian, where he managed large cross-functional teams and helped guide Jira's evolution into an enterprise SaaS offering. He is co-founder and chief product officer at Heatseeker.
KO
Kate O'KeeffeinCEOShe was previously a Partner and Director at BCG Digital Ventures and spent a decade at Cisco Systems, where she founded the Cisco Hyperinnovation Living Labs (CHILL) and led the Services Innovation Excellence Center. Earlier in her career she founded Cinderella Bella and worked as an innovation manager at South East Water, and she served as a non-executive director at Birchal from 2023 to 2025.
Investors · 5
Also in the syndicate · 1
Capital Flead
Funding
SEC filings, press & company announcements- Undisclosed amountpre-seedSep 2025
Capital F (lead)
Source ↗ - Undisclosed amountpre-SeedMay 2025Source ↗
Source: company announcements and press reports — follow each round's link for the claim.
Competitors · 7
by search overlap
Demandbase24 shared keywordsDemandbase provides an AI-powered B2B intelligence platform that integrates go-to-market data, tools, and execution across the GTM ecosystem. The platform connects account intelligence, buying group data, and intent signals to help B2B teams plan, execute, and optimize their sales and marketing strategies.
SurveyMonkey23 shared keywordsSurveyMonkey is an online platform for creating surveys and forms to run market research, customer satisfaction, event registration, and employee feedback programs. It offers AI-assisted survey building, expert templates, a global respondent panel, analytics tools, and integrations for individuals, teams, and enterprise organizations.
Twilio22 shared keywordsTwilio provides a cloud-based communications platform that enables businesses to integrate voice, messaging, and video into applications using APIs. The platform combines communication channels, contextual data, and AI orchestration for enterprises and developers building customer experiences.
Nextdoor (NYSE: 2021)18 shared keywordsNeighborhood social network; IPO 2021
Similarweb18 shared keywordsSimilarweb provides web analytics showing traffic market share across mobile, desktop, and tablet platforms, including device traffic trends and top platforms by country. It serves businesses analyzing digital audience and regional traffic data.
Totango16 shared keywordsTotango offers a customer success platform for businesses to manage customer relationships and drive revenue retention and growth, including AI-powered features like account summaries and a customer intelligence engine. The platform serves customer success teams and includes tools such as in-app engagement and an online training hub.
Pipedrive16 shared keywordsPipedrive is a cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) platform designed for small and medium-sized businesses to manage sales pipelines, track leads, and automate sales processes. The platform provides visual sales funnel management, email marketing integration, customer tracking, and reporting tools to help sales teams close more deals efficiently.
Companies competing with Heatseeker for the same Google search keywords, organic and paid, via search-intersection analysis.
In the news
Frequently asked questions
- What does Heatseeker do?
- Heatseeker is a platform that combines synthetic personas built from first-party customer data with live in-market experiments to validate messaging, pricing, and go-to-market strategies. It serves marketing and product teams seeking to understand actual customer behavior through real ads and experiments rather than surveys.
- Who founded Heatseeker?
- Heatseeker was founded by Rutger Coolen in 2023.
- Who are Heatseeker's investors?
- Heatseeker's investors include Eastend Ventures, Even Capital, HearstLab, Techstars.
- Where is Heatseeker headquartered?
- Heatseeker is headquartered in Bundall, AU.