FAQ
Answers about the scouting workflow.
Everything a corporate innovation team tends to ask before its first project, from how the workflow runs to what each plan costs.
About Coopsaas
- What does the name Coopsaas stand for?
- Coopsaas stands for Cooperation Software as a Service. The name points at the work itself: helping corporate innovation teams cooperate with the companies they scout, evaluate and pilot, delivered as software you log into rather than a project you outsource.
- What is Coopsaas?
- Coopsaas is a scouting workflow for corporate innovation teams, paired with an integrated company database. It takes a project from a business challenge described in plain language through to a shortlist your team can defend, keeping the search, the evaluation and the decisions in one place.
- Is Coopsaas a database or a tool?
- Coopsaas is a scouting workflow with a company database built in, not a database on its own. The database surfaces relevant company profiles, and the workflow gives your team a structured way to search, evaluate and decide with them.
- Who is Coopsaas for?
- Coopsaas is built for corporate innovation teams, venture client and open innovation managers, and startup scouts. It fits teams that run scouting projects more than once and want a repeatable process instead of starting from a blank spreadsheet every time.
- What makes Coopsaas different?
- Three things set Coopsaas apart. It combines the scouting workflow with an integrated company database, it automates a high share of the repetitive scouting steps, and it ships with built-in method knowledge, so a team has a structured process from day one.
- How is Coopsaas different from a static company database?
- A static database hands you lists and leaves the thinking to you. Coopsaas adds guided search, shared evaluation criteria, team scoring and a record of every decision, so the same data turns into a shortlist you can stand behind in front of stakeholders.
The scouting workflow
- How does the Coopsaas scouting workflow work?
- The workflow runs in seven steps: describe your business challenge, refine it with guided search, organise your search directions, define what a great match looks like, scout and shortlist, evaluate together, then turn your shortlist into a partnership. Each step feeds the next, so nothing gets lost between them.
- How do I start a scouting project?
- You start by describing your business challenge in natural language. There is no brief template to fill in and no consultant needed. The AI reads what you wrote and suggests search directions from there.
- How does the guided search help me refine a brief?
- Guided search reads your business challenge and proposes search directions right away, with keywords, criteria and angles ready to go. You are not staring at an empty search box. You start from suggestions and adjust them to fit your project.
- What are search directions, and can I change them?
- Search directions are the angles Coopsaas explores to find matches, including adjacent ones you might not have considered. You review the AI-suggested directions, add the ones that fit and dismiss the rest, so the search follows your judgement rather than a fixed query.
- Where do the evaluation criteria come from?
- Coopsaas drafts evaluation criteria from your business challenge, then your team refines them and adds its own. The point is a shared, explicit definition of a great match before anyone starts scoring, rather than criteria that live only in one person's head.
- How does shortlisting work?
- You browse a longlist of matched company profiles and move the strongest candidates forward. Shortlisting is a deliberate step in the workflow, so the reasons a company advanced or dropped out stay attached to the project.
- What does AI actually do in Coopsaas?
- Coopsaas is AI-assisted, which means the AI suggests and drafts while your team decides. It reads your brief, proposes search directions, drafts evaluation criteria and surfaces the clearest signals from your shortlist. The scoring and the final call stay with your people.
The company database
- What is in the Coopsaas company database?
- The database holds company profiles that the scouting workflow draws on to find matches for your business challenge. It is integrated into the workflow rather than a separate directory you search on the side.
- Do you only cover startups?
- The database is not limited to startups, which is why Coopsaas refers to company profiles rather than startups. A relevant match for a business challenge can be a young company or an established one, and the workflow treats both as candidates to evaluate.
- Can I bring companies I already know into a project?
- This is a good question to raise with us for your specific setup, since the right answer depends on how your team already tracks companies. Ask us during a demo and we will walk through how existing candidates fit into a scouting project.
- How does the database find relevant companies?
- Coopsaas matches company profiles against the search directions and evaluation criteria from your project, so results reflect the specific business challenge you described. The Integrated Database add-on opens access to the full database to surface more relevant companies.
Working as a team
- Can my whole team work in the same project?
- Yes. Coopsaas is built as one shared workspace, so longlists, ratings, notes and decisions live in one place the whole team can see. That replaces the usual sprawl of separate spreadsheets and email threads.
- How does team evaluation work?
- Your team scores company profiles against your shared evaluation criteria, and every rating is logged and defensible. When a stakeholder asks why one company advanced over another, the reasoning is on record rather than reconstructed from memory.
- Can we invite people who only need to look?
- Yes, through the Viewer seat, which is free and read-only. It lets stakeholders view scouting lists, evaluations and pipeline progress without changing anything, so you can share context without handing out edit access.
- What happens to our scouting knowledge when someone leaves?
- It stays in the project. Because the search, the criteria, the scores and the decisions are recorded in Coopsaas rather than in a person's inbox, a scouting project keeps working when the person who ran it moves on.
Plans and billing
- How much does Coopsaas cost?
- Coopsaas has four plans. Viewer is free, Basic is EUR 20 per month billed yearly or EUR 25 billed monthly, Premium is EUR 80 per month billed yearly or EUR 100 billed monthly, and Custom is priced on demand. Yearly billing saves 20 percent.
- What is included in the free Viewer seat?
- The Viewer seat costs EUR 0 and is an invited, read-only seat for stakeholders. It gives them a view of scouting lists, evaluations and pipeline progress, which is enough to follow a project without taking part in the editing.
- What is the difference between Basic and Premium?
- Basic gives you the core Coopsaas features to manage companies in your scouting workflow. Premium is the full feature set for professional innovation scouting without limits, which is why it is the recommended plan for teams running scouting as an ongoing practice.
- When would we need the Custom plan?
- Custom is for teams that need more than the standard plans cover. It is priced on demand and includes onboarding and customer success, co-innovation on features, and Service Level Agreements. Talk to us and we will scope it to your needs.
- How much do I save with yearly billing?
- Yearly billing saves 20 percent against paying monthly. On Basic that is EUR 20 per month instead of EUR 25, and on Premium it is EUR 80 per month instead of EUR 100.
- What add-ons are available?
- Two add-ons extend Coopsaas. The Integrated Database is EUR 200 per month and opens access to the full integrated database to surface more relevant companies. Scouting Support is priced on demand and brings global startup scouts from our network to work directly inside your Coopsaas team.
Data and security
- Where is our data hosted?
- Hosting region is something to confirm with us directly for your account, since the specifics matter for compliance and we will not guess at them here. Raise it during a demo or through the contact form and we will give you a straight answer.
- What security certifications do you hold?
- Ask us for the current list of security certifications rather than relying on a claim on this page. Security expectations differ by organisation, so the honest approach is to review your requirements together and confirm what applies to your setup.
- Do you offer a Service Level Agreement?
- Service Level Agreements are part of the Custom plan. If uptime commitments and defined support terms matter to your organisation, that is the plan to discuss with us, and we will put the specifics in writing.
- Is our scouting data kept private to our team?
- Your projects, ratings and decisions are your team's workspace. For the detail on data handling and processing, the Privacy Policy is the reference, and anything beyond it is worth confirming with us for your account.
Getting started
- How do we get started with Coopsaas?
- Book a demo and we will walk you through Coopsaas with your own use case in mind. If you would rather try it yourself first, you can start directly with a self-serve plan and bring questions to a demo later.
- What do we need to prepare before a demo?
- Bring a real business challenge you are working on. Coopsaas starts from a challenge described in plain language, so a concrete example makes the demo far more useful than a hypothetical one.
- Does Coopsaas integrate with our other tools?
- Which integrations are available is best confirmed with us for your stack, rather than assumed from this page. Coopsaas does support exports that drop into the slide decks and spreadsheets teams already run on, and we can talk through the rest during a demo.
- How quickly can a team get productive?
- Coopsaas ships with built-in method knowledge, so a team has a structured process from day one instead of designing one first. You describe a business challenge, follow the guided steps and reach a shortlist without building the workflow yourself.
Still have a question we did not cover?
Book a demo and bring a real business challenge. We will answer the specifics for your team, from hosting to integrations, in the same call.