Every year, countless new startups launch with strong teams, clear ideas, and solid funding. But once they hit the market, many struggle to gain traction or reach the right audience.
One of the most common reasons for this is poor market understanding. Traditional research services are often slow, expensive, and outsourced, making them hard to access when budgets are tight and speed is of the essence. As a result, early-stage teams can miss essential data on market size and customer needs, making it harder to carve out a place in the market and sustain momentum.
That's the key insight behind Influsfera, an AI platform built to give founders a faster, more affordable way to access market insights without relying on expensive consultants.
Founded by Victoria Clotet, a 23-year-old computer scientist and entrepreneur with first-hand experience in the startup world, Influsfera uses AI agents to scan public sources and generate structured research automatically reports on key information like market trends, competitor positioning, and customer pain points, giving companies the context they need to make informed, strategic decisions.
Here's a closer look at the life and career of Victoria Clotet and how they led her to founding Influsfera.
A Founder with an Eye for Research
Victoria's instinct for research and analysis started long before she entered the startup world. As a child, she'd spend hours exploring different industries and products, even watching keynotes from Microsoft and NVIDIA to see how new technologies were introduced and positioned.
"I liked to research to learn something new every day," Victoria recalls. "Whether it was about an industry, a product, or anything in general. Even if it wasn't a homework assignment, I'd do it anyway."
That same curiosity led her to pursue a double major in computer science and commerce at the University of Virginia, where she learned the technical skills to build software and the business knowledge to launch and scale products in real-world markets. Outside the classroom, she worked on PhD-level research in cybersecurity and IoT, gaining hands-on experience with how emerging technologies are built and tested.
She was one of just 40 students from a class of 4,000 to complete both majors. After graduating, she set her sights on a bigger challenge: to build something that people needed.
Influsfera: An AI-Powered Market Research Tool for Startups
The idea for Influsfera really began to take shape when Victoria joined Founders Inc., a highly selective startup accelerator in Silicon Valley.
Surrounded by early-stage founders building ambitious products, she noticed that many of them were jumping into product development without proper research or a full understanding of the markets they were trying to enter.
She saw that most founders didn't have the time or experience to conduct proper research themselves, and hiring third-party consultants was often too expensive. Without that foundation, products were launched without a clear market fit or positioning, making it harder to attract users and stand out.
These challenges are not uncommon: surveys show that a combined 54% of startup failures stem from a lack of market demand and flawed underlying business models. "Many founders have the ambition to build great things," Victoria explains, "but sometimes they don't fully understand the market. And some of their ideas either fail, or they miss what the market is actually asking for."
Armed with this insight, Victoria launched Influsfera, a platform that uses AI agents to automate the most time-consuming and expensive parts of the market research process.
Rather than hiring consultants or spending weeks gathering data, founders can simply input a search term (whether it's a market area, product category, or specific company name) and receive a structured report within minutes. Drawing from more than 50 publicly available sources, the report highlights key details such as market size, projected growth, emerging industry trends, common user challenges, and in-depth competitor profiles, revealing how similar products are positioned and which needs they currently serve.
The result is a thorough overview of the competitive landscape: who the key players are, the size of that specific market/industry, what's already being done, standard salaries per country or US state, and where there might be existing market gaps. Armed with that context, startup teams can validate their assumptions, uncover strategic opportunities, and refine their business model to position their product more strategically.
By simplifying the research process, Influsfera gives teams an accessible tool that helps them better stand out in the market. As Victoria puts it: "I want this platform to help founders and even established businesses understand their specific markets fast and easy so they can get ahead and be successful in their fields without misunderstanding the market demands."
Making Research Fast, Reliable, and Accessible
Since launching Influsfera in early 2025, Victoria has continued to champion better access to research in the startup world.
She is currently a member of NOVA Talent, a global merit-based network connecting professionals across a wide range of industries, andalso the co-founder of Entrepreneurs in Madrid, a community organization aimed to foster genuine networking connections and peer support among founders in Madrid and across Europe and the US which brought together founders and builders from the U.K., US, Spain, Argentina, and Peru to share experiences and discuss the real-world challenges of launching companies across different markets and industries.
Looking ahead, she plans to grow Influsfera's technical team and expand its reach into more international startup hubs while collaborating with public institutions that support early-stage entrepreneurs, particularly first-time founders who often can't afford formal research at the beginning.
Victoria Clotet's long-term vision is to make strategic research as accessible and intuitive as tools like Notion or Figma: something founders can use on their own terms without needing a team of analysts.
At the heart of it is a simple belief: founders should build with clarity, not guesswork. Influsfera is Victoria's way of making that possible by giving teams the insights they need to make smarter decisions from day one.
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