This startup wants to be the NASDAQ of the art world

Stories of Scale is a content series with startup participants from our conference in a partnership with EQT Ventures, sharing growth stories and lessons from industry insiders centered around four pillars: technology, business, human optimization, and communication.

Are you savvy enough to identify a counterfeit work of art? Do you know which paintings are most likely to be a solid investment? At the most recent TNW Conference, we spoke with Petr Václavek, the VP of Global Marketing and Communications for Artstaq, where he shared some of the challenges facing the auction business within the art industry.

When it comes to trading or investing in art, being well informed can provide you with key insights into the industry. Consider having the opportunity to invest in an artwork and having to choose between a piece by Pablo Picasso or Andy Warhol. Could you select the most stable investment? By combining ratings collected from a network of art experts with real-time market data, Artstaq makes the art investment industry much more transparent for art buyers and sellers.

With a data-driven approach, Artstaq launched a public dashboard on its website. Based on their ratings, Pablo Picasso’s paintings bring him to an astounding 10/10 for Artistic Quotient (AQ). This unique metric compiles dozens of data points and offers a unique evaluation of an artist’s work. Putting this into perspective, Andy Warhol scores 9.5, and Damien Hirst holds a score of 7.8 out of 10.