

and love what we do.
– Founder’s story –
How it began
“It’s 10:00 pm. We are working with high pressure on a proposal for an exciting consulting project. We want to integrate a few slides from a different proposal but these are in German. We need them in English and we need them now. All team members are busy with other tasks (note: nobody likes to translate slides), the support staff is not available on short notice… so I start to translate them by myself. In order to be faster, I copy-paste the slide sections to DeepL and back… I am impressed by the quality of the translation and think to myself… there must be an automated way for this!”
I talk to friends, AI experts and some colleagues about the idea of a multi-skill digital assistant designed to help people like us with recurring tasks. There is nothing like this on the market, the people are excited about the idea. I am excited too! But is something like this technically possible?
On December 5, Brian is born. At first, he can only do small talk and tell jokes. I am experimenting with chatbot technology, RPA, researching further online skills and databases. I analyse all top AI 100 companies in order to find out which of them are potentially helpful for business professionals like me. I can get no sleep – new skill ideas come late in the evening, in the middle of the night, very early in the morning… the only relief is to write them down – a mind map of 50 potential skills is the result.
It will work! We have built the architecture for Pro Brian and we see the technological prove that Brian will work and it will be amazing! The first users test the translation skill and they are loving it. It is not perfect, but it saves a lot of time!
AskBrian GmbH is founded. We have some funding, have done all the registration and paperwork. In parallel, we develop the free skills of Brian.
Free Brian is accessible to the broad public. The initial five free skills are accessible via Telegram, Skype, and Google Assistant. We do no marketing for Brian; occasional users of Brian help us to make Brian more robust. We test also accessing the skills via a regular telephone number. It is exciting to call Brian, but there are too many misunderstandings in the transition from voice to text. But we see exciting technological developments!
Pro Brian is alive! For the first time, the end-to-end architecture works! Brian answers emails and performs tasks in the background. This is just amazing! Still, much more to do: he can process only smaller files, he is not stable and the translation quality is not good enough.
Champagne Breakfast: In the night, we had a technological breakthrough when all PowerPoint slides are translated and formatted correctly. The founder is crying. Happiness. We intensify the client conversations in order to start free trials. So exciting!
Brian is running, we have paying clients, 600+ users, more than 1000 requests a month. We are improving the deliverability, solving special issues, adding translation of pdf, png, and jpg files. Now we are ready to onboard further clients and start contacting investors.
We experience very positive traction, amazing feedback, and great potential. The founders decide to dedicate 100% of their passion and energy to Brian. We believe we owe it to our clients, we owe it to Brian and we love building Brian. With additional power, we move faster.
The world is struggling with the COVID-19 pandemic, the economy slows down and this is the time where we push even stronger and close our first external financing round! As the world becomes more digital, Brian fits perfectly in the new age. With our new supporters, we have so many more possibilities!














… and so proud to work with BDSU (Bundesverband Deutscher Studentischer Unternehmensberatungen e.V.) as well! BDSU integrates over 30 student consultancies with more than 2000 student consultants!

– Who we are –
People behind Brian
We, the people behind Brian, love what we do. We are senior business professionals who also know what they’re doing. Our background is in consulting, software development, research… What bonds us is the belief that we can achieve something extraordinary.

Pavol Sikula
Experienced Management Consultant
14+ years at Stern Stewart & Co.
Expertise in support optimization
Two-time Ironman

Matthias Ruppel
Passionate software developer
Experienced team leader
3 years big data at T-Systems

Tim Luckow
Consulting market insider
Two years at Comatch
Passionate about connecting people and innovation

Nina Rümmele
Experienced Management and GDPR Consultant
Years in Roland Berger, What the Food!…
Entrepreneur and keynote speaker

Jeewan Gaur
Experienced Financial analyst
Years at CRISIL (S&P company) and BCG Knowledge
Ambitious doer and passionate cricket player

Christopher Schmitt
Experienced backend developer
Years at Hetzner Cloud
Enthusiastic gamer
– On board –
Extraordinary Angels
We are very proud to have extraordinary Business Angels on board who combine senior top management consulting experience and an outstanding track record of digital entrepreneurship. Here is the background of our angel investors.








Björn Kolbmüller
Experienced digital entrepreneur
Founder of Flaconi and Zenloop

Paul Schwarzenholz
Experienced digital entrepreneur
Founder of Flaconi and Zenloop

Stefan Heppelmann
MD Green ALPS and
Partner at Stern Stewart & Co.

Jens Torchalla
Amber Invest and
experienced consulting partner

Dr. Torsten Göcke
Specialist for legal matters
Associate Partner at EY Law

Daniel Möllerhenn
Digital thought leader and
Principal at Bain & Company
– Great help –
Selected Advisors
We break new ground. We combine the world of technology, management consulting, user experience, and artificial intelligence in a new way. It is great to get the help of selected advisors on our ambitious journey.

Dirk Schuran
Former Chief Sales Officer COMATCH
Networker
Sailboat Captain

Matthias Setzer
Business angel and Startup supporter
Global Director Payments
Partnerships at Facebook

Felix Köllner
Serial entrepreneur, bot builder and hackathon champion
10+ years in consulting
Passionate downhill mountain biker