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!