OUR MISSION
LEAP OF FAITH
Acceleration
The business accelerates, but a large share of professionals today deal daily with ‘standard’ operative tasks for which there are already smart tools and services available (translation, financial analysis, research, calculation model, and so on )
Complexity
It is increasingly difficult to keep track of the best services/tools und distinguishing between real value services and good marketing. Many professionals are ‘lost’ in the high number of options, solutions and data sources.
AI at the start
There are already online services and tools supporting multiple tasks of advisors. These tools are fast, instantly available, increasingly smart and, compared to their value, quite affordable. Considering the recent advances of AI, we believe to be just at the beginning.
Seeking simplicity
Accessing the smart features of multiple tools without data security concerns in ‘one place’ by using free natural language increases the efficiency but is also an exciting experience.
HOW IT BEGAN
(Founder’s story)
“It’s 10:00 pm. We work with high pressure on a proposal for an exciting consulting project. We want to integrate two 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), 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?
Brian is born. As first he can just do smalltalk and tell jokes. I am experimenting with the chatbot technology, RPA, researching further online skills and databases. I analyze 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 in late evening, in the middle of the night, very early in the morning… the only relieve is to write them down – a mind map of 50 potential skills is the result.
It will work! We have build the architecture for Pro Brian and we see the technological prove that Brian will work and it will be amazing! First users test the translation skill and all of them 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 paper work. In parallel we develop the free skills of Brian – Brian of first contact.
Free Brian is accessible for the broad public. Initial five free skills are accessible via Telegram, Skype and Google Assisstant. We do no marketing for Brian, accidental and occasional users of Brian help us to make Brian more robust. We test also accessing skills of Brian 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 – looking forward!
Brian’s webpage is live! We are preparing the market launch of Pro Brian. The first heavy weight skill will be powerpoint translation. Further skills will follow. Working on webpage, pricing, talking to potential clients… we are more and more excited. The next milestone will be: ‘Pro Brian is alive!’
Pro Brian is alive! For the first time the end-to-end architecture works! Brian answers emails and peforms tasks in the background. This is just amazing! Still, much more to do: he can proces 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 crying. Happy. We intensify client talks 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. So the founders decided 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 Corona, economy slows down and this is the time where we push even stronger and close our first external financing round! The world becomes more digital, Brian fits perfectly in the new digital age. With our new supporters, we have so many more possibilities!
COOPERATION PARTNERS AND TECHNOLOGY
PEOPLE BEHIND BRIAN
Pavol Sikula
Founder & CEO
Experienced Management Consultant
14+ years at Stern Stewart & Co.
Expertise in support optimization
Two-time Ironman
Matthias Ruppel
Co-founder & CTO
Passionate software developer
Experienced team leader
3 years big data at T-Systems
Jeewan Gaur
Product development & Research
Experienced Financial analyst
Years at CRISIL (S&P company) and BCG Knowledge
Ambitious doer and passionate cricket player
Nina Rümmele
Projects and GDPR
Experienced Management and GDPR Consultant
Years in Roland Berger, What the Food!…
Entrepreneur and keynote speaker
Christiane Krause
HR and Corp. Development
Experienced in networking, customer relations, PM and controlling
15+ years at Siemens
Passionate wellbeing manager
Christopher Schmitt
Software developer
Experienced backend developer
Years at Hetzner Cloud
Enthusiastic gamer
SELECTED ADVISORS
Björn Kolbmüller
Lead Angel
Experienced digital entrepreneur
Founder of Flaconi and Zenloop
Paul Schwarzenholz
Lead Angel
Experienced digital entrepreneur
Founder of Flaconi and Zenloop
Stefan Heppelmann
Angel
MD Green ALPS and
Partner at Stern Stewart & Co.
Jens Torchalla
Angel
Amber Invest and
experienced consulting partner
Dr. Torsten Göcke
Angel
Specialist for legal matters
Associate Partner at EY Law
Daniel Möllerhenn
Angel
Digital thought leader and
Principal at Bain & Company
Matthias Setzer
Advisor growth
Global Director Payments
Partnerships at Facebook
Matthias Anderer
Advisor AI
Aerospace engineer, serial entrepreneur and accelerator builder
10+ years in consulting
AI technology evangelist and paraglider
Felix Köllner
Advisor digital assistants
Serial entrepreneur, bot builder and hackathon champion
10+ years in consulting
Passionate downhill mountain biker
Aravind Mohanoor
NLU Expert
Leading expert for digital assistants
Founder MiningBusinessData
Software engineer and entrepreneur