At X-Europe we're all about startups tackling real issues. To be successful a startup must have a strong and motivated team and a great community around it. We asked our AI&ML startups what milestones have they achieved so far and how they would advise other startups on the same journey.
On Milestones
The AI&ML domain is so far-reaching, if you've got a business idea, the chances are that you can apply AI to it, yet succeeding in it is not an easy feat - high costs and a constant race against the competition will keep everyone on their toes. That's why it is even more important to celebrate milestones, build upon them and snowball the startup into a success.
The fact that we have onboarded over 30 exporters and 12 funders to the Fineon Exchange marketplace platform, resulting in the processing of over USD 150 million worth of transactions, is a great milestone to have achieved, given that we officially launched the marketplace in the last quarter of 2020. - Fineon Exchange
We're proud of the team that we've built: Almost 60 technology enthusiasts at Samotics serve over 80 clients across the globe and work with global partners such as Schneider Electric to help industries work better, safer, and smarter. - Samotics
Our main milestone was being named Gartner Cool Vendor 2020 in Customer Service & Support Technology, from the listed companies in our category Whenwhyhow was the only one without VCs and the only one based in Europe. - Whenwhyhow
Our biggest milestone is to be a prime contractor in a consortium for snow monitoring in an ESA tender. Furthermore, we have achieved important partnerships with actors in the hydropower and water utilities sectors to commercialize our solution. - Waterjade by MobyGIS
On Impact
AI&ML has experienced tremendous growth in both popularity and real-life applications. So many things have been made faster, smarter, and more efficied thanks to the possibilities allowed by the application of AI&ML. We can see more and more corporations joining in on the AI hype with new products or extensions to their existing productline. Startups, however, can move faster and can focus on particular issues. We asked our community what kind of impact they are having so far with their solutions:
Our technology makes an impact by taking a dramatic step away from an internet where the primary metrics used are engagement based, and helps companies focus on better engagement. In the future we will look back on the time when everything was measured in clicks and wonder what we were doing. - Deepnews.ai
The technology enables streaming companies and sports clubs to scale up their video production capabilities using the existing resources. AISpotter can analyse large numbers of video archives or multiple simultaneous live video streams saving hours of production time. - AIspotter
Our solutions is transversal, Whenwhyhow could provide values insights in many verticals as banking, insurance, airlines, telcos, utilities, e-commerce, all the ones with "digital relationships" with its customers. Once said that we detected a lot for very customized solution for e-commerce, and that verticals as utilities have less interactions with customers. The right combinatation of underserved "in customer understanding" verticals and high level of digital interactions made us focused right now in banking (we are now in a F10 programme), insurance, airlines as first targets. - Whenwhyhow
We provide tailored services of water predictions to their production plants. Water is the blue gold of the 21st Century and Global Warming is making water harvesting ever more discontinuous and unpredictable. Our impact is in the adaptation to Climate Change. - Waterjade by MobyGIS
More and more novel solutions are popping up within AI&ML help such industries as construction, healthcare, e-commerce, entertainment and so many more. These solutions not only tackle significant issues faced by modern society but also makes life more pleasant in general.
At X-Europe we go further than just our services, we offer advice, connections, and exposure to new ideas that can drive developments and changes within businesses. The startup life has lots of ups and downs, including pivots, adjustments, and finding the right product-market-fit. The AI&ML cohort participants have seen changes as well:
We received attention from potential investors and also potential customers. There was also an opportunity to meet and discuss potential cooperation with the biggest companies in Central Europe. We gained valuable feedback and some useful tips for improvements. - Fintelligence
Highlights have been the matchmaking with corporations (gave us the opportunity to have very valuable leads), as well as the matchmaking events with investors and the mentoring program. - ReliaSol
X-Europe has provided the laying ground to building our go-to-market strategy for the Central & Eastern Europe region. It's also fully immersed us into the regional tech start-up ecosystem with great connections in the VC and investment network. - BotsAndUs
X-Europe has triggered our first collaboration talks with Vodafone, has helped us define our product messaging and conversion goals with our Mentor Tess and has helped us train our marketing and sales team with growth hacking mentality. - Neurisium
Another benefit of acceleration programs such as X-Europe is that they can help the startups to pinpoint the next steps in the company's development and prepare for the challenges ahead.
As we have refined our message with X-Europe, we have also been moving various companies through our sales pipeline. We look forward to beginning more partnerships throughout this year and to further developing our model into more languages. - Deepnews.ai
We're using the feedback we received during the X-Europe mentoring sessions to further finetune our business model with our targeted industries and customers, as well as improving our messaging on the benefits our solutions delivers to our customers. - ReliaSol
In terms of a direct outcome from the programme, we hope to progress the pilot that we are enteringing into with OTP Bank to the commercial partnership stage. We also hope to meet other potential clients/ collaborators at the X-Europe partner events in May. - Fineon Exchange
We put a lot of emphasis on building the deeptech community in Europe by enlisting the main ecosystem builders and the most promising startups in the region. Our hope is that the startups will form a close-knit community in which they can share their tips and advice to other founders looking to grow their ventures.
Don't build tech for the sake of building impressive technology but make sure to build solutions to actual problems. Continuously test, iterate and integrate with customer processes because no matter how good and innovative the tech might be, people still have to find it useful. - BotsAndUs
To be honest I would recommend resilience and if possible try to look for funding soon. The bootstrapping way is too hard in the B2B space with long sales cycles of your targeted customers. - Whenwhyhow
Remember that AI and ML technologies are simply another tool or means to develop and deliver your solution, albeit it a rather cool and exciting one! All the usual steps apply if you want your idea to be a success: identify the problem, research, product/market fit, go-to-market, etc. Your future customers won't care what AI tech your solution uses, just whether it will solve their problem and at what cost. - Deepnews.ai
Be patient. Commercially applicable and scalable AI is still in its infancy and your dreams of growing fast might take longer than expected. Take your time and survive until you're successful. - Neurisium
I would like to see more women in tech and especially in artificial intelligence. I think that diversity is critical in tech, as it enables companies to create better and safer products that take everyone into consideration, not just one section of society. I would recommend just start learning and pick the right problem that you want to solve! - Fintelligence
Try to be open-minded and realistic at the same time. Don't expect too much. You have to understand the difference between theory and practice. Start from something easily achievable and once you get it slowly put your expectations higher and higher and never stop. Listen to your customers to avoid creating something which will satisfy only your ambition. - ReliaSol
Supporting startups in their growth and providing them the insight and inspiration needed to take the next steps is a rewarding and valuable outcome of the X-Europe programme. With 3 more cohorts of startups, X-Europe will be sharing the thoughts and experiences of more startups like our AI&ML cohort. To showcase their journey and to inspire future entrepreneurs. Stay tuned!
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