Startup of the Day - Indisys

The company of the day is Indisys, based in Spain. They provide high-end solutions in domains where Natural Language and Dialogue Intelligence may optimize the customer’s experience. You will find below an interview with Pilar Manchón, CEO of Indisys. All the best to them and congrats for being the startup of the day!

Website: www.indisys.es.

Interview with Pilar Manchón, CEO of Indisys

Who are you?

CEO.

How do you feel being the most promising ‘company of the day’ per Microsoft?

When other professionals in the field with reknown skills and experience endorse your project, you feel the thrust, that impelling force that drives you further and makes you give even a little bit more of yourself. Believing in your project is essential, but having others believe in it is a real thrill. Success is surely one step closer.

What did you do before creating your company?

I was a researcher in Computational Linguistics.

How did you get the idea? What s the genesis?

I had been working in the field for quite a few years, first in the USA, and then in Spain. Our research group obtained great results in some projects, and then it was a matter of identifying the business opportunity and finding money to get started. Finding capital was extremely hard, but we did and here we are now.

What do you sell? What is your company’s mission?

Speech is the most natural and common means of communication between people. The nature of spoken dialogue per se however implies extremely complex activities that are difficult to reproduce artificially. Moreover, we tend to be collaborative in our dialogues, doing our best to accomplish the task at hand in an efficient manner. It is the combination of these strategies that results in flexible and natural dialogues. Indisys has successfully mirrored human intelligence, placing voice and natural language at customers' service. This new generation of intelligent agents provides affordable high-end solutions for intelligent customer relationship management.

Indisys’ new breathtaking technology, has blown away the old existing barriers imposed by other dialogue systems. Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Processing, Cognitive Science and User-Centered Design have been carefully combined into Indisys’ recipe for success. We are proud to provide high-end solutions in domains where Natural Language and Dialogue Intelligence may optimize the customer’s experience. We offer Intelligent Virtual Operators as well as Intelligent Virtual Assistants and Messenger bots.

Funding history? VCs? BA?

We started up with a couple of BAs and our own investment. Then in 2007, a VC bought 25% of our capital.

Growth? Internationalization?

We are looking into it right now. Our first target is to gain a good part of the Spanish market and then grow.

How many employees do you have? How many developers?

12 Employes, 8 developers.

Are you hiring? If yes, what? Where?

YES! We are hiring developers, scientists and linguists.

Which platform are you building on? Why?

Visual Studio 2005-2008 / Windows XP-2003.

Do you have any Software IP? Is there something that you’re the only one to do on the market?

Yes! We have proprietary software. There are other market players, but our technology is more advanced and grants us a significant competitive advantage.

Who’s your role model?

Why choose one when there are so many examples... I would like Indisys to grow in a similar fashion to Nuance Communications, small team of entrepreneurs built what today is a huge multinational.

Where do you see opportunities today in the Software/internet areas?

E-services are definitily an area of opportunity. Nowadays, we want everything at our disposal, with no hassle and no difficulty. We want intelligent, efficient and natural interaction at all levels, which implies the use of multimodal interfaces, speech and natural language.

Looking for funding? If yes, how much?

We are looking for opportunities to grow and expand. New business plan under development at the moment.

What about the BizSpark Program? What do you think? Are you going to join? Why?

Definitely! We can use any help we can get to become better and more competitive. We see the program as an opportunity to establish partnerships and alliances with other innovative, complementary and fast growing companies.

Any advice to young Software entrepreneurs?

Never give up, never surrender! (Galaxy Quest) If you have a good idea and the stamina and skills to make it happen, do not falter. Make sure you are open to objective advice and listen to people you trust and respect.