Innovation District professor sells AI start-up based on research excellence

In 2017 business analysts were saying that Artificial Intelligence would revolutionise… Everything. They expected the most immediate use case to be customer service, and this tip was not lost in Stephen Alstrup, who was- and is- one of Europe’s leading algorithm researchers. He had just finished teaching his first batch of Ph.D.-students at BARC, a new centre of excellence at Innovation District Copenhagen-partner University of Copenhagen. A handful of his PhD’s wanted to start a company with him. This summer their company, SupWiz, sold to Norwegian customer experience specialists Puzzel for an undisclosed sum. By Jes Andersen.

Training an AI to understand confused humans

Supwiz leveraged the founder-groups hard-core algorithmic insights to build AI powered plug-ins for customer support systems. Their first customer was Danish-gone-global IT-company NNIT. Every year their 3,000 staff receive several million customer requests in multiple languages. Alstrup claims that he knew nothing about customer service, but his start-ups’ AI was rapidly trained to understand customers. Even when they misspelled or rambled.

Our first product was a plugin for a ticketing system. It allowed NNIT to go from two and a half to one and a half staffers to re-route requests. Even so, the staffers were happier, because routing tickets is really boring work. That’s when I realised, that our solution was going to work”: Stephen Alstrup, CEO, Supwiz and professor, University of Copenhagen, Dept of computer science.

From academia to entrepreneurship and back

Alstrup has one of those resumés that leave the rest of us exhausted. With a freshly minted PhD he co-founded the Danish IT-university ITU. Left that to found and build Streaming Software company Octoshape which sold for 750 mio DKK. Left entrepreneurship for University of Copenhagen to help build BARC which became Europe’s leading algorithm research centre. All the while lending his knowledge to several government councils and think-tanks.

My previous experience as a start-up founder made me want to build this company in a way that others say is impossible. We never spent a dime on advertising and have almost no sales organisation. Instead, we focussed on building the coolest product and finding customers who wanted to build it with us”: Stephen Alstrup, CEO, Supwiz and professor, University of Copenhagen, Dept of computer science.

Organic growth with co-creating customers

Having customers who were eager to co-develop the company’s solutions has allowed SupWiz to grow without spending time hunting investors. It has also given them access to actual customer data to train their AI on. Continually training their AI on the interactions of companies with their customers has become a cornerstone of the SupWiz product development principles, and Alstrup feels, that this approach has proven extra valuable to early customers.

Corporate companies ought to co-create much more with start-ups. It’s hard for a big company to be innovative, but they can learn a lot and save money at the same time through collaborating with innovative start-ups”: Stephen Alstrup, CEO, Supwiz and professor, University of Copenhagen, Dept of computer science.

A call for more start-up/corporate co-creation

Alstrup also urges start-ups to make collaborators of early customers. Not least for Artificial Intelligence companies, because they get access to data. While start-ups usually know where to look for co-creators, corporates face a problem that might have a solution in innovation districts.

Established companies, that wish to co-create with a start-up, may find it challenging to even find one. These early-stage companies do not advertise the fact that they are new but Innovation District Copenhagen is home to more than 500 technology-based start-ups. Taking a look around the start-up communities in our district is a really good place to start”: Kristoffer Klebak, Head of secretariat, Innovation District Copenhagen.

About Innovation District Copenhagen

Join us in Innovation District Copenhagen – a world-class innovation district where you can transform your bright ideas into growth, jobs, and global solutions.

• Co-locate with University of Copenhagen, University Hospital Rigshospitalet, University College Copenhagen (KP) and 500 innovative companies.
• Co-create with 40,000 researchers, staff and students.
• Collaborate to develop new solutions to societal challenges.
• Find a job with leading academic institutions and deep-tech companies.

Learn more about the Innovation District Copenhagen organisation.