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2020 Best Tech Startups in The Woodlands

The Complete Intelligence team is so thrilled to have been awarded as one of the best tech startups in The Woodlands for 2020! Thank you so much to The Tech Tribune for this honor.

 

 

Please check the original publication of this here: http://thetechtribune.com/best-tech-startups-in-the-woodlands/.

 

Article as it appeared on the Tech Tribune website is below.

 

The Tech Tribune staff has compiled the very best tech startups in The Woodlands, Texas. In doing our research, we considered several factors including but not limited to:

 

  1. Revenue potential
  2. Leadership team
  3. Brand/product traction
  4. Competitive landscape

 

Additionally, the best tech startups must be independent (un-acquired), privately owned, at most 10 years old, and have received at least one round of funding in order to qualify.

 

Looking for a badge to celebrate your awesome accomplishment? Find it here!

 

1. Othram

Founded: 2018

 

“Othram applies cutting-edge genomics to forensics in a novel way that harnesses the full potential of genome sequencing to deliver superior genomic insight from degraded and low-input DNA samples. Founded in 2018, Othram operates at the intersection of molecular biology, population genetics and bioinformatics. Our team includes leading scientists and engineers working at the frontier of genomics, using proprietary laboratory techniques and computational algorithms to extract the most value possible from human DNA. We work with the military, law enforcement, private investigators, historians, and academic researchers to maximize the value of their genetic samples. Othram is headquartered in The Woodlands, Texas.”

 

2. Complete Intelligence

 

 

Founded: 2015

 

“Using advanced Artificial Intelligence, Complete Intelligence provides highly accurate cost and revenue forecastshighly accurate cost and revenue forecasts fueled by billions of enterprise and public data points using our Global Cognitive System ™. Our platform gives companies insight into their future, so they can plan for success. Stop guessing. Start planning. Succeed.”

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QuickHit Visual (Videos)

QuickHit: The “Great Pause” and the rise of agile startups

Vice President for Accelerator Investment Fund for Capital Factory, Bryan Chambers, joins Tony Nash for QuickHit’s 15th episode. In this episode, they discuss the making of agile startups, and how they are amidst an economic recession brought on by the COVID pandemic, energy fallout, and other issues. Chambers also talked about The Great Pause. He sees this as a large contributing factor for the future of startups around the globe.

 

Capital Factory is the center of gravity for entrepreneurs in Texas. They help founders and startups by introducing them to their next investors, their next customers, their next employees. Since 2013, they’ve been the most active VC in the state of Texas, unlocking billions of dollars of new value for startups.

 

The views and opinions expressed in this QuickHit episode are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Complete Intelligence. Any content provided by our guests are of their opinion and are not intended to malign any political party, religion, ethnic group, club, organization, company, individual or anyone or anything.

 

Show Notes

 

TN: How have small, innovative companies been impacted by the various kind of problems we’ve seen over the last four months starting with COVID and then energy fallout? And how are corporates responding to that?

 

BC: The best entrepreneurs I’ve ever had the opportunity to work with generally have two characteristics: they’re incredibly resourceful and they are very emotionally intelligent individuals. Those are the two critical aspects of entrepreneurs that are also going to help them successfully navigate a global pandemic.

 

Everybody’s pretty impacted. The impact is significant. And so much that we’ve applied a formula internally called the COVID Impact Score. We ask everybody: how has COVID impacted this business and where is it going? How is it changing? Few people are positively impacted by it. Most people are negatively impacted by it. A few businesses are just neutrally impacted. But most people fall into that first camp, the negatively impacted.

 

People should be looking in the mirror, thinking very deeply about how do they pivot. How do they capitalize on new opportunities? Regardless of a global pandemic, it’s incredibly hard to build a startup and build a successful organization. This makes it even more difficult, and we’re going to see a lot of companies die faster. But we’ll also see lots of new and exciting innovations be born. We know in the wake of a crisis, major innovation and reform, happen. It’s exciting. But it’s also painful to get there.

 

It’s the Great Pause. The investment community is confused because our minds always say “no” when it comes to making an investment decision or a purchasing decision. It may not the [fault] of the product or service. We don’t know what’s going to happen in our business next month or next quarter and confused minds say “no”.  And I think there’s a lot of “no” right now.

 

TN: That’s what we’re seeing in the commercial environment but I think from the investor side, I yearn for the days of Q3 2019 in terms of investment funding. What a beautiful time it was. And it’s just a 180-degrees from that right now. As an entrepreneur and a startup, it’s an interesting time for us. It’s a matter of reorienting who we are. I know Capital Factory is doing the same thing.  Even big corporates are doing the same thing.

 

That’s what we’re seeing in a lot of the conversations we’re having. Many people aren’t really sure of their short-term priorities, and they just kept moving along. We’re finding opportunities in that, which is great.

 

Figuring out how to respond to that had been a challenge for us. But now that we’ve cracked it, we feel like we’re really moving ahead, and I’m hoping that those entrepreneurs that you guys are working with, that many of them can do that.

 

So part of the next step is what are corporates doing? How are corporates innovating through this? Are they relying on Capital Factory companies or external innovations to figure this out, or are they doing that great pause you’re talking about? Or are they just taking their own inventory in-house? Maybe they are trying to figure out where they’re going?

 

BC: It’s all of the above. Budgets have dried up and confusion still remains. People are scrambling to figure out how to re-prioritize innovation projects. But something so unique is happening in the technology ecosystem, not just in Texas, not just in the nation, but across the world. Innovation cycles are continuously speeding up. They’re getting faster. This only makes Fortune 500 companies more and more susceptible to disruption and more and more uncomfortable.

 

Any major corporation has two strategies: an internal strategy and an external strategy. They must be thinking about both. How do we improve our own processes, our own efficiencies and continue to innovate and iterate better and faster? But we better look outside our four walls, because startups are coming to eat our lunch. They can do it better and faster than they ever have in the history of the world, and it’s happening.

 

New business models and new types of firms will emerge. New firms like Capital Factory and our Innovation Council, the service that we help provide to startups and to our Fortune 500 organizations are going to be more prevalent. It is so fast and furious [at this point in time]. No large corporation can [compete] successfully without help from new types of partners.

 

TN: What we saw initially with COVID, especially, is a wave of fear. Now what we’re starting to see is a wave of humility. We could have done this better. We need to look outside. We need to consider that person inside who had that idea. That initial wave of fear was really two months. People were just reacting and trying to figure out how to survive day-to-day. Now they’re taking stock and looking back so they can figure out what their next step is.

 

How do you see corporates operating with external innovative companies going forward? Do you see more action there? Do you see more interest there? Do you see the return of corporate VC arm in any large company?

 

BC: Corporations need to be great at executing low-cost, low-risk proof-of-concepts in a non-production environment. We’re going to need to do integrations with lots of startups and rapidly test. Then [they will need to] choose the ones that work well and scale with them, if not acquire them, invest in them or support them.

 

The global pandemic has brought that confusion which has brought a temporary pause. But we’re going to see it continue to accelerate, and we’re going to see it accelerate in all areas. Organizations will be be forced to start engaging earlier with startups. We’re going to see more corporate venture capital dollars begin to flow.

 

Big corporations, now for the first time, are turning around thinking, “Oh my gosh, that startup can really compete with us and we´re Microsoft.” That statement is more true now than it ever has been. It’s only that level of innovation that will continue to benefit the agile, resourceful startups.

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Editorials

What nowcasts and unique datasets can tell tech about the coming economic shockwave

This article about nowcast is originally published in Protocol.com at this link https://www.protocol.com/nowcasts-forecast-economic-downturn-coronavirus

 

We are living through an economic event with few historical parallels. There is no playbook for shutting down many of the world’s largest economies, nor starting them back up again. But data-mining tech startups are searching out insights in unlikely places, trying to make sense of the global pandemic.

 

These companies are mining specialized datasets, from the prices of beef rounds and chuck, to traffic levels, to the volume of crude oil stored in tanks. Using a mix of machine-learning techniques, they’re spinning this data into “nowcasts”: small, nearly real-time insights that can help analyze the present or very near future. They’re far faster, more granular and more esoteric than the monthly or quarterly data drops provided by the U.S. government. Nowcasts originated in meteorology but are now being applied in economics, and the unpredictability of weather has never been more relevant to the economic outlook.

 

To glean key tech industry takeaways from the coming shifts, Protocol chatted with three data tech startups about the niche datasets they use to analyze economic events and consumer behavior.

 

One of them, Complete Intelligence, has attempted to build a proxy for the global economy that includes market data from over 700 commodities, equity indexes and currencies. Orbital Insight uses global satellite imagery to gather data on large-scale changes in traffic patterns, the business of marine ports, the movement of airplanes, and pings from cell phones and connected cars. And Gro Intelligence specializes in data related to global agriculture: crops and commodities, foreign exchange rates, and the supply and demand of food products.

 

Since these firms tend to shy away from spinning their nowcasts into takeaways (leaving that to their clients), Protocol also enlisted economists to help analyze the data and compare findings with traditional models.

 

Here’s what may be in store for tech over the coming months.

 

Top-level takeaways

 

The U.S. economy was relatively strong going into the outbreak of COVID-19. And that’s a key differentiator between this pandemic and past downturns: This is, first and foremost, a health crisis that’s spilling over into the economy — meaning that how well the economy recovers will depend heavily on what we learn about and how we handle the virus.

 

The wide range of responses to the pandemic — differing by country and, especially in the U.S., by region — mean that economic recovery will likely be protracted and uneven.

 

The U.S. is currently seeing this play out first hand in the way various states have implemented social-distancing measures. Gro Intelligence’s data showed that prices of beef rounds and chuck — which are more prevalent in home cooking — were at all-time highs in March as restaurants shut down across the country. But by using cell phone ping data, Orbital Insight found that things weren’t quite so uniform. It zeroed in on three cities representing three different stages of the pandemic — San Francisco, New York and New Orleans — then measured the percentage of time people stayed within 100 meters of their home each day. During the second half of March, the average resident of New York stayed home close to 85% of the time; in New Orleans, it was around 75%.

 

“When there is uneven distancing, there will be uneven recovery from the health crisis and therefore the economic crisis,” Krishna Kumar, senior economist and director of international research at RAND, told Protocol over email. “This might wreak havoc with cross-state goods, people movement and domestic travel.”

A heat map of San Francisco

San Francisco’s downtown is normally crowded with people, as the yellow areas on this map indicate. But after a shelter-in-place was ordered in mid-March, business districts emptied out.Image: Courtesy of Orbital Insight

 

Combine that with the far-reaching policy rollouts in the U.S. — such as individual stimulus checks, SBA loans and Federal Reserve actions — and there are a host of variables that could make the next few months difficult to predict. The stimulus may help spark a quicker recovery, but that trajectory depends on how long the downturn lasts. Experts agree that too much help could launch another crisis.

 

“A key reason for a more rapid decline in the unemployment rate from the near-term peak is the unprecedented size and speed of the fiscal and monetary response to this adverse shock, which contains measures aimed at maintaining payrolls,” researchers wrote in an April report from Deutsche Bank shared with Protocol, which addresses GDP model implications for the U.S. unemployment rate. The report forecasts the labor market returning to more normal levels of unemployment by the end of 2021 (4.4% by the last quarter of 2021 and 4% a year later), while the protracted scenario suggests the labor market won’t normalize until well into 2023.

 

Corporate debt levels hit an all-time high of $13.5 trillion at the end of 2019, and economists worry that too large a government bailout could spark a default crisis down the road — or even a corporate version of the subprime mortgage crisis.

 

“There’s a danger that we can lend carelessly,” Kumar said. “We just have to be prudent in bailing out the businesses that have future prospects and have returns to show.” He added that after the 2008-’09 financial crisis, banks in China lent heavily and, 12 years later, the time of reckoning might have finally come for those loans. “We can learn from that and make sure that we don’t end up having a state of default.”

 

Complete Intelligence’s algorithms suggest that deflation is likely already happening in China and parts of Europe as a result of COVID-19. But the data also posits that the U.S. may avoid outright deflation. The Federal Reserve has “taken unprecedented steps to inject liquidity — it stands ready to buy even junk bonds,” Kumar said. “These steps are even stronger than the ones implemented during the Great Recession of 2008. At least for now, it doesn’t look like the liquidity pipes are freezing.”

 

Oil storage statistics can also signify broader consumer economic indicators like consumption, and as of April 14, there’d been a 5% increase in crude oil stored in floating-roof tanks around the world over the past 30 days alone. (The startup applies computer vision to satellite imagery to analyze the tanks’ shadows to glean their volume.) While lower prices are good for consumers, they’ll also add to deflationary pressures, according to Kumar — and the U.S. energy sector will take a hit, likely putting a dent in GDP.

 

And a GDP hit likely translates to an impact on the already-growing unemployment rate. Using Okun’s law, a common rule of thumb for the relationship between gross national product and unemployment rate, the Deutsche Bank researchers worked out an updated economic forecast. “Our baseline parameterization,” the researchers wrote, “has the unemployment rate peak at over 17% in April — a new post-World War II high, before falling to around 7% by year end. Under a protracted pandemic scenario, the unemployment rate remains above 10% through all of 2020.”

 

What tech leaders should know

 

For one, expect less pricing power and lower margins. With the businesses shuttering across the country and high unemployment numbers, consumers by and large will have less to spend with. This could lead to supply surpluses, and in the world of tech, electronics manufacturers in particular will need to cut down on production, said Tony Nash, founder and CEO of Complete Intelligence. That will likely hit China, where a considerable amount of tech manufacturing still takes place, hard. As executives calibrate capacity and inventory, production runs will likely shrink alongside pricing power.

 

What happens in the U.S. may not affect a company as much as what happens in the global market. That could be especially true for tech companies with traditionally large sales volumes in Europe and Asia. Complete Intelligence’s machine-learning platform predicts that consumer price indexes in Europe will fall into negative territory later this year, but that deflation won’t hit the U.S. as hard as it will Europe and Asia.

 

“When China shut down, Apple had to shutter many of its stores, and Apple was one of the earliest companies in the country to feel the pain of the virus — because of the global output,” Kumar said.

 

COVID-19’s spread across the globe has come in waves, and that makes it difficult to predict its effect on the global supply chain. But experts say one time-honored strategy remains true: Diversification is key. And individual companies’ rates of recovery may depend largely on how localized their supply chains are.

 

That’s partly due to manufacturing delays that could stem from additional waves of the virus in other countries. But countries’ self-interests also play a role, Kumar said. “After 2008, many countries enacted protectionist measures,” he said. “And if they’re not able to import easily, first it’s going to increase the cost of our imports, and second, we might not even have the local capacity.” For example, there are almost no smartphone and laptop screens manufactured in the U.S.

 

We’ll also likely see tech companies prioritize different geographical supply chain footprints for future generations of products. Alongside this shift, tech giants will also likely take a harder look at which jobs they’re able to automate.

 

“We’re hearing more and more electronics manufacturers moving their manufacturing out of China, and what I’m seeing in data especially — at least for the U.S. — is moving to Mexico,” Nash said. “We don’t expect people to necessarily move their current generation of goods out of China, but as they move to new generations of goods, they’ll look for other places to de-risk those supply chains. So they may have an Asia version of that product that they continue to make there, but they may have regional manufacturing footprints for North America, for Europe and so on, so they don’t have to be as reliant.”

 

The shifts won’t just affect how things are made but also what’s being made in the first place. Necessity is the mother of all invention, as the old adage goes, and there’s a reason why so many side-gig-friendly platforms like Airbnb and Uber sprung from the last financial crisis.

 

And that’s not to mention the overhaul of how we work that many are already experiencing. We may see even traditional companies increase leniency on existing remote work and parental-leave policies, according to Kumar.

 

Conflicting recovery forecasts

 

Predictions of what recovery will look like are akin to trying to predict snowstorms in the summer.

 

Gro Intelligence CEO Sara Menker told Protocol that the U.S. could see a V-shaped recovery, similar to China’s, but that’s more likely the sooner recovery begins. Menker does concede that due to the two countries’ substantially different strategies addressing the pandemic, it’s difficult to know when we’ll be on the up-and-up again. One insight supporting the beginnings of recovery in China: the price of white feather broiler chickens. They’re a breed served almost exclusively in restaurants, and the prices now seem to be entering a V-shaped recovery after a precipitous decline. You can even track it against the reopening of Apple stores: Gro’s data shows white feather broiler prices in China started to rebound around March 6 and a clear price spike around time Apple stores reopened in China on March 13.

 

On the other hand, Orbital Insight CEO James Crawford predicts a more linear recovery, based partly on satellite imagery of roads in China’s urban centers. “In Beijing, for example, we’re not seeing a V-shaped recovery in traffic patterns,” he told Protocol. “It’s been very much a linear return, with less than half the cars on the roads now compared to pre-COVID activity levels. Although the evolution of shelter-in-place was and will be different stateside, businesses should plan for a gradual rebuild in activity as confidence grows among wary consumers.”

 

And, using global economic data like CPIs and predictions surrounding the strength of the U.S. dollar, Nash forecasts a slower recovery. “Whether you’re looking at equity markets or commodity markets, what we’re seeing from our platform is a slow return,” he said. Nash predicts volatility over the next four or five months along with the beginnings of a sustainable uptick in July — though, he said, that won’t necessarily mean a straight upward line, as there are a number of other consumption considerations involved: whether school will start again in the fall, whether football season will be reinstated, whether people can trick or treat in October, whether there are holiday parties in December. “That will define the rate at which we come back,” he said.

 

The true shape of the recovery to come is probably somewhere in the middle, according to Kumar. It’s likely too optimistic to expect a V-shaped recovery, but the more pessimistic prediction — several months of stagnation — “assumes that we can never get a grip on this disease, and given that social distancing seems to be broadly working, I think that’s too pessimistic,” Kumar said. And that’s not to mention the stimulus boost enacted by the federal government. The spark here wasn’t a financial system collapse; it was an economic shutdown. He predicts a more “checkmark-shaped” recovery, with a precipitous drop followed by a less steep, drawn-out upward slope.

 

But rolling back social distancing guidelines too early could sideline recovery as soon as it begins. Some scientists believe the potential impact of colder temperatures on the virus’ spread could lead to a second wave of infections in the fall, and even optimistic projections suggest a vaccine won’t be available until 2021.

 

“The uncertainty that we see in the health care crisis, you’re going to keep seeing in the economy,” Kumar said. “You can get sick very fast, but you’re going to recover much more slowly from your sickness. And that’s what’s going to dictate the economic pattern.”

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News Articles

Startups Step Up with Free Resources and Virtual Technology

This post on free resources was originally produced by Oracle and first appeared on the Oracle for Startups Blog: https://blogs.oracle.com/startup/startups-step-up-with-free-resources-and-virtual-technology

 

Startups are known to be adaptive, innovative, and agile. When there’s a crisis or disruption, these up-and-coming business are quick with a solution, and this situation is no different.

 

Despite being hit hard themselves, startups are stepping up to help by offering their virtual technologies and resources for free. Among them, we are proud to share, are several cloud startups from the Oracle for Startups community.

 

Here is a running list of some of the startups who are putting their ingenuity and inspiration into action.

 

Extending Help to Farmers and Growers

 

AgroScout

 

AgroScout’s software solution enables growers and farmers to turn a low-cost commercial drone into a digital agronomist, providing pinpoint detection of disease and pests, thereby protecting crops and increasing yield. During this economic crisis, AgroScout is offering its solution at discounted rates and including free use of a drone for 2 weeks in the case of growers who do not already own one, so the grower can try out the system without any cost.

 

“In these challenging times, we don’t want to ask farmers to put their hand into their pockets unless they are 100% positive it’s going to help them out,” said Simcha Shore, CEO of AgroScout.  “In addition to our discounted offerings, we are also providing online demonstrations so growers can be acquainted with the system and understand the benefits.”

 

The solution accurately and autonomously detects, identifies, and monitors diseases, pests, and other agronomic problems in the field. Data is uploaded to the cloud and analyzed by AgroScout’s deep learning algorithms with the goal of sending growers accurate crop stress statuses, disease, and pinpointed pest locations, accompanied by treatment recommendation, directly to their computer or mobile device.

 

You can take advantage of AgroScout’s current offers here or by emailing sales@agro-scout.com

 

Patient Triage Via Mobile App

 

w3.care

 

Brazilian startup w3.care is focused on mobile emergency care through telemedicine and artificial intelligence solutions for ambulances, rescues, and healthcare units. The startup has developed a new and free service, TeleCOVID, which helps identify potential patients and calculates their severity into low- and high-risk profiles. Low risk profiles receive care instructions and best-practice procedures, as well as connections with medical professionals. In the case of high risk, the TeleCOVID will start the medical tele-orientation using the w3.care platform, which is HIPAA and HL7 compliant, to help better connect high-risk patients to immediate care. (No personally identifiable information is used during the process.)

 

“Telemedicine is critical right now and the ability to help triage via TeleCOVID is helping the general population and the many medical doctors and organizations we are working with,” said Jamil Cade, MD and CEO of w3.care.  “We are helping medical professionals to tele-triage, tele-orientate, tele-monitor and use real-time data visualization to battle this pandemic.”

 

To access information on this free service, visit their website.

 

Real-time, Active Analytics Helping on the Front Lines

 

Kinetica

 

Kinetica is providing free access to its Active Analytics Platform for researchers, data scientists, and academics trying to analyze the impact of COVID-19. Kinetica helps organizations build real-time active analytical applications that react instantly to changing conditions. The platform leverages powerful GPUs to process and visualize complex streaming, historical, and location data at scale—layering on machine learning—to deliver real-time information for insight-driven actions and results.

 

“Our hearts go out to all those affected by the outbreak of COVID-19. I believe it is our duty to do all we can for the safety of our community,” said Kinetica CEO Paul Appleby. “Kinetica was founded on the idea that data can change the world. By providing our analytics platform for free we will help provide critical, real-time information to protect the most vulnerable, assist emergency responders, better care for the sick, and find a solution against this terrible virus.”

 

Use this form to provide a basic overview of your project, and access the platform free.

 

Throwing Studios and Artists a Lifeline

 

GridMarkets

 

GridMarkets, a cloud rendering and simulation company for studios, animation/visual effects, and other industries, is providing its service at a significant discount (and in some cases, at no cost) to studios and freelance artists in need. GridMarkets’ “COVID-19 Relief Program” (powered by Oracle’s VMs) can help studios and freelance graphic artists in many ways, including:

 

•    Enabling studios to continue work so they can preserve their cash and business
•    Providing a lifeline to the artistic community
•    Bootstrapping a freelance business (if they have been laid off by their studios)
•    Helping professionals refresh their artistic “reels”
•    Creating helpful community VFX 3D tutorials

 

“Visual effects studios and freelance 3D artists, who produce the world’s visual content, are being crushed by COVID-19.  Demand is down and anyone fortunate enough to have a project is now, understandably, ultra-budget sensitive,” said cofounder Mark Ross.  “Our visual effects cloud-based rendering and simulation service, powered and secured by Oracle, can be up and running for a studio or freelancer in minutes with no special skills required.  We have cut our prices and made grants available as a way of giving back to the artistic community in their hour of need.”

 

Learn more about GridMarkets’ COVID-19 Relief Program on their webpage.

 

Helping Navigate Volatility in Markets and Supply Chains

 

Complete Intelligence

 

With economies around the would essentially being put on pause, there is a new level of uncertainty in markets and supply chains. As a result, manufacturers are quickly trying to pivot and make adjustments on the fly. Complete Intelligence is offering a free report and consultation call to help businesses adjust to volatility in markets and supply chains.

 

“We’ve seen a big shift in how category managers and planning managers are looking at their supply chains,” said Tony Nash, CEO and founder.  “With entire economies being shut down with coronavirus, companies are taking a closer look at the concentration of supply chains by region. Our AI/ML software helps companies easily visualize their supply chains, and helps them pivot quickly.”

 

With Complete Intelligence, businesses can easily visualize their cost data, make predictions and plans, all in the context of a global economy. The company uses more than 15 billion data points in their AI/ML tool, so planning teams can see their cost projections in the context of market influences.

 

Contact Tony Nash at tnash@completeintel.com for more information.

 

Keep your storytelling fresh – even while working from home

 

Sauce

 

Video is paramount to brand storytelling, but creating great, engaging content when you can’t send out video crews or get face-to-face is a problem.

 

Sauce’s platform allows businesses to keep engaging with their audience, by transforming every organization’s community into a video creation team. The London-based startup enables video creation leveraging smartphone cameras, so anyone can become part of the film crew. The result is authentic user-generated content.

 

With features for editing, subtitling, and music – the platform is collaborative, fast, and robust.

 

“We’ve received an uptick in organizations needing advice and direction around video creation,” said Sauce cofounder Priya Shah. “We want to meet their needs with advice and technology resources so they can keep their video content and storytelling fresh and constant—even while we are all working from home.”

 

Contact Priya at priya@sauce.video for advice on capturing great video, even when your whole team is at home.

 

Chatbots triage customer service calls

 

BotSupply

 

BotSupply is a conversational AI company that helps organizations create engaging and relevant customer experiences using their bot platform. Today, the cutting-edge startup is providing its AI platform for free to public and non-profit healthcare organizations so they can do what they do best: save lives.

 

Triage and response teams across industries are being overloaded with customer calls. As call volume increases, so do wait times. Chatbots help these organizations provide information in a timely manner, automating the most repetitive queries and routing only the most critical ones to human agents.

 

“The beauty of chatbots is that they are so flexible and easy to implement that you can respond to any crisis in a matter of hours, not weeks. This is something other communication tools simply can’t do,” said BotSupply cofounder Francesco Stasi. “We are happy to offer these resources free while many are in need.”

 

To get started, contact Francesco at francesco@botsupply.ai

 

Mapping services for governments, healthcare, startups

 

TravelTime

 

TravelTime’s platform processes maps and data from across the globe and delivers optimized travel time mapping, so you know what’s reachable in minutes, not miles.

 

Today, TravelTime is offering its data and mapping services to governments, charities, health services, and NGOs for free. The startup is also covering mapping and data costs for other startups and small businesses.

 

“Although the current situation is disrupting our personal lives, our technology remains as solid and stable as always and so it is business as (un)usual for us,” said TravelTime cofounder Charlie Davies. “There is no time limit on this, there is no contract, there is no assumption for future use. We want to repurpose our data and services to help. Lots of people have helped us along our way, now it’s our turn to try and do the same for others.”

 

Any government, charity, health service, or NGO that is actively helping to address the crisis can get unlimited free access to data to help them plan their responses, including:

 

•          Arranging visits to vulnerable patients

•          Mapping the right locations for testing centers

•          Communicating to the public which test centers are right for them

 

Small businesses and startups can also take advantage of these services. Access the request form here.

 

With virtual-AI platform, HR recruiting keeps pace

 

Jobecam

 

Brazilian-based Jobecam is offering free access to its virtual recruitment platform so human resource teams can continue recruiting. Jobecam is a 100% digital recruiting experience that brings agility, accessibility, and diversity through AI-driven video technology. A pioneer in video blind interviews, Jobecam’s solution improves the recruiting experience and makes it virtual in a time when face-to-face meetings aren’t possible.

 

“In this moment of uncertainty and social isolation, we all need to come together and help,” said Jobecam COO Thereza Bukow.  “By making our solution free, we enable businesses to be more agile in their recruitment process and deliver a better experience that is secure and modern.”

 

Jobecam’s solution offers:

•          Registration of unlimited job posts

•          Automatic screening of candidates

•          Recorded video interviews

•          AI-based intelligent rankings

•          Live interview room, cultural matching, and video curriculum

 

Contact Jobecam by emailing cammila@jobecam.com or thereza.bukow@jobecam.com.

 

Real-time employee feedback that’s simple and meaningful

 

Holler Live

 

Dutch startup Holler Live is offering their real-time feedback solution free to human resource managers, so employees can provide their opinions and feedback on various topics, including how they are adapting during this time.

 

“Employees across the world are working from home—many for the first time. Holler provides an easy way for employees to voice their opinions and feedback—allowing human resource managers to better understand how staff are handling the changes and challenges of remote working during this difficult time,” said CEO Rado Raykov.

 

With one swipe, Holler Live allows people to express their opinion in an easy and universally understandable way. Holler Live partners get specific and user-permissioned alerts, permitting them to promptly respond in real-time to the opinions of their target audience, whether it’s employees, customers, or other stakeholders.

 

To access Holler Live’s free solution, please email rado@holler.live or sign up here.  Watch a video of the mobile employee engagement solution.

 

Keeping media rolling with AI-powered content tools

 

aiconix

 

German startup aiconix is offering its multilingual transcription and subtitling solutions for free and discounted rates. An AI-powered media and content creation platform, the technology enables media and entertainment professionals to produce better content more efficiently by automating routine workflows and creating new content from large amounts of unstructured audio-visual data.

 

“In these days, where everybody communicates online, it should be essential to reach also those who need barrier-free access, and provide searchability in audio and video files,” said CEO and cofounder Eugen L. Gross.  “We want to provide our live transcription and live subtitling feature for free for the next three months to those who need it like hospitals, authorities and NGOs.”

 

From press conferences to media content, aiconix’s transcription and subtitle services can plug into any data stream in multiple languages allowing organizations to quickly repurpose and disseminate valuable content. The platform enables automated subtitling of videos, semantic text analysis, transcription of audio, automated recognition of faces and local celebrities, label detection, and much more.

 

Contact aiconix to access your discount and get started:  Live@aiconix.ai or contact form.

 

Startups are also reducing operating costs by taking advantage of free and discounted cloud with Oracle for Startups. Learn more and join them at oracle.com/startup