Foundation of the month: respeak

What does your company stand for?

Respeak stands for several solutions with which we want to revolutionize the accessibility of knowledge in companies. Employees in companies need to quickly get the right knowledge at the right time to do their jobs in today’s volatile times. To achieve this accessibility, we do three things:

1) Extract information from existing documents at companies and make it accessible via natural language. In other words, Respeak quickly provides answers to questions, for example, about maintenance or processes.

2) Deliver new knowledge in a novel and interactive way, in a low-threshold learning dialogue with our chatbot. We use these dialogs in onboarding or corporate learning.

3) and conclude We also collect information with surveys that feel like an interview and are automatically evaluated.

Where and how did you get the bright idea to start up?

The initial impetus for Respeak came during our doctoral studies in business informatics at KIT with Professor Mädche. Here, we intensively studied the automation of qualitative data collection and analysis, but also the design of human-like chatbots. In research, we ourselves had a lot to do with accessing but also collecting information and developed our own solutions on a small scale. These first prototypes kept us so busy that we really wanted to put our ideas into practice – and that’s how Respeak came to be, with the help of the EXIST grant.

Has Corona had an impact on your startup/industry so far, and if so, what?

Fortunately, Corona has not had a particularly noticeable impact on us. We didn’t really start with Respeak until July 2021, so the Corona situation wasn’t that new anymore. Perhaps our first projects with more direct, physical customer contact would have looked a little different. But all in all, the shift to hybrid work was also helpful, for example, in hiring working students from other regions.

What qualities do you think a founder should have?

Openness, flexibility and resilience. It definitely helps a lot to be able to approach people and seek conversations and exchange. You should be flexible, because such conversations naturally always generate new ideas, comments and feedback that influence the current status. That’s why conversations with customers, mentors, investors and other startups are so valuable for sharpening and developing your own idea. But for that, you also need flexibility and a willingness to take on new things and experiment. And resilience is important to be able to deal with the responsibility, uncertainty and sometimes rejection that comes with entrepreneurship.

Do you have any practical tips for other young entrepreneurs?

Just do it and try it out. And don’t be afraid to talk about ideas. The challenge is usually not to have an idea, but to get the idea “on the road”. And for that, as much feedback as possible just helps especially. It’s super exciting what you can put together these days with just a few lines of code (or with the multitude of good no-code tools) – and how quickly you can demonstrate and test ideas with them. In addition, there are many good programs and accelerators, especially in BW, that support young founders in their first steps, both in terms of content and financially.