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dialmind

Interview with DialMind Founders

DialMind is like Google assistant, Alexa or Siri for online shops. It takes action, understands and responds to callers via phone. Transfers callers to the right department when operator is needed. Frees roughly 80% of the human agents’ time to focus on higher-value tasks. DialMind drastically lowers support costs and scales explosively on demand.

Robert Panayotov (RP): My name is Robert and I am a co-founder of DialMind the automated phone solution and this is my brother Martin, say hello Martin.

Martin Panayotov (MP): Hi!

Why did you start DialMind?

MP: We together founded DialMind a while ago. Initially, this project was inspired by a problem that we had in our other marketing company. We had a few employees taking leads by phone. They were not productive or motivated and they were asked the same repetitive questions from customers all day long and we had to cover different time zones.

So ideally we decided to automate those calls in an effort to get more efficient. This decision gave birth to DialMind, our AI-powered phone automation service. We built and implemented the system and we saw an incredible 30% increase in conversions. On top of that our colleagues that were previously taking the calls and getting the leads are now repurposed to solve more interesting specific cases and problems. 

RP: yeah so this actually proved to us that this is something interesting for other businesses so that’s why we’re talking with you and we were part of Nextgrid. 

What makes DialMind the next big thing?

MP: The world is changing rapidly and most of the business tasks will be automated sooner or later, especially with AI. We saw incredible conversions increase in our other business so we were certain that we can achieve the same for other companies as well, not only us. Robots don’t take time off and generally, they don’t make errors and they’re extremely effective. Plus they scale on demand. This is the main reason we decided, okay how can we get this technology to the next level and to make it available for as many people as possible. 

RP: And as far as for our Shopify product, the DialMind Shopify plugin, we think it’s really the next big thing on Shopify and for all companies because integrating into their systems would be a piece of cake. They will have no unnecessary costs on integrating that. So I think this will be a game-changer for them.

You participated in our third batch in the Nextgrid AI seed program. What was your experience?

RP: We’re super grateful for that, for the time you guys invested in us. We learned a lot and improved a lot on our business, on our communication, on our branding and marketing, and especially thanks to you Kuba we actually also improved our logo and our website. We are super grateful for all the time you invested in us and the experience was super valuable and if we had to do it again we would do it in a heartbeat.

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What is the most exciting thing in the space of artificial intelligence right now?

MP: Artificial intelligence is all about solving business issues, automating, and scaling. Creating artificial intelligent algorithms is nothing without actually solving a real business issue. That’s why we started DialMind. We saw an opportunity for automation when we had the expertise and the team to solve the problem with modern AI technologies, and basically, this is how we started to approach this problem.

RP: Yep and the important thing here to take in mind is that a lot of businesses are starting to understand AI products and they are starting to use them more in their businesses. So I think this is the perfect time for us to actually attack that market and be the first movers there, especially in the Shopify space.

How do you think AI technologies will impact humanity?

RP: Well they will impact it in a great way and we think this will be a game-changer. If you think of the Industrial Revolution and what that did to jobs and to the way that people did business, we think that this will be an even more drastic catalyst and it would change the way business is done. The way tasks are handled and the overall efficiency and productivity will reach all-time highs and it will be a catalyst for these changes and I think the actual application of AI in actual business problems is what actually is important.

What’s the biggest learning from founding DialMind?

MP: So initially we’ve built it to solve our internal problems in another context. We didn’t realize that our system can be applied to a large number of business cases. That’s how we go about developing DialMind in a reusable way that will allow us not only to scale in numbers but industries as well.

What gets you out of bed every day?

RP: Personally for me, that is the love of my family and the challenges at work I encounter every day. These are the driving factors of my life. Work is fun and the biggest challenge the greater the impact on society it has. This is what motivates me personally to get up in the morning or what the Japanese call ikigai, the purpose of your life and the driving force of your everyday life.

MP: I personally work on what I like and I’m able to do what I love. I think that it is very important for everybody that wants to excel in what they do. They need to love their work and we want to help many people do more interesting things and automate the boring everyday things that are repetitive and just boring. What we want to do is to work towards automating and making everything more efficient so people can have more spare time to do better things.

RP: Yeah and if it wasn’t for this energy of both of us we wouldn’t be here talking with you right now, we wouldn’t be in the Nextgrid accelerator, we wouldn’t be doing AI. All this excitement and all of this love towards technology and improving the quality of people’s lives are what drives us to do this.

What advice would you give to other entrepreneurs thinking about founding their own tech company?

MP: Just do it! You need to take the time to research the business case first. Having a trusted partner, for example like Nextgrid or everybody that can help you around you, can significantly get your idea shaped. They will help you create a game plan that you need to follow and execute. So make sure your product or service solves real issues and helps people. I would recommend everybody trying to start a new business to read Peter Thiel’s book “Zero to One” which shows what kind of business you need to pursue in order to be great at what you do.

RP: So yeah, of course, action is super important. You need to do it otherwise nothing will happen. But please take into account that a lot of smart people did a lot of successful stuff before us and we need to take the time to read those books, super crucial and important for you guys. I saw that changed my life tremendously. Me and my brother are book junkies for everything that’s about productivity or about making our lives better and about health. So you need to stay healthy, you need to be active and you need to constantly learn otherwise you’ll be eaten by the big sharks.

Is there anything else you would like to add?

RP: There wouldn’t be enough time to express my gratitude towards Nextgrid and the time they took their personal approach towards everything. It was super useful for us. It helped us structure our strategy towards attacking this specific market. Specifically, thanks to Matthias for helping us understand the potential of Shopify and for Anita for actually being with us through the whole journey of improving our business. Sandra and Kuba also to you, everybody in the team is super useful. You guys are rock stars and I think you will benefit not only us but lots of other startups. What we’re hoping now is to actually get an investment for our idea. We’re getting in touch with even more investors about it. We have some interest towards that so we are very eager to see who will be able to assist us not only financially but with their advice, expertise, and ability to grow a large team and to keep this energy flowing. 

MP: Yeah on top of that we are working toward the final product that we believe will be live in less than two months, maybe a month and a half from the date we take this interview. I think we’re really close, we actually have a working prototype internally that we test and we work on all the time. So pretty soon a lot of Shopify stores will be updated and upgraded with awesome customer service over the phone. 

RP: Yeah so the next time you call a shop and you see a robot talking back to you, it might be just DialMind handling your call and you should expect the perfect service for what you’re asking.

MP: Or maybe you won’t notice that it is a bot so you never know.