Thematic

In Founder Focus we introduce entrepreneurs and change-makers working on innovative startups, social enterprises and SME’s around Aotearoa New Zealand.

At a glance

Founders: Alyona Medelyan and Nathan Holmberg

Business: Thematic

Founded: 2015

HQ: Auckland

Can you tell us a bit about your business?

We use Artificial Intelligence to help companies improve their products and services. We do this by analyzing customer feedback that they receive across many different channels and showing them what drives customer metrics, how they change over time and what are the emerging trends. We work with medium to large enterprises and our customers include LinkedIn, DoorDash and Atlassian.

What’s the backstory for your business idea?

I was a consultant in the general area of Natural Language Processing, a subfield of AI. I have a PhD in this specific field. During that time, several companies reached out to me with the same question: How can we improve our Customer Experience? Our customers are telling us in NPS surveys, complaints, our call centre. But we don’t know what to prioritize first and we don’t know how to get in-depth insights. Can AI help?

I knew that with the advances in AI it was possible to create a solution that scales well and is different from what’s available in the market. We designed a solution that lets people not just discover themes in customer feedback but also re-organize them to reflect business knowledge. This really resonated!

Two of the three companies who asked for a solution back in 2015 are still customers eight years later.

What programmes, learning or mentoring, or resources have been of assistance so far?

I used to listen to podcast: How to start a startup, Master of Scales, Startups for the rest of us, Stanford Entrepreneurship series. But our lives as founders really transformed when we signed up for YCombinator online Startup School and later that year got accepted into the real YCombinator startup in Silicon Valley.