At the start of the year, Wired listed us as one of the Top 9 Italian startups to keep an eye on in 2019. Almost a year on, and we’ve become more than a startup. We’ve become a scaleup that’s grown exponentially in what’s been an extraordinary year.
Let’s run down the highlights.
Doubled workforce, tripled office space
It was our biggest year for hiring ever. To keep up with client demand, we doubled the amount of iGenius team members, bringing in talent across the board — from project management to back-end. Hiring was up 60% from 2018 and our team got 65% more international (by international, we mean non-Italian), giving us the personnel and diversity to continue growing exponentially.
A bigger workforce required a bigger office, so we got one.
Our new Milan office is more than triple the size of our old one — boasting a variety of productivity-boosting features like more meeting rooms, larger conference rooms, extra break space and, best of all, a foosball table.
AI isn’t the only thing we train in our new Milan office
Listed on Top 100 European SaaS companies
Accel — a venture capital firm that invested in the likes of Spotify, Facebook and Slack — praised us as one of the Top 100 European SaaS companies. As reported, we were the only Italian company chosen, and one of just nine in the Data/Analytics category.
According to Accel, the future is bright for software companies in Europe: “European companies are getting bigger faster,” read the report, “and we believe Europe will generate the first SaaS decacorn in less than three years”. A decacorn is a company worth at least $10 billion.
In 2020, we aim to continue standing out not only in the growing European market, but the international one too.
Global companies adopt crystal
A range of market-leading companies started using our technology— such as Allianz, Enel and Janssen (part of Johnson & Johnson). Their crystal-powered platforms process data based on the companies’ own metrics and answers team members’ questions via voice or typing using natural language. They can access real-time information from their smartphones—regardless of their analytics expertise.
Augmented Intelligence Foundation Launch
Competing in the AI race has never been so important. So we launched a not-for-profit initiative to help non-digital-native companies do more with AI. The Augmented Intelligence Foundation aims to give businesses the right knowledge and tools to compete on a par with tech natives and make better use of technology. You can find out more and get involved here.
After going from startup to scaleup, we needed to match the growth with a new look. As well as delivering a new brand identity — including a new iGenius logo and our very own font — we completely revamped our product website, crystal.ai. It’s full of videos, interactive graphics, dynamic statements and even an in-page demo on the home page to try our AI advisor out.
Inspired by atomic design, our designers started from a high-level concept and created a library of granular components that can be combined depending on what we need (from a website to a social media post). This comes together to create a complete design system that’s scalable and flexible enough for us to grow into. On top of that, it looks amazing.
A little snapshot of our design system
Successful Product-To-Platform Shift
It’s been an important year for our AI advisor, crystal. In line with our announcement in February, we shifted to a platform approach, making crystal usable for any business and even simpler to set up.
We optimized the system, delivering smarter AI that’s full of features — such as Context-Driven Response, Proactive Notifications & Alerting and Predictive Advice.
Furthermore, crystal’s multi-language capabilities are sharper and the system more versatile, supporting any environment.
Our R&D team in Switzerland took huge strides forward with our natural language processing technology, too. They spent a lot of time researching and creating a custom voice for crystal that sounds more human-like than ever.
With this, and tons of other exciting features in the 2020 pipeline, it looks like next year is going to be even better than this one.
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