After hiring a new CEO last fall to make its machine learning software more accessible, Techstars alum indico is ready for a big sales and marketing push.
To do that, the Boston-based company has raised a $4 million seed round led by Philadelphia-based Osage Venture Partners, with participation from existing investors .406 Ventures, Boston Seed and Hyperplane. As part of the financing, Osage partner David Drahms will join indico's board of directors, which will also add an independent member in the near future.
In an interview with BostInno, indico CEO Tom Wilde said that the company's transition from selling its machine learning software as an API for developers to a platform that's more accessible to non-technical workers has been paying off. The company had it strongest sales period yet in its fourth quarter, adding a number of Fortune 1000 companies as customers or trial customers, though Wilde declined to say how many.
"The company's competence in that adjustment to the go-to-market increased significantly and we decided to raise a proper round around that strategy," Wilde said. The company last fall raised a $1.5 million debt round, which served as bridge financing for when Wilde initially joined as CEO.
"AI has to deliver tangible results in 2018, and that perfectly aligns with indico’s mission.”
Using machine learning algorithms, indico's software aims to make sense of unstructured data, namely text and documents, and provide companies with analytics they can use to take clear actions. For instance, Wilde said, one company used indico to analyze customer service interactions and found that customers often asked for trial renewals of its product, prompting the company to automate that process.
"Indico has developed something that is really unique that solves what will become a glaring problem or in driving benefits from artificial intelligence when you're a big company trying to use it," Wilde said, pointing to a prediction from Forrester for AI companies in 2018. "AI has to deliver tangible results in 2018, and that perfectly aligns with indico’s mission."
