A4Everyone & Visa Innovation Program: “This was an opportunity to test whether we can work with multinational enterprises”
One year ago when they were chosen for the Visa Innovation Program, data science startup A4Everyone was twice smaller in terms of revenue, people, and perspectives. “I expect that in one year we’ll at least double everything we’ve achieved right now,” tells us co-founder and CEO Hristo Hadjichonev. Between the start and the formal end of the program, which was facilitated by Eleven Ventures, the four-year-old startup managed to raise an investment round led by Eleven, start growing its team and make first steps towards the DACH market.
A4Everyone’s core product is a platform that automates decision making based on data models. “Generally what we are doing is automating decisions of humans to enable people to focus on work that is more creative rather than on repetitive tasks that can be done by computers and algorithms,” explains the CEO.
Serving different sectors and markets
A4Everyone has developed a SaaS platform targeting medium and enterprise businesses and offers solutions for different cases – from supply-chain forecasts to automated decision making in financial and insurance institutions. The company currently has products for retail and wholesalers, for customer finance businesses, and for insurance. Although these are different domains and areas, the core technology is the same, which allows A4E to easily develop solutions for different use cases, from automating scoring models to supply-demand balance optimization.
Currently, the startup is serving ten clients in four countries around the world and plans to expand. So, for Hadjichones and his team, the Visa Innovation Program offered on the one hand an opportunity to gain trust from potential clients on different new markets, and also test their abilities to work with enterprises.
“Visa is a reputable name, so if you are able to partner with Visa that makes sense to any other big company to trust you and your expertise. For me, it was a challenge to test whether our company is prepared and ready to face the expectations of a big multinational enterprise like Visa,” explains the CEO. What he learned throughout the process was to rely not only on domain expertise but also on process management and standards. “Generally, when you face a big company, you have to be ready. That would be my advice to anyone stepping into that innovation program. It’s not only about your expertise but also about how you can manage your processes to meet the standards of a big enterprise,” he adds.
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