Have you ever heard about HyScore.io? No? But you will! HyScore.io is our very first „Startup of the month“ which we have chosen out of all those startups who registered themselves in February at our brandnew startup platform startbase.de.

And who could describe a startup better than it‘s founders? Here are 10 questions (and one special question) to HyScore.io.

1. Why did you found your startup, which problem do you address and how do you solve it?

Today it is essential to structure content such as large amounts of text and data as efficiently as possible and to make it available for further (automated) processing and monetization. We faced this challenge in earlier projects in the AdTech, Publishing and Content Syndication space and didn’t find a good solution to do the job a) economically and b) that provided the data and insights we were looking for. Many companies still employ students, interns or other staff to do the job – or gave up getting over the huge data loads. Some try to develop some own expensive, time consuming solution, which is not their main focus. hyScore is an independent, cross-industry provider of innovative Natural Language Processing (NLP) solutions combined with Artificial Intelligence (AI). With the flexible hyScore solutions, texts, websites, audio and video can be analyzed in real time. The technology can be individually trained and adapted to special requirements. With hyScore, large amounts of text/data can be analyzed 100% automatically and valuable insights can be provided for further use and processing in more than 20 languages. The savings of high expenses, a reduction of investment costs and risks, a fast and simple proof-of-concept and an acceleration of time-to-market and thus earlier revenues are some of the additional benefits connected to our services.

2. What gave you the idea to found hyScore?

A discussion over a cup of coffee at „Katies Blue Cat” Café (Berlin) between Michael and Lucas was the initial starting point. You know, that here in Kreuzberg we have some excellent coffee shops…. and we love coffee.

3. What is special about your business-model, what are you doing differently?

We’re something like a „B2B+2B“ business. That means we’re more working as a partner for our clients whose deliver the part they need to enhance and enrich their product or furthermore create the bridge to automate processes. We’re a business enabler with some generalist or individual, tailored natural language processing solutions. From the beginning onwards we were working not in traditional hierarchies and rule sets. We established an open work environment which allows our staff to work independent and decide by themselves how they do the job. This includes where, when and how everyone works at hyScore. Everyone is committed on the company’s development. That makes us more flexible than others and helps our clients.

4. What was your greatest success so far?

Beside convincing people of how important and useful our solutions are? A great success is that we as a yet not well-known company (e.g. like IBM) win direct pitches against other established companies. That shows us that we’re on the right path. We continuously develop our products and solutions. 

5. What is your biggest need/your next challenge?

The biggest challenge is still to gain more awareness, what hyScore is capable to do for your business/product and how we can help to avoid high investment risks to automate processes in a blink of an eye. So said, we are happy that we achieved the title “Startup of the month”.

6. What are your learnings so far?

a) Always do your own research. 
b) Ask, ask again and… maybe ask again, until you’ve all puzzle pieces together to provide a solution which really solves the clients problem and helps to manage the expectations and fulfil the requirements. 
c) Be bold and start positioning as a premium solution provider from the start on. 
d) Learn, improve, repeat! Learn, improve…

7. Where did you meet?

Once upon a time in Berlin… to be honest, we have known each other for years. We met here and there during our business life where everyone was working in different companies. Then – some day – completely by accident, we worked for the same company. Based on this circumstance, our history and the „team chemistry“, the idea to develop hyScore in our free-time was born. Later, after we’ve talked about our ideas, received positive feedback from our personal networks and directly acquired our first client who was eager to pay for using our service, we founded the company.

8. Where do you see your startup in 3 years?

Our technology is being used to analyse content from every country on the globe. In 10 years, our tech is used by anyone…

9. If an Investor gave you 500.000 Euro, what would you do with the money?

The €500,000 will enable us to fund further product development so that companies such as Facebook, Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Apple are eager to use us.

10. Who would you like to have dinner with and why?

In the team we share many interests and would therefore have a dinner with the following four distinguished personalities from very different areas to discuss the future:

  • Warren Buffet (investment idol)
  • Noam Chomsky (godfather of computational linguistics)
  • Kevin Feige (Marvel mastermind)
  • Cixin Liu (Chinese and uprising science fiction star)

Extra: The name “hyScore.io”

We searched for something which reflects what we are doing. The company name is connected to our earliest prototype for a generalist solution of our hyScore|analyze – product. Beside other valuable information we extract weighted keywords out of any text. The weight or score value reflects the importance of the keyword in relation to the text. As higher the weight or score of a keyword as higher its importance in the context of the whole analysis. So we had a “high score”. Because we’re also computer and console gamers in our freetime we thought that might be a bit misleading and high was shrinked to “hy”, which some translate to “Hey! or Hello!”. So the name “hyScore” was born. By offering our NLP solutions via API services the “.io”-Domain was ideal and stands for us for “In” and “Out”. Text in, result out.

Check hyScore.io’s profile on startbase.de here!

You would like to be our next „Startup of the month“? Subscribe now at startbase.de, the first universal startup platform in Germany, meet other startups, founders and investors and save your chance to become our next „Startup of the month“!

INSIDE is the magazine of the German Startups Association. The German Startups Association represents the German startup-ecosystem and campaigns for entrepreneur-friendly conditions. Through the dialogue with political decision makers, the Startups Association offers suggestions with the aims to foster a culture of self-employment and to decrease the barriers for founders. The Startup Association advocates for innovation as well as an entrepreneurial spirit and carries the startup-mentality into society. As a network, the German Startups Association connects entrepreneurs, startups and their friends with each other.

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