A digital assistant for sales teams is the current project of the series founder Stefan Groschupf. With a million investment he drives the expansion from San Francisco.
Updating addresses and telephone numbers, creating forms and reports for the sales manager. With a digital assistant for sales teams, founder Stefan Groschupf from Halle has raised nearly 13 million euros in investor funds. San Francisco based startup Automation Hero is developing software that automates time consuming, repetitive tasks in artificial intelligence based businesses.
The young company with currently 30 employees is also represented in Germany. With offices in Berlin and Halle. Within the next two to three years Groschupf wants to increase his team at the German locations to at least 100 employees, he announces in an interview with WirtschaftsWoche founder.
Automation Hero is working on process automation software that it installs. For example, with insurance companies or other large corporate customers with at least a three-digit number of sales representatives. Every user receives suggestions from the digital assistant, which the startup calls Robin, via a personalized access in the working day. Employees can have individual tasks taken over by the computer program at the click of a mouse. For example, having forms filled with numbers from the company database or having their travel expenses account drawn up.
The goal is the German financial sector
With the technology, the startup wants to expand internationally. “In Germany, we are already well positioned, Europe and North America are now the markets we focus on,” says CEO Groschupf to WirtschaftsWoche founder. Especially in the financial industry in Germany, the 41 year old pays off great opportunities. “The reality in many companies is still that data must be entered several times in different systems. For example, more than 60 percent of a salesperson’s time is wasted on administrative tasks that prevent him from spending time on the customer, “says Groschupf, who set up big data startup Datameer in 2009 also based in San Francisco, Berlin and Halle. The serial founder has been living in the USA since 2005 giving him better access to venture capital.
Despite the distance to customers in Germany, Groschupf sees further benefits from the main location in San Francisco. “In North America, we sell faster and almost every deal is twice as big as it would be possible in Germany,” says the founder. To build a large, successful company within a short time is currently only possible from the US, says Groschupf.
After leaving Datameer in 2017, he was now able to complete the second round of financing with Automation Hero within twelve months. A total of 19 million dollars are now in the company, including the insurer Signal Iduna. The main investor for the current cash injection is the European venture capitalist Atomico. In addition, the fresh capital of Cherry Ventures comes from Berlin and Baidu Ventures, the US investment arm of the same name Chinese search engine group. According to Groschupf. The startup also cooperates with Baidu in the research on new applications for AI.
Also published on Medium.