Daniel Fallmann founded Mindbreeze in 2005 at the age of 23, after he finished his studies in computer science. As Mindbreeze’s CEO, he is a living example of high quality and innovation standards. His passion for enterprise search and machine learning in a big data environment has fascinated not only the Mindbreeze employees but also their customers.
What is Mindbreeze all about?
Mindbreeze is a leading international provider of appliances and cloud services for enterprise search, applied artificial intelligence, and knowledge management. Our solution incorporates Artificial Intelligence (AI) and is a component of what many businesses now need for their business transformation processes. In a nutshell, what this means is, we help large companies analyze and understand their data and information to make it instantly findable, usable, and valuable for their employees and customers. We serve over 2,400 clients across a wide array of industry verticals.
With headquarters in Chicago, Illinois, as well as European corporate offices along with a global partner network, Mindbreeze has an international culture that our employees are enriched by. We are excited to come to work every day because we have great clients. We’re helping to make the work experience of their employees more efficient and make their lives easier.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you started your company?
I founded Mindbreeze in 2005. Since then, we have built a successful information insight company headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. We also have a strong global presence and consider ourselves to be an inclusive, progressive international company. I still remember the days back in 2005 when I started building the first version of the product with a good friend from the university days. and it has been so interesting to watch and participate in the advances in technology and Artificial Intelligence throughout our company and product evolution. Our software helps companies with digital transformation. We have learned a lot by working with over 2,400 companies that use our solution to help their companies transform from traditional manual processes to new digital methods.
Can you tell us some of the future trends that are on the horizon for Artificial Intelligence?
One thing we’ve seen is an increase in the use of digital twins. This concept started in the manufacturing industry to serve as a way to organize information about machine components and other parts. A digital twin is a digital replica of a physical object, product, or subject matter expert’s knowledge. They are being used more and more to provide a 360-degree view of a company’s data to help make critical business decisions. This is trending because companies need to make the right decisions quickly because, in today’s landscape, both speed and accuracy are equally critical.
Since this is what we do at Mindbreeze, it’s hard to stop at just one trend in AI. We also see many companies caring exponentially more about the importance of activities, past actions taken in connection with particular pieces of information, and even the emotions that users associate with information – companies are connecting these elements to their bottom line in more and more ways that we have never seen before. Employees are also expecting and benefitting from the personalization of relevance to their search results and finding what they are looking for quickly using AI solutions that sort through a company’s internal data and documents.
What was the biggest problem you encountered with your business, and how did you overcome it?
At Mindbreeze, we are fueled by challenges instead of allowing problems to have a negative impact. Every day of our lives, it is possible to find a challenge of some kind, and we take pride in finding creative solutions as an agile-oriented team. Culturally, we have many people working together from very different backgrounds. We overcome any of the communication and cultural barriers we might have with a lot of positive communication and healthy acceptance of unique experiences and circumstances. We adopt a strong growth mindset toward everything we do daily and are enriched by our differences instead of overwhelmed by them. Members of our team gather together for informal chat sessions, and we have a lot of fun sharing ideas. We are pleased about the positive culture we have created. As a team, we never stop, and we are always in search of excellence.
What were the top mistakes you made starting your business, and what did you learn from it?
When we were first starting, we had a small team like so many startups do, and there were things we didn’t know in the beginning. We needed to benefit from broader perspectives to help us achieve the global success that we’ve since experienced. We learned that we needed to expand quickly, bring more people into our vision for Mindbreeze, and do so with experts from diverse backgrounds. This has been a game-changer for us, and it’s made all the difference. We are currently hiring right now for lots of positions, and we are always looking for brilliant minds with unique perspectives and backgrounds. We are growing in all of our locations, so even for people that want to spend some time abroad, we are an exciting company to engage with.
What is the one thing you wish you knew before starting your business?
I wish I knew how long some things actually take. All good things take time, but when I was younger, I didn’t always know this. Having at least a bit of patience is now part of the wisdom I’ve gained from the hands-on experience of building a company over many years in practice and not just in theory. As a leader, I am tasked with steering our company in the right direction, and I’m grateful that I’ve been able to learn more every year we’re in business. I love what I do, and I wouldn’t change a thing.
What has been your most effective marketing strategy to grow your business?
Our most effective strategy for marketing is always investing as much time into creating high-quality content as possible. We want people who visit our website and related social channels to learn something when they read our material and remember us. This is an exciting time for AI. It’s not just for data scientists anymore, and other functional areas are beginning to see that they need to up their understanding of how AI will improve their performance. We make it the mission of our marketing strategy to help educate leaders about AI and its functional areas, so it’s not so complicated and inaccessible for them. We try to be a reassuring voice with all of the answers they are looking for to these complex topics.
If you only had $1000 dollars to start a new startup, knowing everything you know now, how would you spend it?
I would focus on my idea (which certainly would be around Software, AI, sustainability, …) and try to create a first prototype that I can show and let people try out hands-on. I would spend $1000 dollars to support my prototyping process. That could be, e.g., purchasing a strong GPU for machine learning algorithms or any other puzzle piece needed to make up a tremendous focused prototype that makes the value add and USP explorable. Nevertheless, the great thing with the industry I am in is that a prototype mainly requires brainpower to be created.
What’s your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?
My best piece of advice is to not spread yourself so thin with multiple time-consuming business ideas. Pick one that you think is the value add for your potential customers, stick with it and make it unique. Maintaining a strong focus is critical, and learning to say ‘no’ to everything in your focus group. It worked for me.
How is running a tech company different than what you thought it would be?
When I first started, I was just excited about building a product. I still am, of course, but there is so much more than just that when it comes to leading and running an organization. Today, I am investing in developing so much more than only a product. I’m trying to be a mentor for the great people at Mindbreeze, and I want them to push themselves to the highest possible standards for quality and execution for innovation.
How can readers get in touch with you?
Mindbreeze would love to hear from anyone interested in learning more about Artificial Intelligence solutions transforming the workplace. We explain how all of these things work on our blog, and we encourage people to reach out to us and let us know what questions or feedback they have for us.
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