7 minute read
Founder Story

Lithuania-based startup Attention Insight uses artificial intelligence to optimize marketing

The Attention Insight poses for the camera outside during the day.

How a startup is revolutionizing the way UX and marketing works

The COVID-19 pandemic challenged founders to think on their feet as day-to-day operations and needs quickly changed. But Kamilė Jokubaitė, cofounder and CEO of SaaS platform Attention Insight, saw an opportunity to evolve and fill a key market gap. Like most other tech companies, the Attention Insight team was moving to remote working and Kamilė says working from home presented an opportunity for deepening her team’s self-awareness and work ethic: “This is a path that we're taking to test out how our personal selves can coexist with our work lives.”

Her startup, Attention Insight, uses artificial intelligence and heatmapping to give brands and agencies pre-launch analytics and feedback, eliminating the need for direct user engagement and data collection. Their technology simulates human vision so clients can see their campaign through users’ eyes with 90% accuracy—a feature which has proven especially effective during social distancing . “At this critical time when focus groups or user interviews are not an option at all, we are able to solve a very sensitive problem. We were not affected as heavily as smaller businesses who are relying on day-to-day interactions with customers.”

If anything, Kamilė sees an opportunity for companies like Attention Insight to serve businesses that are migrating online in response to the pandemic: “Offline products are gaining momentum in e-commerce environments; now all small businesses are twice as motivated to move into the e-commerce space. So I think the commercial SaaS segment will survive the biggest hit.”

We are forming a new niche in the market which perceives AI as our colleague–as a way to do our work better, not as a threat that will take over our jobs.

Attention Insight was designed to be a versatile product that could serve different segments of the market: from small business owners without analytic skills or user research teams, to big agencies who want to supercharge their offering with AI. Kamilė even leveraged market resistance to AI by reframing it as an asset for clients, and calls Attention Insight “banner carriers for AI in design and marketing.” She explains, “We are forming a new niche in the market which perceives AI as our colleague–as a way to do our work better, not as a threat that will take over our jobs.”

Kamilė approached the Google for Startups Immersion: Women Founders program with the challenge of disrupting marketing at both a brand and agency level, and says that her startup benefited from the program even before it began: “The biggest takeaway was the tremendous help we received from the mentors. During the selection process, we met with 23 Googlers, all from different departments–everything from products 100% related to what we do, for example, Google Cloud or Google Optimize, all the way to YouTube and other departments. It was amazing to see how in just 20 minutes, we were able to get different perspectives about our products and our vision.”

Kamilė was paired with mentor Sebastian Vieregg, the Industry Leader, Agencies & Partners in Google Germany. “Sebastian knows the industry inside and out and he was able to quickly scan and get rid of the paths that were not right for us and leave us with a path that could work better,” reflects Kamilė. While addressing the core challenge of positioning Attention Insight, the program also took Kamilė through an intense process of fine-tuning the company’s messaging, pitch training, and Objective Key Results (OKR) methodology. After Immersion, Attention Insight’s key mentor continues to support the company as an advisor, and he is still working closely with Kamilė and her team on shaping Attention Insight.

Their team also uses seven Google Cloud products to build and run their platform. The Google Kubernetes Engine gives them the ability to quickly deploy (and revert, if necessary) new versions, which saves them time on other tasks. They’ve also saved time using the Google Chrome extension, which enables Attention Insight’s users to get analysis results in a matter of seconds. What will they do with all this free time? Perhaps the usually-arduous task of labeling their training data–which is a cinch using Google Cloud’s AI Platform Data Labeling Service–an essential step in training their machine learning model.

If Kamilė had to distill her growth mindset into one piece of advice for founders, what would it be? “Form a group of cofounders and surround yourselves with mentors and people who are better than you in their own fields, because that will help you grow. You cannot be a jack of all trades, but you can form a network of experts–and this helps tremendously with shaping the product itself.”

Learn more about Attention Insight