Birger, you have a fantastic background in the data business. Can you tell us a little bit about your background and how you know the AxonJay team? Sure. I worked more than 25 years for Dun and Bradstreet and Bisnode as an international leader in areas such as data for marketing, data for credit risk evaluation and for supply chain management. Most of the time, for these large corporates, but I also spent ten years building my own startup in Denmark, breaking a monopoly within the consumer credit area.

Name: Birger Baylund
Role: Chairman of the Advisory Board of AxonJay

Birger, you have a fantastic background in the data business. Can you tell us a little bit about your background and how you know the AxonJay team?

Sure. I worked more than 25 years for Dun and Bradstreet and Bisnode as an international leader in areas such as data for marketing, data for credit risk evaluation and for supply chain management. Most of the time, for these large corporates, but I also spent ten years building my own startup in Denmark, breaking a monopoly within the consumer credit area.

So you've been working as a startup as well?

True, and that gives me the sense and the flavour for startups today as well. The AxonJay team was actually an invention within Bisnode at the time. We realised that the traditional way of making data actionable and giving insights for automated decisions would change due to new technology within AI and machine learning.

So they were kind of like entrepreneurs then within the organisation.

Exactly. We were trying the difficult task of disrupting ourselves from the inside.

How did that work?

Well, I spent a lot of time protecting the team from the existing analytics team we had. But we managed to cover some very important ground when it comes to how AI can be relevant for business leaders.

And now you have also invested in AxonJay and your old team. A company that says that this is no longer about the data, or the one who has the most data in the lake, the biggest platform for data science, or the biggest data team. So the big data brokers missed something?

No, but they have to shape up in order to follow or to cope with the changes in technology. When you talk about data, one should know that without data, AI and machine learning is nothing. But the big corporates, within the industry like Dun and Bradstreet and Bisnode, what they do is that they are structuring data so they are trusted data. There is still room for that because there is so much data out there and not all of it is trusted as legitimate.

Why I see an interesting space here is that AI is within a lot of things that we already used today on our mobiles and whatever. But what we discovered, and what is now with AxonJay, is that suddenly it becomes a visual and relevant for C-level in a company. The black box and the normal algorithm which is used in Bisnode and Dun and Bradstreet is not on the C-levels agenda or attention. But through the training model of the AI that AxonJay has invented, then it suddenly becomes something different and something new.

You have on a number of occasions said that the AxonJay Self-Machine-Learning Platform is state of the art. What do you mean by that?

Training AI models and machine learning is very often done from machine to machine or from a person that is not aware of that when you push this like button on Facebook, you are actually training an AI model. The technology in the AxonJay Self-ML Platform has been developed over a number of years and has been teached in Oxford University and has been developed by the best architects within this space. That is one area. The other area is how that model is becoming relevant and being trained. And that I believe is making a big difference in the customer experience of how that actually works.

You talk about the customer experience. How is the customer experience different?

What makes it different and relevant for the customers is that they feel that they are part of the process and they are teaching the algorithm themselves. They are doing it through a thought process of worksho, through external triggers from the Internet that actually discovers the right behaviour of what they are looking for. Through these data, the thought workshop process, and the hands on teaching the algorithm by saying yes or no to, for instance, “Is it a good lead or bad lead?” or “Is this decision good or bad?”. It makes it not only more relevant, but also customized and they feel like this is their own, and not something that they just bought.

So what will AxonJay disrupt according to you in this industry?

They will disrupt the perception of what AI and machine learning is. Many companies know that this will be the future of getting the right answers out of the data they have in a short time, but they don't know how. I believe that AxonJay will disrupt the perception of how AI and machine learning will be valuable for customers in their competition and in their striving after sustainability and becoming better citizens of the world.

Why would you say that a customer needs to jump on the self machine learning platform today? What are the key reasons?

The world is going so fast and we know that just within a specific area of medicine more than 1.400 articles a day are released. No human can ever cope with reading that, and that is what AI and machine learning can do to help companies achieving better decisions, better solutions and faster for their customers. Also to oversee complicated areas in an easy way.

The other day I heard about an M&A data house that uses AI, who in a matter of a few seconds, can go through thousands and thousands of documents and only points out the 2% that is important to look at. That is who we want to be from now on. I spoke with some representatives from the government in Denmark who are concerned about the need to re-educate citizens because AI will take over a lot of jobs in manual areas to start, and more complicated areas going forward. So we need to jump on it in order to stay in business.

How would you say that the AxonJay team is different from other startups?

The AxonJay organisation is something you can call a DAO (Distributed Autonomous Organisation). These are the new experimental ways of running a startup. We only know one other than AxonJay that goes like this. You know, the headquarter is a mix of a hotel, a college gym and a workspace. This is to my belief the way where you can bring the best capacities, no matter where they are geographically or nationally, into the team. I think that is what AxonJay has done and now it should prove that it also is working.

Usually when you talk about startups, it is a couple of guys and girls with a few laptops that is disrupting an idea. But this team is different?

Yes, i really like the diversity. It's not only youngsters who are 22 years old. We have diversity in age, in gender, in education. That gives a 360 degree approach to the problems or any issues and opportunities that the company has.

What is the key to AxonJay’s future success going forward?

There is so much AI and Machine Learning can do today. One of the keys to success is to find the most relevant spaces to let this team and this strong technology model work on. See what customer pains and problems we are going to solve. Or maybe we're going to solve several. But which are they? That is, as I see it what I see AxonJay should focus its effort on right now. But it is also about strong customer interaction and co-creation model. I believe this is something that is extremely important in this period where we are going out, listening to customers and listening to where we actually can make a difference, helping the world to become a better place.

Birger, you are the chairman of the Advisory Board at AxonJay. Can you tell us a little bit about the Advisory Board, and their roles in making this company successful?

I am proud of being asked to take this role. I am also happy that the team has a huge and strong experience within banking & finance, sustainability, but also unicorn experience as well. I add my data background and my customer and go-to-market experience as well into the board. The strength, as I see it, for an advisory board opposed to a normal board with a chairman, is that it is easier for an advisory board. It feels more natural to become part of the operations, or be involved in some areas, and have the feet on the ground. I believe that is a strength that AxonJay has right at this point, at this moment in time. The advisory board is willing and has the capabilities to actually step in and do some customer calls or whatever, where we can make a difference with our network and our experience.

For more information please contact:

Jean-Philippe Schepens,
Founder & CEO
Email
LinkedIn

About AxonJay:
AxonJay is an AI tech company that uses machine learning to help you extract actionable intelligence from the most relevant data and from a company’s behavior in its digital ecosystem. The company has developed a state-of-the-art Self-Machine-Learning Platform and uses continuous business feedback loops to train its algorithms. It is our mission to make AI and machine learning more accessible and easier to use for any business. AxonJay is a pan-European Tribe with people working in Denmark, Sweden, Germany, Slovenia, Italy and from its HQ/co-living space in Brussels Belgium. AxonJay #DisruptWithPurpose #RightHereRightNow!