Tacit founder Josipa Majic
Understanding emotions and behavior is essential for businesses and organizations that need better insight into what their customers really think about them.
In the retail world, for example, they may be thrilled with a particular fashion item, but unhappy with the price. Being able to capture and analyze the human emotions behind that sentiment allows companies to be much more responsive to consumer demand, and that’s where Tacit comes in.
The London-based tech startup develops AI emotional analytics tools for businesses, giving them a unique insight into how people truly feel, not necessarily the reaction they want to portray.
Tacit was founded in 2014 by its CEO Josipa Majic. As a new graduate from the University of Zagreb in Croatia, she had already launched a biometric research company, ID Guardian.
“Work I’d previously done on a patient monitoring system inspired me to develop a product that would improve the way data is collected for the youngest patients,” she says. “This led me to start building Teddy, a plush toy with built-in medical sensors designed to track baby and child health metrics.”
It quickly became apparent that was also a demand for this type of technology in a B2B environment. Armed with her knowledge and experience in hardware, software and firmware of biosensors, Majic and her small team of three, launched Tacit tech, a product that collects and analyses biometric data for the purpose of emotional and affective analysis.
She says: “A major FMCG company had approached us early on and asked for a pilot project that would use our toys and biometric sensors to collect consumer reactions to different video and audio content. The pilot went incredibly well, and we were on our path to using those learnings to build a B2B analytics company.”
The company raised £250,000 in angel investment, which they invested in the consumer electronics business, but since then has relied solely on its revenue. Majic says: “Rather than pursuing growth at all costs, we decided to build a sustainable and profitable business that would be at the cutting edge of biometric research and around for years to come.”
Tacit’s behavioral and emotional insight by using more than 11 biometric data sets including facial coding, speech sentiment analysis, skin conductance, eye tracking, skin temperature, heart rate variability, and blood oxygen saturation. These data sets plug into the latest AI and wearables technology for measurement and interpretation.
“This enables us to connect what elements of a product resulted in certain emotional and cognitive reactions and turn that into actionable insights for businesses,” says Majic.
The biggest challenge the team encountered during the development of the technology was assembling an interdisciplinary team of computer scientists, neuroscience experts, MDs, psychologists, hardware and software engineers who have worked on Tacit’s research products with a range of universities, research institutions, and corporate customers since it was incorporated.
“We often have very conflicting views and approaches on how to solve certain technical challenges, both internally from our team, but also externally from all of our stakeholders,” says Majic.
In a market that still requires a lot of education, there were inevitable marketing challenges. “We need to raise more awareness around the ethical and data privacy challenges as well as what the technology can and cannot do,” she says.
Tacit’s products are now being used by leading global brands, including Fortune 100 companies, and major universities in over 44 countries. The company also has a growing number of product development and R&D customers; however, its fastest-growing markets are in fintech and gaming.
Majic says: “In fintech, neobanks and banks are using our products to map out consumer experiences, especially for older and very young demographic groups. In gaming, we help professional e-sports players to use biometric data to identify personal stressors, flow states and learn how to manage tilt and negative emotional reactions in high stress environments.”
Tacit now has a team of 10 and is on course to achieve revenues of over £1 million in 2020, including those from its subscription and project-based services. “We are sustainable and profitable and plan to continue growing our business from revenue, without any plans to raise external capital.
The company will be launching a real-time analysis tool that serves as a personalized productivity coach it uses your EEG, ECG, sleep, activity and behavior data to help you find out what people's personal stressors are and how to achieve peak performance in a predictable way, aimed primarily towards professionals working in a digital environment.
Majic, who was acknowledged by TIME Magazine as the inventor of top 10 most innovative products of the year 2014, says: “In terms of projects, we will be starting one of the largest longitudinal wearables studies where a leading university will be collecting biometric data at scale in order to assess mental health, both self-reported and objective via biosensor data.”
2019-10-27 09:08:06Z
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisoncoleman/2019/10/27/the-tech-startup-that-tells-businesses-what-their-customers-are-really-thinking/
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