Beenova AI

At Beenova AI (part of Meet Anna, LLC) we build personalized AI mentors to teach and measure 21st century skills all entrepreneurs need, yet don't receive training on. These skills are taught using Artificial Intelligence and Emotional Intelligence and are deployed across easy-to-access platforms in the style of a mini MBA.

STEP 1: The first "touchpoint" - when an entrepreneur meets her / his AI mentor, Ira - is through joint deployment with strategic program partners (corporations, job centers, higher education institutes).

STEP 2: Each entrepreneur embarks on a personalized learning journey. The AI Mentor Ira understands skills gaps and serves relevant learning content to immediately and effectively close gaps. Learning is tracked against essential skills that allow entrepreneurs upskill across marketing, accounting, basic hr, strategy, communication and bring their work to the next level. 

STEP 3: Entrepreneurs multiply these skills amongst their workers. 

Scale of problem: 

Africa: 90% of businesses in Africa are one-person ventures, 22% of Africa's working age population are starting businesses and women in Africa are twice as likely to start a business as women elsewhere in the world. SMEs and and Medium Enterprises are the biggest formal employers in Sub-Saharan Africa and will undoubtedly be key in creating 54 million jobs in Africa by 2022 (ADB). Unemployment is in part the reason for high rates of entrepreneurship.

80% of new businesses fail in their first year. The number #1 reason businesses fail is that there is no market need - the entrepreneur did not do the right research. The number #2 reason businesses fail is due to lack of good communication with employees and clients - this skill can make or break any venture.

Across the African continent, people carry an extraordinary inner resilience. However, due to a lack of access to learning, data, and quality content (in the first language of entrepreneurs), their efforts to build a better life are often left unrealized.

With Beenova AI's personalized mentors, we provide structured, in the flow of life learning, on platforms entrepreneurs already use in 100+ languages.

What is it? Beenova AI uses personalized AI Mentors to teach and measure Future Skills and Entrepreneurship across the African continent. Our AI mentors speak over 100 languages, work on every popular platform, and support entrepreneurs from start to finish in their entrepreneurial journey. Our unique combination of both practical teachings (billable entrepreneurial skills) in addition to mindset management (a strong, resilient mind is a key asset for an entrepreneur), Beenova's AI mentor, Ira, equips each entrepreneur with daily, micro-learning. 

What does it do? Beenova AI's mentor, Ira, follows three simple steps:

Step 1: Ira builds a personality profile of each entrepreneur, tracking skill gaps and a talent profile.

Step 2: Ira does a daily mindset check-in: by understanding where our head is at, we are stronger performance and can learn techniques to build better habits that will see us through tough times. 

Step 3: Ira serves personalized learning content directly related to the entrepreneurial journey. 

Processes and Technology: Beenova AI uses Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence to build effective, open-ended discourse with the user. 

Expectations: We expect our groundbreaking technology, built with accessibility, scalability and sustainability in mind, can change the Future of Work in Africa.

Target population: First time entrepreneurs across Africa -  27% of adults 18 - 64: median age 31. 

Needs: The majority of these early-stage entrepreneurs operate in retail and hospitality. These skills are relatively easy to teach, meaning a lower barrier to entry with higher success rates. Entrepreneurs need practical strategies to keep new businesses going.

Engagement: Global experience, 15+ years in Africa in various capacities (UN, technology, education, entrepreneurship) means prioritizing engagement with local communities. Beenova's technology deepens this in real-time, while simultaneously solving another problem: lack of data and insights around entrepreneurial needs. We supported two NGOs working on entrepreneurship in South Africa through innovative teaching and accelerator programs with promising results. At Socionext.org, 57% of 800 people surveyed remain active entrepreneurs; 30% continued businesses created during workshops, 70% started another business. The other NGO, South African Institute for Entrepreneurship, measured new centers built by entrepreneurs realized an average monthly income of between R1500 and R4500 in year one.

Solution addresses needs:

• Addresses skill gaps
• Builds relevant skills in real-time. Makes these skills transferable to employees;
• Provides immediate, micro learning in an entrepreneur's native language and makes high quality engagements with AI Mentors effective and exponential. 

African Economic Outlook 

Our solution:

1) Enables entrepreneurs of small businesses to have access to the same quality learning materials that their global counterparts have;

2) Can be deployed across any platform, removing the barrier of accessibility (our WhatsApp solution requires zero additional data purchases);

3) According to our research based on Forrester's TEI™ Methodology, personalized learning and 21st century skills are the single most important factors in Future of Work learning. We make these accessible to entrepreneurs in Africa.

Our competition comes in many forms, around the areas of learning, assessment and performance improvement. Companies in this space include LMS, Assessment, Micro-learning and LXP, as it can been seen in the picture below (© Josh Bersin Academy).

1. Uses the latest AI (Deep Learning) to create a human-based interaction with the technology of our AI mentors;
2. Can be deployed in any communication or collaboration platform with an API, rather than creating its own platform and therefore can be used by everyone without new software installation and at no cost;
3. Is made to understand one's level vs. 21st century skills that equip the learners for the future of work; and
4. Takes advantage of any learning content in the public domain from sources ranging from MIT TR and HBR to Singularity University and Inc.com, lowering costs for content development and/or licensing

The core technology that powers our solution is Deep Learning. We train the latest Deep Learning algorithms on datasets designed and compiled by us in order to create an AI mentor that can interact with learners much like a human mentor would. The AI mentor understands the skills one is lacking and finds content that this individual would like to interact with. 

The whole experience is open-ended (not like a chatbot, but like a conversation with a human) and most learners mention that they feel they have a personal connection with the AI mentor. There have been many cases where it is hard to understand that an AI and not a human is communicating with you (which effectively means that our system passes the Turing Test in these cases).

Moreover, advances in Deep Learning in the last 2 years have improved our solution dramatically, and we expect that this field will continue to grow and allow us to improve our solution, aiming at a more human-like connection and experience.

Last but not least, we have built our AI mentor as a brain that can communicate with users on different platforms. Therefore, a core technology that is powering this is the growth of the communication and collaboration platforms such as Microsoft Teams, Slackand WhatsApp, where users can have a live discussion with our AI mentor, as they would with a human.

Advances in Deep Learning have made it more mainstream in the last 2 years. Some examples of other applications of the technology we use are:

• AI beating humans in reading comprehension (Stanford Question Answering Dataset-SQuAD challenge) with various algorithms involved (Microsoft, Google, Alibaba, and many Universities etc)
• AI from Facebook that can blend personality, empathy and knowledge in a conversational way
• AI being able to generate original works of art sold at Christie's

Therefore, the important piece in the puzzle is not if the technology works - not only it does, but it becomes better and more commoditized every week! The important piece is how we can design systems to use these algorithms in a safe, inclusive, ethical and human-based way. It is our view that the data structures and data collected during this design is what would be key in delivering value to humans. 

The long-term outcome of this solution is to increase the number of people from marginalised backgrounds with access to viable and rewarding livelihood options. 

To achieve that goal, we identified two preconditions: people need to have relevant skills (1) and good jobs or know-how on creating other forms of income need to be available (2). 

To gain relevant skills, we need to create access to education (3) as well as the opportunity of practical on the job learning (4). 

In Africa, 90% of the firms are one-person ventures, often lead by reluctant entrepreneurs. As long as those firms are unable to grow and hire staff, new reluctant entrepreneurs will enter the market and no scale advantages will be achieved. To build bigger and more successful businesses that can hire and develop their employees (5), we need more skilled and successful entrepreneurs to build those businesses (6).    

In our solution, people from marginalised backgrounds sign up for the mini-MBA through a Beenova Mentor to start and build a successful business or grow and develop their existent businesses (7). 

The organisations we partner up with have established relationships in the communities they work in. They will hold community events where they address the option of entrepreneurship as a viable livelihood path and introduce the Beenova Mentorship programme as a program that can help them build the skills and confidence at their own time and pace (8).

Beenova AI - scalable, sustainable AI and EI mentors will be accessible on their own devices on easy-to-access platforms and will teach them entrepreneurial skills in the style of a mini MBA. Through a personalized learning journey the AI Mentor understands skills gaps and serves relevant

learning content to immediately and effectively close gaps. Learning is tracked against essential skills that allow entrepreneurs to upskill. The entrepreneurs will also learn how to be good leaders and multiply these skills amongst their workers, answering to the earlier mentioned preconditions of training and on the job learning (9).

Our solution is extremely scalable, because it is based on widely used communication platforms and personalized, automated AI mentors. Where direct interest exists amongst corporations, higher education institutions and governments, we can easily scale to 10s of millions of people.

Currently serving: 3000 and growing fast
Serving in one year: 100K+
Serving in five years: 10s of millions, depending on interest from organizations and governments (beyond our B2B scope)

ONE YEAR:

• Deploy Beenova AI across priority countries in Africa reaching 30-50% of entrepreneurs
• Help governments, companies and learning organizations provide quality education and prepare for the Future of Work
• Provide immediate relief for the global unemployment crisis
• Create unique data sets regarding mental health, emotional awareness and learning preferences

FIVE YEARS:

• Our long-term goals are to change the world, by developing its human capital to the fullest degree and ensuring entrepreneurs have increased access to build strong business that allow them to equally participate in the Future of Work
• To upskill entrepreneurs and help them support their employees and their employees' families and communities
• To bring to Africa unparalleled education opportunities by presenting the AI Mentors in the form of "Mini MBA"

Financial

• We have experience with NPO and for-profit models
• We understand a for-profit model with investment through MIT Solve from partners aligned with our mission will help us exponentially accelerate our growth

Technical

• We have fully developed the technology - ready to go!
• We have a plan for product improvement, in addition to a team of demo testers that provide constant feedback
• As we are a year old start-up, we turn solutions around quickly and efficiently
• Internet connectivity creates challenges for platform interactions
• Device inequality might make the platform harder to use on certain devices

Cultural 

• We understand cultural barriers are deeply engrained in traditional systems and may withhold the level of conversation we need around skills development and innovation market business
• Through years of work on the African continent, we have a strong network of relevant partners - from NGOs, to corporates, to universities, to thought-leaders/role models - that we can leverage

Market barriers: 

• Right now, we work with the most innovative, human-based application of AI technology right now - in the past year, we have noticed that the understanding of AI and AI application is very limited 
• We see this as a challenge as the unknown may cause apprehension in user adoption
• However, we have researched the priorities of organizations participating in this challenge, and we are confident we can deploy strategically throughout the right partner networks and engagements

Financial

• Work with strategic partners and use the MIT Solve prize to accelerate our growth

Technical

• Continue to work on our technology and improve our algorithms

• Further develop Beenova's AI capacity

Cultural 

• Continue growing our multi-cultural team

• Request input from a variety of stakeholders

• Work with a wide range of product testers

Market barriers: 

• Conduct research to stay ahead of the curve and anticipate market changes where / if possible

• Use global dissonance as an opportunity for innovation

Beenova AI is part of Meet Anna LLC. At Meet Anna LLC the team has worked on numerous globally recognized, award-winning initiatives with at the heart of what we do the intersection of education, technology and diversity and inclusion. 

Full time: 2
Part time: 4
Contractors: 2

Jos is CEO and co-founder of Beenova AI, founder award-winning NGO Girls & Football, two-time author, Faculty of Exponential Education at SingularityU. She grew up in 12 countries, four in Africa. Jos was selected as a 50 Global Heroes Ending Violence Against Children (alongside others like Hilary Clinton and Maria Eitel), a 2019 Woman To Watch, a Women Deliver Young Leader, a Nike Girl Effect Challenge winner, a Microsoft YouthSpark winner, an Ashoka Changemaker, and has spoken at global events: TEDx, to Glowork, to WEF: Women in Leadership.

In 2009, Antonios Kondis founded Icarus Sports, which now has more than 50 employees and hundreds of clients reaching more than 170 countries. Antonios' second company, a HFT AI system for predictions markets, is currently trading $40m+/year with his own funds and growing (~5x in 2018 vs. 2017). Using AI, he managed to simulate the work of a team of more than 1000 sports prediction experts, using the latest Supervised Machine Learning (SML) algorithms. The system captures billions of data points to make sub-millisecond predictions and handles 100s of thousands of orders per day.

Dewi has been involved with research around entrepreneurship, job creation and gender in Africa for over a decade. From understanding obstacles in education for girls to the role of cities in job creation, Dewi has developed a unique understanding of the obstacles, players and mechanisms impacting job creation and entrepreneurship in Africa. She has worked with award-winning NGOs, the World Bank and the University of Oxford.  

• MIT EF Greece: We were a finalist in MIT EF Challenge for startups.
• Microsoft: We are certified Microsoft Partners. 
• Google: We are Google Certified Educators (Level 2)
• SingularityU: We are part of the Future of Exponential Education team at SingularityU. 
• Abundance360: We partnered with Peter Diamandis, Abundance360, on a session re the Future of Education. 
• xEdu: We partook in a program called xEdu, based in Helsinki, Finland. 

Previous partners include, from Meet Anna based initiatives and others:

• Nike Girl Effect Challenge
• Women Deliver
• Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs
• Ashoka
• Sprinklr
• South African Institute for Entrepreneurship
• FIFA
• Socionext

We consist of both for-profit and not-for-profit models and projects,. Henceforth, we are prioritizing our focus on for-profit ventures in order to decrease our dependence on outside grants and funding.

Our core product, Beenova AI, is sold under a recurring fee-for-service model. It costs less than a mobile phone plan and is affordable for individuals, schools, nurseries and governments in most countries in the world. For example, Europe spends ~4.7% of GDP (2017) on Education to deliver a largely outdated curricula that does not prepare children for the future. What Beenova AI asks is a few €/$ per learner per month to build a personalized learning, emotional and personality profile and direct the right content/activity to the right person at the right time. We offer packages to learning institutions (nurseries, schools etc) and caretakers with higher price points, which offer deeper, customized and more personalized insights on the learners.

We are interested in building strategic funding opportunities through relevant relationships with telcos across Africa.

We are also able to leverage an income from institutions to whom our data on financial inclusion and data never before gathered is highly beneficial.

Our path to financial sustainability and growth is through our B2B model which allows us to sell our product and drive revenue. We have been able to keep our expenses low as a result of working efficiently and strategically and as a result, we believe we will cover our expenses by the revenue we are already generating.

We're applying to MIT Solve because our ground-breaking technology can change the lives of millions of entrepreneurs across the African continent, and will also help redesign the Future of Work, change communities, countries and the world-at-large. We have a track record of experience in entrepreneurship, the Future of Work, across the African continent, and in AI. Winning MIT Solve would help us to bring our world-changing technology to a global scene faster.

The world can’t wait. We want to tackle entrepreneurship challenges across Africa first, because these challenges are pressing and have a direct impact on the quality of life of not only the entrepreneur, but also of those in their immediate network. 

Then, we aim to focus on upskilling unemployed people across the US.

We believe MIT Solve can help propel our solution through its network to individuals that share the vision and desire to prioritize scalability and sustainability in entrepreneurship.

Antonios, one of our co-founders is an MIT alum - we know and trust this global network for its diversity, passion and cohesion. The other co-founder, Jos Dirkx, has been a Women Deliver Young Leader (2013) - https://womendeliver.org/class... - and knows the power of such a network in making change on a global level. We would be thrilled to work with this incredible network of passionate world-changers and would make every moment count!

Finally, we have launched innovative mobile health technology across Africa before through mGirls - reaching over 60,000 girls in our first month alone.

Product/service distribution: We've built our technology in 10 months. We've worked with beta testers worldwide and we're ready to scale. We'd like to form strategic partnerships that allow us to further deliver AI to truly change the future of learning. 

Board members or advisors: The current global pandemic has made it difficult for us to leverage networking opportunities. A strategic board advisors would help forge new connections.

Legal or regulatory matters: Legal is one of the biggest expensive for an any starting company. We would like to work with strategic legal partners that can help guide us on important IP matters moving forward and that have an interested in the emerging field of AI. 

Marketing: As a startup, it's hard to justify any spend on marketing, media or exposure. We know the work we're doing is important - we'd like to share it with the world!

We've done significant research on the various stakeholders engaged in this challenge. We see opportunity for relevant partnerships with many of these teams:

• XPrize: Use strategic technology like AI to solve global grand challenges
• Comcast: Leverage relevant technology and communications platforms to channel societal change
• Luminate: Increase access to billable skills
• MIT Inclusive Innovation Challenge: Base-line work is around conscientiousness and AI for all - taking into account not only the design of the AI, but also the communities benefiting from this design
• United Nations Technology Innovation Labs - Help uncover mega trends in early childhood education and piece together innovative research on entrepreneurship
• Vodafone - We understand the priorities of Vodafone are to increase access to learning opportunities for marginalized communities, and we would be interested in a relevant partnership that helps Vodafone bridge this gap.
• General Motors - We believe leveraging the objectives of GM within the deployment out of our solution (particularly ideas around 21st Century Skill development, access to mentors for everyone using AI to scale learning) could support the learning structure the continent needs.

Other partnerships we are actively pursuing include strategic partnerships with HR companies, tech players and Learning Management System companies. 

Again, we have a strong network across Africa and we understand that access to quality resources is one of the first challenges we have to actively solve.

Our solution contributes to improving the lives of women and girls in several ways:

1) As we use both Artificial and Emotional intelligence, we support not only skills development, but also help women thrive with confidence and build on their human dignity. 

2) Our solution is personalised and can be used on existing platforms, and is therefor specifically suited in addressing issues women face in access to education. This includes bias, unsafe environments and unpaid care responsibilities. By using Beenova mentors, women can access educational resources at any time from their own homes and build their educational experiences around any other responsibilities they may have. This allows women to learn and grow in order to fulfil their potential.

3) Our training materials are personalised and adapt to the interests and needs of the individual. Women and girls can engage with material made by and tailored for women and their specific interests rather than a one size fits all educational experience and provide women with critical information for their safety and well-being. Additionally, beyond just a focus on skills development, we equalize the AI playing field by ensuring more diversity in development of AI. 

4) With women reaching their full economic potential and vitality, this will also impact the communities they live in, therefor improving communities to thrive beyond the individual beneficiaries.

Like GM, we are dedicated to support marginalised groups to have access to relevant skills, including those in STEM topics, and gain access to quality employment. Like GM, we believe in the power of AI for teaching and personalised mentors for all.

Across the African continent, good jobs are few and far between. To tackle this, our solution equips people to create their own jobs, and jobs for fellow job seekers. We do this by using personalized AI mentors who teach 21st century skills through easy-to-access platforms in the style of a mini MBA. 

The prize and relationship with GM will allow us to 1) work with them on selecting the best content, 2) learn from and partner up with their extensive network of partners, such as Ashoka, Khan Academy and Mind Research Institute, 3) visit their head quarters to discuss scalability with their engineers and 4) work with them on providing AI mentors to their education and employability programs.

Qualification

Beenova AI is dedicated to human-based tech design of AI. We are based on the most advanced AI research in the field of Deep Learning. In order for us to be able to create AI mentors that understand and help humans develop their skills and create a better future for themselves and humanity, we have spent considerable resources into designing, testing and implementing data structures and algorithms to deliver a valuable experience for humans.

An important thing to remember when talking about Deep Learning is that the field will certainly grow in the next years. The algorithms that were cutting edge two years ago are deprecated today. However, this does not mean that AI will solve our problems automatically. Algorithms need data that are (among other things) 

• well structured to solve an important problem; 
• unbiased to limit racial, gender, age or any other bias in the available datasets and 
• collected with inclusive and diverse participation in technology in mind

Therefore, the design of AI will not only need coding expertise, but mostly human-based tech design expertise.

Use of prize money

We will be using the prize money to expand our human-based tech design team with a combination of human-centered designers, AI content writers and AI software developers, who will:

1. keep up with recent developments in Deep Learning algorithms (new ones come out almost every month!) in order to create prototypes and understand how/if the new algorithms can deliver more value to humans
2. test and productize the prototypes to deliver this value to our audience