What is the experience of being an incubatee? We got answers from Irvin Amukasa. He is one of the minds behind Sophie Bot – a chat robot that answers any question you have on sexual and reproductive health.
Sophie Bot is one of the startups that benefited from the Nailab Incubation Program.
Let’s begin with an overview of your business
Sophie Bot is artificial intelligence built to answer your questions on sexual and reproductive health.We like people to think of us as Siri for sexual health.Though we have users asking us questions for free we have discovered our value lies in automating customer support for businesses.Specifically for businesses in sexual health
How did you end up joining Nailab Incubation Program
We were the finalist for the i-am initiative, a UNFPA program run by Nailab aimed at getting innovators solving sexual reproductive health issues.Winning the final guaranteed us $10,000 in seed funding plus space and acceleration from Nailab. We have been there since.When we joined we were at early stage with the mvp live on the Google Playstore.
Take us through the day-to-day experience of being an incubatee
Week starts with a meeting at 10am with the Nailab team to report on growth of the previous week, lessons learnt and how to grow even faster the following week. Making sure we have rhythm on our feedback cycle. Round table event with all involved startups pitching in and exchanging insight and advice.
10% growth target week on week.
The rest of the week is executing ideas agreed on save Thursday afternoon we have an afternoon session with assigned mentors. Based on weak point identified earlier in the week, we have training sessions from guest trainers and speakers ,experts on the relevant subject.
What would you tell other startups is needed to the get most out of Incubation at Nailab?
A little stubbornness. You will get advice from all ends, swinging any decision you have to make a hundred different ways the best way is to know thyself and the business so well you take advice aligned to your vision.
Network and be curious about all the other entrepreneurs in the space, they are a far better resource.
LIKE: SOPHIE BOT FACEBOOK PAGE
DOWNLOAD: SOPHIE BOT APP ON PLAYSTORE
You were among the most promising incubatees at Nailab, what will we be hearing about your startup in 5 years time
Solved Natural language processing for bots.
#1 customer support automation platform in Africa
#1 resource on sexual and reproductive health in the World
$500M valuation,half way to Unicorn Status
Nailab is Nairobi business incubator providing business advice, technical training, professional mentoring, giving access to markets and linking entrepreneurs to investors – check out their programs