Work

Creating AI products at pace: from prototype to $100m+ valuation in 18 months

The Opportunity

Automation is a potential answer to the challenges of many organisations, promising to free up time and budget while enabling employees to focus on less structured but equally important tasks.

AutogenAI asked Softwire for specialist engineering support to help them validate their vision of creating an automated bid-drafting tool that would enable their customers to use augmented intelligence to write more, high-quality winning bids, faster than ever.

Our Approach

Working with a startup means designing a fluid, lean and iterative process that moves fast while still establishing the solid foundations that can be built on as decisions get made. A two-week ideation period got the ball rolling, turning a concept into a prototype web app that allowed validation of assumptions and identifying and addressing blockers that might arise in customer journeys.

Customer feedback was collected at every stage of the process which helped support the potential of the tool, boosting commitment to getting the project to launch and giving key stakeholders the confidence that this was a viable and desirable product.

The Softwire team included a mix of backgrounds to enable fast paced development as well as effective oversight and governance and post-launch we were involved in upskilling AutogenAI’s own team to enable the software to be maintained and enhanced in the future.

The Impact

Going from client vision to enterprise-level product in just six months gave AutogenAI an early-mover advantage in an already fast moving market. Their customers reported a 50% reduction in bid costs and AutogenAI saw a 5X growth in headcount in the six months following the product launch.

Sean Williams, AutogenAI’s founder and CEO says: “The Softwire team has been absolutely magnificent. Really, utterly superb and has played a huge part in the success of AutogenAI. We’re two steps ahead of everybody else, but it moves so fast that others will catch up, so I want to be ten steps ahead. I think the Softwire team will be key to that.”

“ I brought Softwire in because I needed a delivery partner that could work flexibly in a fast-paced professional environment to validate our vision and help us quickly turn that vision into an enterprise-level product.

Sean Williams, Founder, AutogenAI

Our Work