Interview Winner Pitching Battle 2019

Andreas Rath, CEO ONDEWO GmbH in Vienna and Thomas Röblreiter, Organiser of the 6th International B2B Software Days on 11.03.2021

Thomas: Why did you apply to participate in the Pitching battle of the International B2B Software Days 2019?

Andreas: It was a fantastic opportunity to introduce our vision and our ONDEWO Call Center AI Platform to an international audience.

Thomas: I was part of the jury selecting the finalists. I still remember your pitch deck explaining your speech-2-text and text-2-speech approach to automating telephone calls. Really well done.
What about your experiences with pitching sessions?

Andreas: Of course I have joined several pitching events before. For me it is always a great pleasure to present my own company, how innovative we are and what we have reached with our AI approach so far.

Thomas: How did you prepare yourself for the pitching battle?

Andreas: My advice here is practice, practice and once again practice! I used an empty meeting room with a beamer and asked two of my colleagues to give me feedback. As Camile Gallo mentioned in a post for the Inc: “Steve Job made presentations look effortless because he put a lot of effort into making it great.”

Thomas: Finally you succeed. How did you benefit from your victory in this battle?

Andreas: Right afterwards I received a lot of inquiries for meetings. One among them was Frequentis, an Austrian corporate in the public security business. They were interested to integrate our technology in their call center product for the police, firefighters and ambulances.
As our system is a stand alone solution and does not need an internet connection, it fulfills an important security requirement for such applications.
Three months later we have finalized a first prototype proving to save more lives with artificial intelligence. This was the basis to realize further AI projects together and recently we succeeded with our proposal in the last “Take Off” funding call from the Austrian Research Promotion Agency.

Thomas: Great! What kind of advice do you want to give interested applicants for the pitching battle 2021?

Andreas: First of all, don’t miss this chance. It is really worth using this stage. Second, once again practice, practice, practice!

Thomas: What are your next steps with ONDEWO?

Andreas: Currently we are implementing ten new languages in our system and are launching our product in Germany and Switzerland. So if you are from the D-A-CH area and interested to sell or integrate our product or offer consulting services about it, please get in contact with me.

Thomas: Last question, do we see you on the Software Days in two months?

Andreas: Of course I am already registered and I am also one of the speakers in the conversion technology workshop.