Startup Spotlight: Makersite
Makersite has demonstrated use cases in supply chain resilience and Net Zero across many different industries, and the ATI Boeing Accelerator is excited to support the team as they take on aerospace. It’s been a pleasure to work with both Neil Dsouza, CEO and Founder and Niki Inglis, Senior Account Executive and the wider team. We recently sat down with Neil to learn more about how they’re using their technology to connect and enrich cross-departmental data into digital twins for analysis, collaboration, and decision support.
Explain your product in one sentence
Makersite is a digital twin platform that uses AI and graph technologies to help design and improve manufactured products across multiple criteria including regulatory compliance, environmental impact, supply risk, and cost of production.
What problem is Makersite solving in the aerospace industry?
The problem is that developing and selling products today involves a number of sequential stages from ideation to shipping, typically spanning 2–5 years depending on industry. Data, tools, and expertise at each stage are siloed which makes identifying problems time-consuming, resolving them complicated, and pre-empting them impossible. As a result, industry wastes $200B each year in R&D alone.
We use 3rd party data, AI, and graph technologies to connect and enrich cross-departmental data into digital twins for analysis, collaboration, and decision support. Effects of supply disruptions, regulations, or product changes can be understood simultaneously from different perspectives including sustainability, compliance, costs, and risks. With AI support, teams can collaboratively identify optimal mitigation strategies and new opportunities in real-time to make better products, faster.
How was the idea for Makersite born?
Prior to starting Makersite, my experience includes 15 years in product performance optimisation with executive positions at Thinkstep. The appearance of new graph and AI technologies coincided with an industry push towards more automated solutions to embedding sustainability, compliance, and other non-financial indicators in product development. This led to the creation of Makersite.
How is Makersite helping its customers achieve Net Zero?
Through our technology and expertise, we help companies in four key areas:
- Find what is material to your business
- Identify data sources
- Establish a baseline and setting a target
- Identify and assess opportunities to reduce emissions
Find out more in our article “Get to Net-Zero with Makersite”.
What are you doing well as a company and where are there opportunities to grow?
We are geniuses at connecting data that was previously disconnected allowing customers to do things better and faster. This is reflected in every aspect of our platform — and is loved by our customers. Commercial success is increasing pressure to scale the team fast. Doing this well is key to future business growth.
Makersite works across a range of sectors including automotive and electronics. How did you choose your initial markets?
We chose markets that already had demand but also a level of maturity for our kind of product. This also coincided very well with the core expertise of our team.
Tell us the story of how your team came together
From my network, I selected the early team members to build the data technology platform. The concept and ambition of Makersite subsequently inspired top talent to join the company building the successful team that we have today.
What’s the greatest learning from your startup journey so far?
In addition to focusing on customers, a team spirit that encourages fun helps us through the good and the challenging times.
How has your mentoring experience at the ATI Boeing Accelerator been so far? What were the highlights?
The ATI Boeing Accelerator programme was very well thought through and organised. A few sessions were extraordinary and provided us access to information and insights that are usually only available to large corporations.
The corporate partners were highly organised too — they read up on us in advance and provided designated representatives to help navigate the nebulous companies to find the right contacts faster.
The social events have also been a great way to get to know the other startups and have some fun!
Hear Neil share more about Makersite at the ATI Boeing Accelerator — 2021 Demo Day
Follow Makersite on Twitter and LinkedIn as the team develops their solution for the aerospace industry and across sectors.
Sign up to our mailing list to hear the latest news from our cohort and be the first to hear about our upcoming events.
For more information about the programme, please contact the ATI Boeing Accelerator team:
Gabi Matic — gm@atiboeingaccelerator.com | linkedin.com/in/gabrielamatic
Wil Benton — wb@atiboeingaccelerator.com | linkedin.com/in/fatkidonfire
Ksenia Kurileva — kk@atiboeingaccelerator.com | linkedin.com/in/kseniakurileva
