Announcing Our Latest Venture Studio Additions
Every year, SAP.iO searches the nearly 90,000 SAP employees for a handful of entrepreneurs to join our ranks through the Intrapreneurship accelerator. We look for big ideas in big markets. There is no bigger idea and bigger purpose than helping people be more effective in what they do, day in and day out. That’s why we’re excited to announce the two latest SAP.iO Venture Studio investments Cygnuz and Free2Work.
Cygnuz: Improving Hiring Efficiency
It’s not often that we’re completely blown away from an unexpected angle. But that’s what happened when three hackers joined our ranks from Bangalore. Hemanatha, Appaiah and Swetha set out to improve the world of recruiting technical talent. Initially, they exclaimed that they could automate a recruiters’ technical screen with an Amazon Echo. (You can tell just how much stock they put in the typical recruiter’s technical chops).
Having spent far too much time trying to find good talent, the team knew how valuable a solution would be that could narrow down a pool of recruits quickly and cheaply for both recruiters and hiring managers. However, the team also understands the limitations of coding challenges. Armed with hustle and creativity, the team fashioned together a network of freelance expert reviewers to screen resumes, github repos, and coding questions. More flexible than services in the market today as well as more capable of handling non-traditional resume screens, such as design and data science recruiting.
In 6 weeks, the team went from voice operated prototype to a network driven product with real paying customers. No ego, no showmanship, just sweat.
Free2Work: The AI to Drive Development Teams
No manager wakes up in the morning aspiring to be a lousy leader. Unfortunately, the vast majority of managers finish their day having accomplished just that. Part of the cause is trying to force fit the manager’s style of engagement to their employees’ personalities.
Vitaly, Rachel, Evgeny, Nirit and Edna know development. And they also know that development teams are very different. Every single member of a team has a unique personality, unique engagement style, and unique aspirations. Unfortunately, most of that information is trapped in the minds of managers (at best) or lost into the ether of digital communications (at worst).
To help the struggling development leaders of the world — the ones that aspire to be better than they are at driving their teams — Free2Work set out to build a conversational AI that will help leaders plan for, prepare, and evaluate the outcomes of their 1 on 1 conversations. By taking into account different team members working styles, personalities, cultural backgrounds, they can take effort and intuition out of the process of delivering incredible management experiences to teams.
We spend the majority of our lives at work. If the team can execute against their vision, they can give everyone a better experience in the office. That means we’ll end up more motivated, more relaxed when we get homed, and more productive the next day. Not a bad outcome.
We are thrilled to welcome them to the SAP.iO Venture Studio and support them on their journey to build two of the world’s next great software businesses that will transform the way businesses are run
