Who are you and what are you doing?
My name is Juan Pablo Marín, co-founder of Aentropico. I am from Colombia originally but now Sebastian, my cofounder, and I are based in Brazil. We have about sixteen years’ worth of experience in applied mathematics and engineering so we decided make these advances in technology and science more relatable for decision makers. We want to help managers make better decisions. We did our post-graduate studies in Switzerland, where we met. And since then we started adapting different data science methods so people with no technical expertise can have access to these tools in a simple way. Aentropico democratizes access to Big Data technologies! Our tools fit data tables like Excel spreadsheets with predictive capabilities.
We try to move away from the one size fits all approach where the user himself has the job of analyzing the data. Instead we provide many different solutions to tackle very specific needs. The customer only needs to decide what question he wants answered. The system then determines the necessary data structure. Once the customer uploaded it our system will take care of the rest.
How did you come up with your business idea?
It’s hard to say but I suppose it is a combination of many different ideas. If you set up the right space for connecting different entities and provide them with ways to connect to each other, they will very likely evolve into something really useful.
That is pretty much the philosophy we use: if you have the proper framework offering many different solutions of processing data that is fed in by users then one will definitely learn and start to see some emerging patterns. That allows Aentropico to find the appropriate data analysis solution for a specific business. We saw all these powerful analytics tools provided by the traditional players in the hands of large corporate customers. These technologies do amazing work but are out of reach for small and medium sized businesses. Coming from developing countries we want to bring these technologies to the millions, not just to the handful. Our business model is subscription-based, so for a fee we give you the access to different data apps from those you can generate all the reports you want.
Who is on the founding team?
Myself and Sebastian Perez. He is my cofounder, also from Colombia. We met around 5 years ago in Switzerland.
How are you different from the competitors?
The difference lies in that Aentropico does not target large corporate IT departments – they have plenty of choice anyway. We target individuals, we target specifically the marketing manager or the finance guy who is struggling to get answers to their daily concerns. That gives us a big head start because we overcome the “language” barrier between the managers and the IT department by giving the managers directly the capability to generate the answers they need. That does not really conflict with what the IT departments but puts a cherry on the pie.
What are you looking for at the moment? (e.g. investors, talent, customers)
Aentropico got accepted to a Brazilian start-up program with the support of the Brazilian government. We will launch our online service in Brazil in the next few months and we are currently looking for funding.
Where do you see yourself in a year?
We want to become the analytics powerhouse in Latin America! That is our main goal.
The interview was conducted by Daniel Nippes
Image and video credit Aentropico
