Munich Startup: What does AwesomeQA do? What problem do you solve?
Alexander Abstreiter, co-founder and CEO of AwesomeQA: Our startup develops an AI-powered community management solution. We enable software startups to collect and interact with their users in community channels like Discord. We noticed that many community managers are overwhelmed by the number of customer service requests, resulting in high user churn. With AwesomeQA, we can address this challenge by automatically answering the frequently recurring questions in seconds using AI. We also prepare the collected data for our customers. This gives them insights into the biggest weaknesses of the current user experience as well as the most requested new functionalities.
Improved knowledge management flow
Munich Startup: But that’s nothing out of the box!
Alex Abstreiter: That’s right, other customer support solutions also offer automated customer service. However, AwesomeQA differs in several aspects. We developed our product with AI from the beginning and integrate community channels like Discord and Telegram directly. Unlike many competitors that rely only on ChatGPT, our AI has a much better knowledge management flow. It automatically learns from each community manager’s responses and additionally leverages knowledge from websites, documentation, and forums. As a result, we avoid the problem of hallucination, which means we significantly reduce self-conscious wrong answers.
Munich Startup: What’s your founding story?
Alex Abstreiter: My brother and I already had the desire to found a startup together during our studies. When my brother finished his data science master’s degree, I quit my job to look for solutions to problems together. At hackathons, we encountered the problem of poor user experience in communities because we couldn’t find relevant information. We then developed an initial prototype that received extremely positive feedback. With this feedback, we iteratively improved and expanded our product.
AwesomeQA: Already over 60 customers
Munich Startup: What have been your biggest challenges so far?
Alex Abstreiter: One of the biggest challenges was getting the first customers. After all, integrating a tool into a Discord community can also involve security risks. Since we had no references at the beginning, potential customers were cautious at first. We had to adjust our messaging several times to finally convince them of our product. However, after we won the first customers, this issue was no longer a major obstacle.
Munich Startup: How is business going?
Alex Abstreiter: We are delighted that AwesomeQA is already being used successfully by over 60 customers. Our AI answers thousands of user questions every month, reaching millions of end users in various communities. We are continuously working on integrating more platforms and expanding our functionalities to become the leading operating system for communities.
Munich Startup: How have you experienced Munich as a startup location so far?
Alex Abstreiter: Munich as a startup location has continued to develop every year and the network of founders here is really first-class. Thanks to renowned universities such as TUM, LMU and CDTM, there is an abundance of talented individuals who are particularly valuable for startups in the early stages.
Munich Startup: Hidden Champion or Shooting Star?
Alex Abstreiter: As a B2B SaaS company, we are more of a hidden champion for now, as many users are not immediately aware of the impact of our product. Although millions of users see our name when we answer their questions, they often don’t realize that companies use our analytics to close the community product feedback loop and improve their products.