What is CodeWell?
By automating entire departments with artificial intelligence-based digital representatives, CodeWell and their flagship product, CodeWell AI, are developing and changing various industries.Founded in 2011 by entrepreneurs Nino Karas and Martin Anchevski, the Macedonian AI platform CodeWell AI is a pioneer in the use of artificial intelligence and digital assistants in N. Macedonia and the wider region.
Conversational AI is becoming one of the most sought-after technologies today, one that’s not only reshaping industries today, but also increasingly improving work methodologies.
How did Nino and Martin contribute towards making CodeWell get to this level of product development?
The journey starts in Skopje and then quickly takes them through Oslo, Amsterdam and New Jersey, having them work with clients such as Sony Music Entertainment, Heineken, T-Mobile, A1 Telecom Austria and many others. The continuous 12 years of work bears fruit to outstanding awards such as “Product Hunt – Product of the Year” in Silicon Valley, as well as second place at How To Web Spotlight in Romania.
For Nino and Martin, it all starts with the rise of android phones in N. Macedonia, something that, at that time, served as an inspiration for finding a solution for one of the most pressing problems that Skopje has – city transportation.
As a result, they create an application for offline navigation that provides users with information about city buses. This application serves as the basis for what later becomes CodeWell.
“It all started with the the app ‘Avtobusko’. It was an application that gave you turn-by-turn navigation in the city, showing your movement with public city transport, something that was unthinkable in 2010. The only information that could be obtained at that time was when the bus leaves from the starting station and when it arrives at the final destination. Since everything in between was unknown, we did our best to make an application that shows you how to move smartly, in the same fashion as Google Maps of today; so it’s easy to know where to get on or off the bus, and try to always be on time,” says Nino.
Soon afterwards, they sell the rights for “Avtobusko” to T-mobile and start working on other products – from tourist guides, to gaming and productivity tools.
The first steps with artificial intelligence application
In 2015, they founded a new startup called “MarkO”. With it, they became the first company to enter one of the top three European accelerators in the Netherlands, in the Rockstart Web and Mobile 2015 batch – a business accelerator in Amsterdam.
“MarkO” was an innovative productivity tool that used artificial intelligence based on what you write as a task or as a reminder in the application. It extracts the information about what it relates to and it creates smart reminders for you. For example, if I write a task or a reminder such as: ‘buy flowers for my mother’s birthday on Tuesday’, it will know that I want to buy flowers and that it has to happen before Tuesday, so it will create time reminders and location markers for me. The next time I stop by or come across a florist it will notify me that maybe I should to stop to buy flowers because it’s my mother’s birthday,” explains Nino.
In 2016, however, they shift their focus towards artificial intelligence and “MarkO” evolves into a completely different product. Instead of a smart to-do list with artificial intelligence, they make the first personal productivity assistant.
The name of the application is “Letz”, and the assistant is called Lucy.
“The app had calendar integration, access to the user’s daily reminders, and it was prone to proactively asking the user:
Hey, is your date over?
Is there anything I should do about it?
Are there any minutes of meeting that I should write down?…. and that’s how we made a switch from a passive tool with innovative technology; we shifted the paradigm to proactively questioning the user, to help him improve productivity and bring it to a higher level,” explains Nino.
Handling productivity with the help of artificial intelligence is what makes Letz an attractive product. Its chat bot is designed to stimulate intelligent communication with users and motivate them in a completely natural way to text and share their daily tasks.
The product was also instrumental for netting their first investment, i.e. 100 thousand euros from the innovation fund South Central Venture. This was South Central Venture’s first investment in a North Macedonian startup. The money was used to complete product development and significantly increase marketing activities.
Over the years, CodeWell has increasingly devoted its resources to the creation of the CodeWell AI platform and digital assistants.
Martin, as co-founder and CTO of CodeWell AI, holds the reins when it comes to the technology behind the products – from simple fixes to full-on neural networks with machine learning.
“We rely on technology from major giants such Amazon, Google and so on. Our development philosophy dictated that technology cannot replace beautiful architectural design. So if you have made something out of a beautiful architectural design, the technology is irrelevant. “If you’re going to use some experimental technology that solves a problem, you have to ask yourself why you have that problem at all (in the first place),” says Martin.
How ChatGPT is changing the development of companies
In CodeWell, the appearance of the ChatGPT language model is seen as a whole new battlefield, because it’s a new step into an uncharted technological territory. Or as Nino and Martin explain: “if we used to fight with swords and sticks, now we see the immergence of gunpowder and the rise of the atomic bomb in the horizon. The rules on the battlefield are changing”.
According to Nino, what everyone now calls a trend, i.e. the emergence of conversational artificial intelligence, is something much more than that. For him, one of the greatest benefits of technology has always been the automation and improvement of mundane and boring tasks that people are not particularly interested in.
“In the same way that technology has automated the work of human elevator operators, Conversational AI can automate departmental jobs that involve mass communication with end customers. So, I do not believe that it is a technological trend, but an inevitable technological evolution of companies. Considering that customers are becoming more demanding than ever, with 7 out of 10 customers calling contact centers ONLY because they want their needs to be fulfilled. On the other hand, fewer and fewer people want to work in contact centers, resulting in a record high employee turnover of 45% per year. Because of this, we truly believe that creating a workforce with artificial intelligence with Conversational AI represents the next step in the digitalization of companies,” emphasizes Nino.
The technology that CodeWell now has is helping them to get a competitive edge and to be much more than a service provider or outsourcing team that worked on custom-requested software.
“After 12 years, the decision is made to close that chapter of the CodeWell story. CodeWell is no longer an outsourcing company and we are fully committed to our CodeWell AI product,” added Nino and Martin.
At the moment, CodeWell has a new product that is already in its demo stage, and is intended for the B2B world. According to Martin, the product is never ready, but the moment to approach the first potential customers is slowly coming to a close.
“For something to scale globally, we don’t have a lot of room for trial and error, so we have to iron out the kinks of the product in the local market, see all the things that need to take shape, and then move on to bigger things and shoot for global expansion, he says.
At the same time, their sights are also set on the banks as well, and their goal is to replace one employee in the bank, but in tasks that are not restricted to one job description.
“The replacement transformation begins with one employee in the contact center. Their replacement has to know how to sell as well – that’s its secondary task. Then there follows a phase in which it can replace any employee inside the team. This way, there’s a shift from shallow integration of the first task in contact center, to the third deep integration where specific knowledge is required,” they explain.
The digital assistants Slavco and Ada
Several of their products are already widely used in Macedonia. Slavco the assistant for A1 in Macedonia is a commercially popular project, and, at the same time, something that represents their return to the community.
There’s also Ada, the first digital assistant in the public sector, that had its launch in February 2023.
According to the team, many situations do not require a document management system. Since it is not necessary to develop a special back-end system for a given institution in order to digitize some services, the assistant can help. Assistants such as these can represent a centralized knowledge base in all government institutions in North Macedonia.
Their expectations are that it will greatly help citizens in obtaining information about processes such as extracting statements, documents, taking pictures for passports, etc.
The hope for a Macedonian unicorn
Regarding the development of the domestic startup ecosystem, Nino and Martin claim that all that is needed is a successful case of a domestic company that will achieve dramatic growth.
“We need a successful case that will shake up the system, we need a unicorn, or some sort of a serious exit of hundreds of millions of euros or dollars so that investors can say: ‘OK… we see a promising rock star in North Macedonia’. An example of this magnitude will motivate the entire investment world to come to us, and support us in our own country, and you can take that to the bank,” they both emphasize.
According to them, North Macedonia definitely has capable founders, who can strongly influence the current situation in the startup ecosystem.
“We have remained too accustomed to the level of a factory for the production of everyday software, and it is time to become more than that. As a creative workshop, we are not just a factory that produces the same things for foreign corporations.” In the next five years, artificial intelligence will have huge impact and our full focus will be on creativity. With that in mind, we will focus on producing some really unique things that I think we have the potential to achieve and to make them here,” says Martin on the subject of North Macedonia and the future of startups.
Lessons learned and the importance of teamwork
“Don’t build a product before you get feedback from the market” – both of them claim that this is the biggest lesson they’ve learned so far during their startup journey.
In addition, there is also the belief in the team and supporting each other in every segment of the production.
“We appreciate the individuality in the team. Everyone brings with them a part of their character, a part of their uniqueness, which is an added value to the team. And we don’t want to lose that, we don’t want to be a corporation that has rules for everything. Since startups rely on the individuality of a group of talented individuals, we want that individuality to offer a form of guidance. The AI technologies we are working on now are the result of the work of developers, but equally important role is also played by the content team as well as the administration at CodeWell. Everyone is involved, everyone is motivated to find a solution ,” concludes Nino.
