Revolutionizing Learning with AI: An Interview with Alelo's President & CEO

HackerNoon: What is your company in 2–5 words?

Lewis Johnson: AI-powered human learning technology

Why is now the time for your company to exist?

We at Alelo became experts in applying conversational AI to education and training long before AI became fashionable. Now that the world has woken up to the potential of generative AI, people increasingly come to us for AI-powered learning solutions.

What do you love about your team, and why are you the ones to solve this problem?

I love our team’s shared passion and commitment for what we do, which is to use conversational AI to create quality learning products that make a difference in people’s lives. We understand the power of conversation to promote learning, which gives us a unique perspective. A key focus of ours is ensuring that our AI-powered solutions are trustworthy. I see too many AI-powered products out there that make mistakes and are unreliable.

If you weren’t building your startup, what would you be doing?

My other passion is singing, and if I were weren’t building my startup I would be making more music instead.

At the moment, how do you measure success? What are your metrics?

We measure success by the number of successful learners and happy customers. We provide solutions to organizations with large numbers of learners, so that we can have as much impact as possible. 500,000 learners to date, with potential for rapid increase.

In a few sentences, what do you offer to whom?

Our primary industry focus right now is healthcare. We work with health systems to create Virtual Patient Navigators that answer patient questions and point them to educational resources, thereby reducing burdens on care teams. We also offer training solutions to training organizations and health systems, that let health professionals practice their skills with simulated patients and caregivers. We also get demand from pharmaceutical companies and other providers of educational content, to create Navigators that support their customers**.**

What’s most exciting about your traction to date?

What’s exciting is to me is that we are acquiring customers with really large numbers of learners. One of our customers has a site that has reached 100 million downloads. That translates into really large numbers of learners, generating lots of recurring revenue for us.

Where do you think your growth will be next year?

I think our growth next year will be 100% YoY, and the year after that 1,000% YoY.

Tell us about your first paying customer and revenue expectations over the next year.

Our first paying customer was the US Government. We reached a lot of learners by working with the Government, but it was mainly through fixed contracts instead of recurring revenue. The new generative AI platform that we are developing has much more recurring revenue potential.  We project $2M next year, with an exponential growth curve kicking in toward the end of next year.

What’s your biggest threat?

Our biggest threats are our biggest suppliers: the large language model developers such as Google and OpenAI. They provide foundational technology for us for now, but they might try to offer competing solutions in the future. So far, their offerings in healthcare are untrustworthy and even unsafe, which gives us an advantage.

This startup founder interview template is based on HackerNoon Founder & CEO David Smooke’s ten questions for startup founders.