"Our technology means you don't have to interview real people anymore"

Co-founder Henrik Roth wants to take marketing communication to a new level with his start-up Neuroflash. In an interview with Startbase, he explains what neuromarketing and an AI have to do with it.

Texting is not easy for everyone. Neuroflash co-founder Henrik Roth also had to struggle with writer's block. With Neuroflash, he and his co-founders want to encourage people to create content, no matter how much experience they have or whether they want to create a block, a product description or even a social media post. Today's world thrives on media attention, he said, and that's why good copy becomes all the more important to stay in people's minds.

How does Neuroflash make it easier for its users?

From a content idea to the actual text publication is a very lengthy and, above all, manual path. We solve that by automating the research and ideation part, and then the actual writing process. The first problem is that people and companies need more and more content to get noticed digitally, but usually don't have more time to produce it. What we also help with is getting around writer's block. Neuroflash provides initial suggestions to never have to start with a blank sheet of paper again. We want to make our customers more effective and faster in their work.

How does Neuroflash work?

You brief Neuroflash , just as you would brief yourself or your colleagues. You provide, in the form of a short description or keywords, the context and the topic about which Neuroflash should write texts. In addition, you need to tell Neuroflash what kind of text you want the AI to write: A slogan or a product description, for example. The user has a lot of control over the quality of the texts, because the rule is: a better briefing means better texts.

Have there been any real failures with the texts created?

You can tell the AI how random or creative the texts should be written. There are very creative copywriters who like precisely such flops, because they get new ideas and associations from them. In practice, however, the AI works very well. We don't want to replace humans, but rather provide suggestions and impulses that can then be customized. Before they are displayed to the user, the suggestions run through many filter systems so that in the end the user is only shown the best suggestions.

Did demand change during Corona for your offering?

Before we launched the software, we offered a lot of market research in the form of consulting projects. Through our technology, brands no longer need to interview real people, but can simply ask our AI. Here, we actually had a positive impact because market research became difficult and costly during Corona with real humans. But the market research budget is also one of the first to be cut, unfortunately, so it more or less evened out. For us as a team, Corona didn't change anything because we worked completely remotely from the beginning.

What differentiates Neuroflash from the competition?

Our current focus is on the German language. Here, we offer our customers the highest quality of AI-written texts in German. But our unique selling point is clearly our proprietary technology, which allows us not only to produce texts, but also to analyze them. We can predict implicit associations and emotions of consumers to topics, words, brands in over 17 different languages. In addition, we help our clients not only with the writing itself, but also in the research and idea generation phase, because today this also costs a lot of time.

Who uses your services?

Our clients include freelancers and agencies that need a lot of texts and can sell more with us. Then e-commerce is a very big field because there is a lot of digital communication, here our clients include larger brands and startups. Smaller marketing teams use us to be more productive.

What do you think is the most important thing when it comes to writing a text?

First of all, a text should be light and easy to understand. Our attention span is very short, so it must be understandable at first glance what it is about and what advantages something has for the user as opposed to other offers. Another important role is played by neuromarketing, i.e. the subconscious. Over 80% of purchasing decisions are made subconsciously. In communication we work with emotions, especially positive ones, which should appeal to the target group. For example, shower gels often have aloe vera written in large letters, even though they contain very little. Nevertheless, the consumer reaches for this product because the term aloe vera evokes positive associations.

What role do investors play for you?

We launched our first version in July last year and were able to learn a lot about our users. Recently, we launched our new software, the AI Texter, which really just produces texts and doesn't do any additional analysis. You can think of it as Google Docs with the ability to produce text.

Where do you see Neuroflash in five years?

We see our AI as a tool that is integrated into the entire process. In the future, we want to provide the best solution internationally, while serving each local market with the appropriate language. Our ultimate goal is to empower people to create content, no matter how much copywriting experience they have.

What mistake would you like to have avoided?

The keyword focus fits here. As a startup, you always have a lot of options and that's where we weren't really good at in the past. By feeding off our own cash flow, we often ran after money, even if it didn't fit into the long-term strategy. Now we are focusing in all areas: product, customers, development priorities.

Thank you very much for the interview.

About the person:

Henrik Roth is a founder through and through. At his young age, he has already founded two startups, appears as a speaker at conferences and has his own podcast, "7 Questions, 7 Essences," in which he talks to other founders about their stories and startups.