Applysis founder Shalva Avanashvili: understanding your customer is the key to succeeding

On September 28, Tehnopol hosted the launch event for a new Estonian based startup Applysis. Applysis​ was one of the first teams from the first batch of the Startup Incubator program, which started in April 2020. The company’s founder Shalva Avanashvili shared his thoughts on startup entrepeneurship.

What does your startup do exactly?

Applysis is a data analytics tool, which helps businesses owning mobile applications analyse customer feedback in just a matter of minutes. With the help of AI, we detect concrete problems and most requested features.

Nowadays large companies like Swedbank, Pipedrive, Transferwise are spending on average 1.7 minutes to analyse a single review. So, considering the average product owner salary in Europe, a company which receives 5000 reviews monthly, is spending more than 4300 euros, only for analyzing reviews.

So, Applysis offers such companies a web platform where they can go and search iOS or Android applications of their choice. We will collect and analyse all user reviews and in a few minutes businesses get actionable insights, concrete problems, customer pain and their needs based on all reviews.

On top of that, Applysis gives businesses the opportunity to analyse competitors and compare functionalities to each other, in order to see why their competitors are better and on which area the business should concentrate more.

What technology is behind this solution?

In order to give the business the best, concrete and insightful results, we are using Machine Learning in many places of the platform.

  1. We are using Sentiment Analysis to measure the positiveness of the customer reviews.
  2. We classify each review in five categories:
    1. Bug report
    2. Feature evaluation
    3. Feature request
    4. Praise
    5. Other

The whole idea is to give businesses one simple interface for understanding what the customers’ problems are and what they ask them to deliver.

With our in-house-built AI models, we detect concrete functionalities in the reviews and measure the overall positiveness of this feature, e.g if the user speaks that he/she has the problems in ‘image uploading’, we detect it, so that each customer’s voice and their problems are delivered to the company.

How did you get the idea for your company?

I have been an iOS developer for 6 years and have worked on at least five mobile app projects. And the common challenge among those projects was that we, as developers, product owners or customer satisfaction team leads had to collect user feedback from PlayStore, AppStore and put it together in one Excel sheet to analyse. The purpose was to figure out which feature works and which doesn’t. This process was fully manual, repetitive and error-prone, because of the human factor.

During my masters degree in University of Tartu, my thesis topic was “Opinion App Driven Recommender System”, which was about detecting concrete features in the reviews. Keeping the previous problem in mind and my master thesis solution, I thought, why not have a SaaS (Software as a Service), which will resolve all problems that I have encountered during my work experience.

Why is customer feedback important?

There is research that more than 90% of the startups fail and one of the top reasons why they do is that they do not have product market fit. This happens because most of the people are solving problems that do not need to be solved in the first place. Instead businesses and startups should try to get as much information as possible from their existing or potential customers to succeed.

So, understanding your customer is the key of succeeding! That is why customer feedback is so valuable. Having a bright idea is nice, but having an idea which solves the customer’s problem is better.

How much are companies paying attention to feedback?

​We conducted several market research analyses before developing the platform. From the research it came out that customer feedback is analysed deeply in many companies, which helped us calculate average analysis expenses and also get many interesting numbers. But surprisingly there were companies, which do not pay attention to Google and Apple Store reviews. Considering all of this, Applysis’ aim is not only to help businesses to analyse customer feedback, but also show everyone how much information may a single review contain and why we should analyse it.

How did you end up in Tehnopol Startup Incubator?
​We participated in Ajujaht and managed to get to the top 30 teams. It was a vast experience, we also participated twice in Prototron, but unfortunately we did not get the financial investment. During Startup Day in Tartu in 2020, I talked with Startup Incubator’s representatives and it came out that Tehnopol could provide everything that we needed at that time: one of the best expertises in Estonia to grow, amazing network, investment opportunities and office space.

What has the experience been like?

Now that the program is almost over, I feel we have grown the product vigorously and I can say proudly and without hesitation that joining the Startup Incubator was one of the best steps Applysis has ever made. Each team at Startup Incubator has their own mentor, this is the top advantage of the incubation period. Having direct communication with the best entrepreneurs in Estonia, who are more than ready to help you in any area of your startup is an amazing feeling. You plan the future with much more confidence.

Do you think Estonia is a startup country? Why?

Estonia, my second country, unconsciously helps you to be productive, creative and hard-working in many areas. The environment here is full of active meet-ups, accelerations, incubators and entrepreneurs. Once you have an idea, there is so much temptation to start working on that and develop as much as possible and you end up with being the founder of a Startup.

Even if you are not living in here, Estonia gives the best opportunities to register your business electronically and handle all bureaucracy, which is surprisingly insignificant, digitally. Sometimes you may feel that you made some mistake while executing important tasks digitally since it was just several clicks.

You mentioned that Estonia is your second country. What’s your first country? What drew you to Estonia?

I am from Georgia, moved to Estonia already 5 years ago. Masters studies was the main reason why I came here and it was the best decision for me. I gained lots of knowledge and experience, the level of education in University of Tartu is higher than in Georgia. 

How would you compare the startup culture in Estonia to the one Georgia?

As for the startup culture, Georgia recently has started to support local startups by government grants, which is great help for the beginning. Georgia has great potential, since it has quite solid technical resources, but I would say Estonia has done more in that area. I want to emphasize the relationship between Georgia and Estonia – both countries have shared their experiences and knowledge to support each other, which makes me so proud!

What would you say to people who are thinking of founding a startup but are hesitant to do it?

I would give three recommendations to everyone who is thinking of founding a startup.

  1. There were several pain points that I experienced while working on Applysis, but the very first one definitely was to start working on it. In the beginning no one has any idea how to start, that is why you should start from anywhere you wish, simply does not matter. Keep in mind that mistakes are inevitable in the raw stage.
  2. Once you make the first steps and you already have some idea what problem you are solving, definitely talk with an experienced entrepreneur to share commonly made mistakes, or at least read about it. Make a high-level list of what must be done, before going deeper in your Startup.
  3. Definitely go for it! It does not matter if your startup will be successful or not, experiencing entrepreneurship is a totally different world. You will improve and gain not only your professional skills but personal as well. On top of that you will overcome lots of challenges, which makes you stronger.

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