This week's startup is leveraging artificial intelligence to enhance human creativity. Let’s dive into Altum.
⚾ The Elevator Pitch:
Starting a website is easy. There's tons of tools these days from Squarespace to Webflow. The hard part is getting people to actually come to your website. SEO (search engine optimization) requires a constant stream of quality content and cross-linking to get your website the visibility you need.
Writing that content takes time, but this week’s startup, Altum, is leveraging bleeding-edge natural language processing research to augment the human creative potential. Writing becomes as simple as (1) enter the topic of your content, (2) pick excerpts that enrich your writing and research, and (3) restyle & synthesize your content with smart suggestions.
👇 The Drop Down
Site: altum.io (currently building jenni.ai)
School: UCSD
Founded: 2020
Stage: Pre-Seed
Tech trend: Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Processing
Traction: Raised a pre-seed round, UCSD Basement Incubator Fellows, iterating on design with early stage partners
Founders - UCSD Alumni & Students
David Park - CEO
Henry Mao - CTO (M.S. Computer Science)
🔍 Our analysis
- 🤔 Problem-First Team
AI for human creativity is an incredibly broad value proposition. Rather than build something generic, the team is zeroed-in on a tangible problem with a real cost associated with it: SEO optimization.
Their goal with Jenni is to eliminate the practice of content mills which tend to pump out poor quality articles. The opportunity here is massive, a single content mill can rake in $97M in a quarter, but their profit margin can be as pathetic as a measly 1%. - 🗺️ A New Domain for AI
AI-powered content for SEO is just Altum's first step. Altum wants to apply its technology to help other domains within fine arts. However, AI and Machine Learning are notorious for pattern recognition. Given Altum's focus on fine arts, we're curious to see how they overcome the technical challenges that make AI not as effective at pure creativity.
