Munich Startup: What does AwesomeQA do? What problem do you solve?
Alexander Abstreiter, co-founder and CEO of AwesomeQA: Our startup develops an AI-powered community management solution. We enable software startups to gather their users in community channels like Discord and interact with them. We noticed that many community managers are overwhelmed by the volume of customer service requests, which leads to high user churn. With AwesomeQA, we can address this challenge by automatically answering frequently recurring questions in seconds using AI. Additionally, we process the collected data for our customers. This gives them insights into the biggest pain points of the current user experience as well as the most frequently requested new features.
Improved knowledge management flow
Munich Startup: But that already exists!
Alex Abstreiter: That’s correct, other customer support solutions also offer automated customer service. However, AwesomeQA differs in several aspects. We developed our product with AI from the start and integrate community channels like Discord and Telegram directly. Unlike many competitors that rely solely on ChatGPT, our AI has a much better knowledge management flow. It automatically learns from the answers of each community manager and additionally uses knowledge from websites, documentation, and forums. This way we avoid the hallucination problem, meaning we significantly reduce confident false answers.
Munich Startup: What’s your founding story?
Alex Abstreiter: My brother and I had the desire to start a startup together already during our studies. When my brother completed his master’s degree in data science, I quit my job to search for problem solutions together. At hackathons, we encountered the problem of poor user experience in communities, as we couldn’t find relevant information. We then developed an initial prototype that received extremely positive feedback. With this feedback, we iteratively improved and expanded our product.
AwesomeQA: Already over 60 customers
Munich Startup: What have been your biggest challenges so far?
Alex Abstreiter: One of the biggest challenges was acquiring the first customers. After all, integrating a tool into a Discord community can come with security risks. Since we had no references at the beginning, potential customers were initially cautious. We had to adjust our messaging several times to ultimately convince them of our product. However, once we acquired the first customers, this issue was no longer a major obstacle.
Munich Startup: How is business going?
Alex Abstreiter: We’re pleased that AwesomeQA is already successfully in use with over 60 customers. Our AI answers thousands of user questions every month, reaching millions of end users across different communities. We continuously work on integrating additional platforms and expanding our functionality to become the leading operating system for communities.
Munich Startup: How have you experienced Munich as a startup location so far?
Alex Abstreiter: The Munich startup location has continued to develop every year and the network of founders here is truly first-class. Thanks to renowned universities like TUM, LMU, and CDTM, there is an abundance of talented people who are particularly valuable for startups in early stages.
Munich Startup: Hidden champion or shooting star?
Alex Abstreiter: As a B2B SaaS company, we are initially more of a hidden champion, since the impact of our product is not immediately apparent to many users. Although millions of users see our name when we answer their questions, they often don’t realize that companies use our analytics to close the community-product-feedback loop and improve their products.
