Interview with Intelenz founder Renzo Zagni

My name is Dustin Betts. I'm the content editor at the Founder Institute, and I'm here today with Renzo Zagni. He's the founder of Insolens, an FI Silicon Valley and Founder Institute Select portfolio company that is applying AI to practical process automation. Renzo Zagni, thanks so much for joining us today.

Thank you, Dustin. Thanks for having me.

So before we dive into your startup Intelens, can you tell us a little bit, you know, about yourself, your personal story? What were the experiences, whether they were professional or personal, that led you to founding this process automation company?

Well, throughout my career, if I can describe my passion with one statement, it's to resolve complex problems with technology. During my tenure at Oracle, I was passionate about this. I encountered a lot of problems that Oracle didn't know they have, that customers didn't know they have, and I was able to quickly resolve those problems. And those solutions resulted in products that were shipped to customers. Some other resulted in patents. Or products that Oracle adopted internally that were used by thousands of users. So that's what prompted me to say, you know, if I can resolve all these problems for Oracle, I can perhaps do it for my own company. I always have the dream to start my own business.

And yeah, awesome. That's, uh, yeah, that's really cool. I know that you, um, had industry background at Oracle, you know, before starting the venture. So, um, yeah, cool to I see you coming out of that space. I know because I'm somewhat familiar with your business, you know, as a Founder Institute portfolio company that Intelens is machine learning to facilitate and automate business processes and controls. But let's kind of hear it straight from you, the founder. Please give us your short pitch for anybody who's never heard of you before. You know, what is Intelens?

Yeah, Intelens is a startup that is developing a machine learning-based process automation software and robotic process automation software for large enterprises. That's very much in a nutshell. Our approach is a no-code approach. Our target customer or target end user is a business person, somebody that doesn't have the knowledge of the technology, knowledge of coding, but is facing the problem every day. So we are giving them a solution that allow them to, in minutes, automate their day-to-day processes.

Perfect, perfect. And it leads really well into the next question that I want to ask you, which is, you know, for those who are unfamiliar with the technology or never heard the term, you know, process automation, could you share for us like some examples of that end user you talked about, how process automation could be deployed for different use cases?

Well, there are certainly— one of the main symptoms that you see when there is lack of automation is Excel spreadsheets. There are a lot of business people, that's the number one tool that they use to keep track of data, to keep track of tasks. So what we're doing is helping them automate those activities, whether it's copy and paste between applications, whether it's sending an email reminder to a customer that is late to pay some bills. Whether it's automating a newsletter or sending a document to DocuSign to be sent to another customer to be signed. So that's where we are looking into what are these activities, what we call the swivel chair activities. Every time you have to swivel the chair to pass some information to somebody else, how we can automate that in an elegant way.

Perfect. I like that, the swivel chair analogy. That makes sense. Yeah, and obviously a lot of businesses who are just, yeah, who are stuck in the spreadsheet mode can become much more efficient in so many different ways. I want to ask you next about your intellectual property. I only recently learned about your US patent filing. Congratulations. I was wondering if you could share with founders about some of the biggest challenges in the patenting process from your perspective. You know, what was, What was challenging about it? I guess you have some background in filing IP from Oracle as well, but you know, what is that really like going through that with the USPTO?

Yeah, it's, that's a very interesting question. And the main challenge is the US Patent Officer, the agent that is going to review and approve your patent. And they have a way of going about this. And for that is, it's like legal language, whether the patent has defined in a way that it not only expresses expresses the intellectual property, but expresses in a way that can communicate with the patent officer. So in a nutshell, the best thing is get a lawyer, a patent lawyer that has done that before and that can help you translate your intellectual property, which is probably something very technical, into a legal language that can then be not only submitted, but more often than not, the agent pushes back and you have to defend that patent. And to defend that patent, you have to work with a lawyer because the lawyer doesn't know about the technology, but he knows how to respond to the US Patent Office. So this is a little bit of a back and forth. And the last thing is, it's expensive, unfortunately.

Yeah. So founders should be prepared for that. And that's like a big trade-off. It's like you really want to work with the attorney who can really like help shepherd you through and make sure that you know what you're doing when you work with that patent officer, but just be prepared that there's a cost associated with that, so.

Correct, and if the patent is sound, sometimes even the patent, the lawyer can advise you on to whether or not the patent will have, the intellectual property will have merit in front of the agent. Because even if you do an investment of $10,000, $15,000 for a patent and the patent is awarded, Well, that's a tremendous boost to the credibility of the company and also to the valuation of the company. So it's well paid off.

Yeah, having a patent is huge. I mean, in terms of an asset that your business holds, yeah, it just makes it so much more tangible. Yeah, congratulations again. That's really cool.

Yeah, and it's also something that makes the team proud, right? Hey, we did all this and, you know, look at this, we receive a patent.

Absolutely. Yeah, one— okay, one next question I want to ask you about is sort of about product features, and you mentioned this really briefly. I think it's really great that Intellands is a no-code solution because I'm frankly like a non-technical person, I guess, in that respect. And so tell us a little bit about your thinking. No-code is very like hot topic right now among, you know, just tech and media. So you're thinking in terms of designing a product for this no-code user deployability. What went into that design process?

Yeah, it is, it was very interesting. I work, when I work at Oracle, I was the head, the head of one IT organizations, and I work with the line of businesses. In all the projects that they need to do for, you know, automating and improving the process digitalization. And honestly, we have much more projects than resources to work on those. So we couldn't serve all our business units the way that we wanted. And I think that's a common denominator in a lot of companies. So what I realized is that what the business user needs to do is not that complex when it comes to developing that solution, but there were no tools for them to be able to point and click, drag and drop, and pretty much digitalize the whole process. And that's what we did, you know, 3 years ago we started with that vision in mind. I say, if a user is going to touch the keyboard, it's going to be because he wants to put a label on something or he's going to write a note. I don't want any single line of code to be in the system. So that was our premise from the get-go. We use artificial intelligence, machine learning for that, and also, you know, a lot of sweat and tears to ensure that we develop a beautiful and elegant platform that anybody can use, you know, with an hour of training.

Perfect, perfect. And I don't know if there's any other kind of features that you want to highlight about the product specifically, but because my next kind of question goes into, again, this use case for somebody who is non-technical.

Yeah, we have several use cases. So for example, with a large agricultural company here in California, they have a packing plant. And for them, what was important is to ensure that there was a coordination between the different teams or the different product lines in the company. And it was not just a matter of saving costs or improving operational efficiencies, but for them it was a liability issue. It was a risk issue because they say if we pack the wrong product with the wrong label and we say this product has no peanuts, for example, and it does contain peanuts, then the liabilities for the company is in the millions of dollars. So we help them address that and significantly reduce that risk. A company in Malaysia, Petronas, we did a pilot with them and what they needed to do is to be able to coordinate and orchestrate activities for oil drilling and platforms offshore. So we built that solution, we proved how they can use that solution to very quickly orchestrate and monitor those activities. And once again, for them, Certainly cost saving was a big factor, but risk management was another very, very important factor. So that's kind of examples from a financial point of view. You know, accounts receivables, being able to send automated and personalized reminders to the customer, the company customer, saying, you know, your bill is past due or it's going to be past due in this amount of days. And here are all the details, what you need to do to pay, being able to automate that, it's certainly a huge value to the enterprise.

Yeah, perfect. No, these real-world examples are absolutely perfect because it leads really well sort of into the next question that I want to ask you, which is to ask you to go out on a limb and predict the future, which I like to put people in that position. So, you know, what do you envision for the future of like of this digital process automation space over the next 5 years in the industries that, you know, are gonna adopt it, basically?

Well, it's— what I've seen is that there is a big push. A lot of big companies are investing in this space in different areas, right? This robotic process automation, digital process automation, business process management is very large. It's— per Gartner, the market is going to double by 2025. It's going to be like a $14 to $15 billion opportunity. But I do feel that this is going to be ubiquitous in any companies. Companies that, you know, it's going to be as ubiquitous as Excel spreadsheet, as using emails to communicate with customers. And the using, being able to use artificial intelligence to, for example, parse an email and read that email and understand that email and based on that email, kickstart a process that is going to send the right information to a customer. That is going to be tremendously valuable. And I think that's the direction that we're going.

Yeah. Yeah. Perfect. I agree. I mean, I think it's going to touch so many different industries that it's hard to imagine like where it wouldn't have an impact. So yeah. Perfect. Next question I want to ask you, I mean, you've obviously done a huge amount of work to build Intelens to where it is today. What are some of the biggest challenges that you've overcome as a founder in terms of building this company?

Well, there are so many challenges. Building a startup is really was one of the hardest things that I have done in my career. I have to admit that. But I think the biggest challenge when you have some innovative technologies is sometimes connect the solution to the problem. And being able to make, help your potential customers make that connection. In their mind. Sometimes when we have this solution, we have this vision, but to be able to articulate this vision in a way that resonates to the customer sometimes can be very hard. The more complex the technology, the most complex the problem that you're trying to solve, it becomes harder. And as a person on technical background, I like to explain things in technical terms. But my end users are non-technical, so I have to kind of do this mind shift and start speaking in the language. And I think that's very important, speaking the language that your customer understands.

Perfect. No, I think that makes a lot of sense, specifically for people like yourself who are coming from a more technical background to think in product terms. To translate that makes a ton of sense. Next question is kind of related. What advice would you offer to an early stage or maybe even just an aspiring entrepreneur who's just getting started, something you wish you had known a couple of years back when you were first getting started?

Well, that's a very good question. The first advice is don't develop— assuming that this is a technology startup, of course— don't develop, don't type a single line of code until you're very clear as to what your value proposition is going to be. And that you have found product-market fit. And even if it means that, you know, just build some mockups, pages, and print it out and show it to potential customers and say, this is how it's gonna do, this is the problem that we're gonna resolve, and get that feedback from customers before you start, you know, investing some cash in the venture.

I think that's great advice because it's very, very applicable to very, very many different companies who kind of get ahead of themselves to design a solution before they've really pinpointed the problem. So I think that's great advice. Awesome. Final question is, you know, to just give us an update on, you know, where is Intel Lens headed next? Do you have any news or other updates to share with the FI community or any asks for the audience who might be watching?

Well, yes, thank you for that opportunity. We just signed our first customers. We've been running some pilots with customers on different representing different industries. We signed our first customer 2 weeks ago. It's a company representing oil and gas. And we are also releasing our version 2.0 of the software. And it has a lot of features. And I will invite anyone listening to this, this livestream that if they are interested in piloting our product and giving us some feedback, you know, I'll be more than happy to connect and help them out resolve some of their complex business problems.

Perfect, perfect. And we have the URL here down there at intelens.com. So if you're watching, you can click and go over and check it out. And congrats also on closing those first customers. That's always a really big deal. This has been really interesting for me, you know, learning a bit about AI and, you know, how process automation is changing changing in our digital world. And I know we're all at the Foundry Institute really looking forward to keeping up with Insolenz and where you're headed next. Renzo Zagni, thank you again for joining us today.

Dustin, thank you very much, and thank you— thanks to Founders Institute for this opportunity.