Company
Mission
Our mission is to give every person and company the ability to easily create an advanced artificial intelligence, which knows what they know, and functions on their behalf.
We want MyCyberTwin AIs to live all over the web, making things easier for people by talking to others and performing tasks for their owners. We want them to breathe life into the relationship humans have with machines, and to function inside technology-mediated virtual worlds and mirror worlds.
We intend to continue to set the industry standards in Artificial Intelligence IQ and ethics.
Our goals are
- fix problems. Support and outperform humans in complex, expensive support and sales
- mass uptake. Every business and person should be able to easily create a MyCyberTwin virtual staff member or clone
- defensible Artificial Intelligence technology
We intend to continue our lead in creating a platform for robots with advanced IQ.
History
The first MyCyberTwin chatbot was built in 1991, when Dr John Zakos, the MyCyberTwin co-founder, was only 14 years old. His imagination was fired by the possibilities of computational intelligence, and he created his first artificial intelligence chat robot called “Lets Talk”.
Unfortunately, John’s neighbor became jealous and broke the disk that the chatbot lived on. Fortunately for MyCyberTwin, John’s interest grew and he went on to study IT and obtain his doctorate in IT, his research focusing on Search using Artificial Intelligence Technology.
While this was going on the other co-founder, Liesl Capper-Beilby, wrote her first software program in DOS when she was 13 years old. It was a Pacman game with music. From that early age she wanted to learn how the mind worked and was fascinated by human and machine learning. This led her to obtain a degree in psychology and then postgraduate qualifications in business, develop a large education franchise and move from there into IT.
In 2000, Alan Page (who is now on our advisory board), introduced Liesl and John, thinking some magic would be created. It was. John worked for Liesl’s previous company, creating search software that most other engineers called impossible.
MyCyberTwin was founded in 2005 and is a privately held company.
Where are all the Chat Robots?
In 2005 John and Liesl decided to start a company together. They started by investing half a year in thinking. Then one day John called Liesl from a bus in New York saying “I had this crazy idea…”
Although they both had an interest in humanizing technology, they asked themselves “If this is such a good idea, why are chat robots not everywhere? Given that it makes so much sense, and is so much part of our collective unconscious, why do we not see them working for large companies?”
The answer was simple. Old chat robots were
- too hard to build, requiring an IT degree and special training
- not accurate. Competitors quote 40% accuracy at start. We wanted over 90%
- very expensive to build and maintain
- unable to handle complex queries, troubleshooting and long conversations featuring multiple products for customers to choose from
Or in other words, most of what a human does at the other end of a phone.
There was also very little merging of human sciences and computational intelligence. It is difficult to do, but feasible; and Liesl and John had done it before in their previous company.
Having realized that the limitation was technology, not market appetite, they set out to build not only the most advanced chat robots, but also to make a platform that anyone could use, so that it would be scalable. These seemed impossibly incongruent goals, but the pair had created and distributed major, innovative platforms before, and were not daunted.
Because of Liesl’s history in taking a previous IT company from R&D to listing, and John’s experience and skill in AI and management, they were able to win a substantial Australian Federal Government grant to fund proprietary product development and commercialization. They added their own capital and a selected handful of investors, and set to work.
The Inaugural MyCyberTwin Virtual Agent
The inaugural MyCyberTwin virtual assistant started chatting in early 2006. The platform went live early 2007, and since then over 40,000 personal and business users have made their own chatbot, without any software skills.
In parallel, we launched our advanced MyCyberTwin Enterprise virtual agents, the first chat robots to be able to
- handle large volumes of complex queries
- function in high-level enterprise environments, direct to customers
- successfully resolve more than 90% of queries
- significantly outperform humans in live chat
These virtual agents performed so well, their use has been extended, and some have even had facelifts!
In the media space, our characters also achieved huge success
- pushing up web traffic by 15%
- 95% of the audience believed they were talking to a human
- 8% of the chats lasted an hour or more, the average chat time was 32 minutes
- engagement grew, not diminished, and people developed a relationship with our characters
More Growth
More MyCyberTwin chatbots are now joining the team of virtual staff, including virtual agents working in information technology sales and support, insurance and the varied departments of financial services giants.
In 2009, Gordon Bell, who is on our advisory board, published Total Recall, about digital immortality, and started work on his own MyCyberTwin chatbot.
We have remained focused on the high-end enterprise space, and on being the gold standard for intelligence and accuracy. Our customer base has increased significantly. We have grown despite the downturn, because we offer significant cost savings, sales growth and higher customer satisfaction, all at an affordable price.
Our R&D offices remain in Australia / Asia-Pacific, but we also set up commercial HQ in New York.
Our dream is ubiquitous engagement with high-level artificially intelligent characters, who improve the quality of human lives. Everyone should have their own companion or clone, or a way to engage in a humanized, personalized way with a company. We dream of singularity, we work towards this engagement being good for humanity.
Liesl Capper-Beilby, BA (Psychology), Grad Cert Venture Development, GAICD
CEO, Board of Directors
Capper-Beilby has extensive international business experience as a CEO. She has been managing growth businesses for over 15 years.
Capper-Beilby has helped lead MCT from a research and development company to a market leader in the provision of high-end customer support solutions to clients like NAB, HP, NASA, Westpac and others.
Before MyCyberTwin, Capper-Beilby was founder and CEO of Mooter. Mooter is a stock-exchange listed company specializing in search and behavioral targeting. While leading Mooter, she raised millions in venture capital, created patents and defensible technology, managed the expansion into US and Asian markets, secured deals with major clients including Yahoo! and Fairfax and prepared the company for listing.
Prior to Mooter, while in her twenties, Capper-Beilby built a multi-national education franchise to 38 branches in four countries. She took the business online, trained her management to run it in 2000, and it is still growing today.
Capper-Beilby holds a Bachelors degree in Psychology and Education, and has a Postgraduate Certificate in Venture Development. She is also a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, and is a regular speaker at local and international conferences.
Recently, Capper-Beilby was honored by the Women in Technology organization, for her groundbreaking efforts in IT, as the recipient of their “ICT outstanding achievement” Optus award for 2007.
John Zakos, PhD
CIO, Board of Directors
Before co-founding the company with a fresh vision for intelligent humanized technology, Dr Zakos worked for both mature and start-up IT companies at an international level. His experience spans both managing business development and leading technical teams in the development of emerging technologies in Asia-Pacific and the USA.
Dr Zakos was a key member of the founding management and engineering teams that built the Mooter platform. Mooter, a global leader in search and contextual advertising technology, has attracted international recognition from several authoritative sources, including the MIT Technology Review.
During his time at the IBM Research Lab in Japan, Dr Zakos’ work focused on the development of world-leading information retrieval and knowledge-mining technology. Previously at Ixla Limited, he was involved in the commercialization of award-winning digital photography and web publishing software.
Holding a PhD in intelligent web technology, Dr Zakos has authored numerous publications and presented his work at international conferences and invited talks. He is a Visiting Research Fellow at the School of Information at Communication Technology at Griffith University, and participates in collaborative research efforts with other academic institutions in Australia and abroad.
Peter Stackpole
COO
Prior to joining MyCyberTwin, Stackpole was recently involved in the successful sale of Refsure Worldwide to First Advantage (FADV), a Nasdaq listed corporation whose principal business is background screening. Having joined Refsure when they numbered just two staff in total and when the industry was in its infancy, his control ended up spaning over 140 staff across 3 countries with FADV being the clear market leader.
Post the sale, Stackpole stayed on for 3 years as Managing Director of the Asia-Pacific South business. During which time, in addition to being responsible for the business growth across Asia-Pacific, he was pivotal in the offshoring of key operational functions as well as being the driver of the strategic direction for their technology platform. Keen to duplicate that success, he joined AIM screening to spearhead the development of their technology platform. Now that this has been completed, he joins MyCyberTwin as the Chief Operations Officer.
With a Bachelors degree in Economics, Stackpole’s initial roles in his career were principally finance-based working in the government sector and private enterprise with KPMG before moving into senior management roles within the recruitment industry. From there, the natural progression was then into the newly emerging background screening industry.
Having now been involved in both the acquisition and sale of successful businesses, Stackpole is now moving into what has become his principle work life challenge, the growth of exciting businesses into new cutting edge markets.
Gordon Bell
Advisory Board
Bell can only be described as a legend in the computing industry.
He was VP of R&D for Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), and in 1972 he described the ‘Bells Law of Computer Classes and Class formation’. In 1987, he was the head of NSF’s Computing Directorate, which formulated the plan for the National Research and Education Network (NREN aka The Internet).
He went on to invest in over 100 technology companies, and co-authored The Bell Mason Diagnostic, a book about an objective means to chart the course and evaluate the progress of early-stage ventures. Bell joined Microsoft Research in 1995, where he has been working on Telepresence and MyLifeBits.
Bell recently published a book called Total Recall, with Jim Gemmell, about digital immortality.
Bell is an esteemed and valuable member of our advisory board. His key interest in MyCyberTwin is in the area of digital immortality, and the capacity for artificially intelligent software to grow in intelligence and ability. His key focus is on assisting the company to make the most of the enormous opportunities we have.
Alan Page
Advisory Board
Page ran a half-billion dollar listed technology company for many years – ISR Group (Intelligent Systems Research, later IXLA). IXLA started out in Artificial Intelligence technology in the 1980s. It then went on to develop one of the first technologies that allowed cameras to talk to computers. This technology was sold to clients like Itochu, Brother and Olivetti.
The company listed on the stock exchange in 1986, and successfully weathered the 1987 crash. Top ten shareholders included Citibank, ANZ, NAB, Westpac, Barclays, Chase Manhattan and MLC. In the early 1990s, IXLA achieved the highest share capital growth on the Australian Stock Exchange for three years in a row, and in 1993 entered the ASX top 200.
Page retired in the mid 90s, to focus on investment and advisory activity. He was an early shareholder in both Mooter and MyCyberTwin, and introduced the co-founders Zakos and Capper to each other in 2001.
Page plays a highly valued mentoring role to key executives. He also advises on global macroeconomics and business strategy. He is a catalyst to higher thought.
Latest News
CIO: MyCyberTwin speaks about winning ATS Patron Awards, company growth. Click here
Computerworld: In Pictures: Behind the scenes of MyCyberTwin. Click here
CIO: Robot self-awareness “lifetimes” away: MyCyberTwin. Click here
NSW Department of Trade and Investment: MyCyberTwin win NSW technology export awards. Click here
StartupSmart: Tech start-up MyCyberTwin named rising star at export awards. Click here
Inc.com: Need a Virtual Customer Service Rep? Click here
Forbes: It’s the Attack of the Sales Bots. Click here
Forbes: Villagers Light Torches, Rush Mothership. Click here
Finovate 2011: Video: MyCyberTwin Presentation. Click here
Finovate 2011: The Conversational Interface: The Biggest Innovations in FinTech. Click here
insideHPC.com: Video: MyCybertwin – Intelligent Agents that Chat with Real People. Click here
American Banker: Helping Banks Get Data from Consumers Who Don’t Want to Share. Click here
Acceleration Watch: The Conversational Interface: Our Next Great Leap Forward. Click here
CRM Buyer: MyCyberTwin: Your Customer Service Fantasies Fulfilled. Click here
Forbes: Customers Crave Real Relationships. Click here
Earlier News
Smart Company: Brave new tech: the next 10 trends for SMEs. Click here
Business Review Weekly (BRW): The Magnificent Seven. Click here
CIO: NSW ICT Entrepreneur Awards. Click here
Women and Leadership Australia: Inspiring women: Liesl Capper-Beilby. Click here
Smart Company: The 10 next social media trends. Click here
The Australian Way (Qantas Magazine): Reality Check. Click here
CIO: AI-powered customer support robots bring human touch to virtual world. Click here
The Courier Mail: Avatars at your service. Click here
Business Review Weekly (BRW): Talk to me. Artificial intelligence means more customers are talking to computers, posing a serious challenge to overseas call centres. Click here page 1, page 2
Library Journal: The E-Memory Revolution. Click here
The Gold Coast Bulletin: Facing up to a digital future. Click here
Australian Anthill: Liesl Capper video on who (and what) drives innovation.Click here.
The Sydney Morning Herald: Life in the Virtual world after Second Life. Click here
Techradar.com: Chatbots faking it as they pretend to be us. Click here
ThinkingString: AutAvatar – MyCyberTwin. Click here
The Sydney Morning Herald: Cyberspace links public to Mars mission. Click here
The Age: CyberTwins deputise for the real McCoy. Click here.
ZD Net Australia: NAB moves customer service to chat-bot. Click here
Associated Content from Yahoo!: MyCybertwin: The Bot That Simulates Me. Click here
GlobeNewsWire: Artificial Intelligence to promote feature film ‘Flatland’. Click here
Launch of DIY Platform
Techcrunch.com: Michael Arrington. Please Meet My Evil Online Clone. Click here
Smart Company: The digital dozen: Our next wave of entrepreneurs. Click here
IT Wire: Clone yourself online. Click here.
Ninemsn: Aussie firm develops online chat clone. Click here
India Times: Now get your clone – virtually. Click here
CNet: Software lets you create cybertwin. Click here
Greek news
Antenna News: Greek voice of Phoenix. Click here
Neos Kosmos: Unlimited possibilities for AI. Click here
Eleutheros Tipos: In ten minutes we make our digital twin / ten minutes make a twin speak Greek. Click here
New York – USA
MyCyberTwin North America, Inc.
401 Broadway, Level 22
New York, NY 10013
Tel: +1 631 504 7851
Sydney – Australia
MyCyberTwin Pty Ltd
Level 7, Suite 702
67 Albert Ave
Chatswood, NSW 2067
Tel: +61 2 9770 7200