Philippe Beaudoin is on a mission to solve a bold problem: how we consume content on the internet.
It is not the first time Beaudoin, a significant player in the world of advanced technology, leverages AI at scale to make a major dent in the digital world. Beaudoin, a PhD in Computer Science, served as Co-founder of ElementAI, one of Canada’s preeminent and most notable AI companies which achieved a valuation estimated between $600M and $700M USD at its peak.
The Broken Algorithms
The idea for Waverly, however, had long been on Beaudoin’s radar. During a tenure at Google in 2010 working on recommendation engines, he noticed that all algorithmic recommendations were designed to work the same way.
The result of that design was a concerning one. Users were left in the midst of an information overload: a superabundance of digital content fighting for our attention which created an ocean of noise, distractions, and a crisis of misinformation – a topic which has infamously become the subject of a 2020 Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma. Tristan Harris, the primary subject of the film, also worked at Google in 2011, overlapping with Beaudoin.
“He had a big impact on me,” said Beaudoin.
Philippe Beaudoin – Co-Founder, Waverly
Beaudoin saw how users were faced with two options: spend hours pushing against the current of the major recommendation engines in order to (hopefully) find what they were looking for or directly digest what was being recommended to them. The former was exceptionally difficult to do, while the latter – as history has shown – risked major socio-political consequences when performed at scale.
“There were no alternative ways to build a recommendation engine; the entire internet was recommending and influencing content consumption for billions of individuals based on the same principles: keeping it ‘frictionless’ based on ‘sensing signals,” said Beaudoin. “I knew there was a problem, but I had no idea how to fix it.”
The Transparent Algorithm
At ElementAI, Beaudoin worked on new Natural Language Processing (NLP) systems working with semantic-level AI. As the power, scope and potentiality of AI had progressed, solutions to the broken algorithm problem were becoming clearer.
Enter Waverly.
Waverly leverages innovative Natural Language Understanding (NLU) technology that allows users to remain in control of the content that is valuable and important to them instead of simply what is trending, popular, or being impelled by platform recommendation engines.
The result: a transparent algorithm that delivers a reading experience that cuts through the noise, regains control from major platform algorithms, and allows users to ride the wave of purposeful content rather than drown in an ocean of (mis)information.
Content is curated through Waverly’s “waves,” thematically-driven micro-feeds which track specific industry trends, market insights, or ideas that a user is interested in. Vastly different in terms of functionality, scope, and level of transparency, Waverly’s algorithm studies intention rather than tracking a user’s every click.
Moreover, one user’s “waves” do not impact those of another user, generating a closed-loop of curation that is personalized and focused – and cannot, by design, act as a diffuser of misinformation.
Scale & Growth
After participating in a 2020 cohort of Real Ventures’ FounderFuel accelerator program, Waverly secured a pre-seed round of financing totaling $1.25M CAD. The funds have been mobilized to scale their small but agile team, allowing them to exit “stealth mode” and focus their efforts on a natural first market: B2B professionals.
“What we noticed with the exclusive beta is that the level of intentionality the algorithm requires works best with professionals,” Beaudoin noted.
With Pro and Business tiers to their app, Waverly becomes a notable tool in the arsenal of high-level professionals, knowledge workers, and performance-driven readers who want to read with intention.
Beaudoin’s bet on B2B as a starting point for the app – before releasing it for the mass consumption market – seems to be a smart one: recent research suggests that anywhere from 37% to 57% of knowledge workers have difficulty finding the right information they need.
Other studies show that high-level professionals and knowledge workers use an average of 88 different apps in order to source the right information. The modern professional is rapidly becoming their own data scientist, curating and capitalizing on the information economy – something Waverly can now do for them on its own.
No distraction. No noise.
The early data shows promise for Waverly’s product-market fit: from 400 users in a closed Beta version of the app to 3X that number in 24 hours post-launch, Waverly is poised to revolutionize the content and attention economy.
From Beaudoin’s perspective, the decision to bring on Formentera Capital as investment partners in Waverly’s pre-seed round was an easy one.
“Cherif {Habib} and I have been long-standing friends and colleagues,” said Beaudoin. “As CEOs, we developed a safe space with each other, having numerous conversations in the earliest days of building our companies. It is rare to find people who are truly on the same wavelength, but we were – and still remain so today.”
Despite an illustrious academic and entrepreneurial career spent in Canada’s AI limelight, Beaudoin is remarkably realistic about the realities of building from the ground-up.
“{Formentera Capital} understands what it really takes to build an early-stage company in a way that other investors don’t,” said Beaudoin. “From my view, it’s a slam dunk.”
With a clear “North Star” to change the way we consume content on the internet at large, Waverly’s journey into the ocean of internet content and the problem of curation vs. recommendation is unquestionably a noble, important and fun wave to ride.
Formentera Capital is an early-stage venture capital firm investing in tech-enabled companies that are good for the world.
