The story of Auba

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This week we share with you the story of Desteia (formerly Auba) , one of our portfolio companies. Auba uses artificial intelligence to predict possible errors in supply chains and, in doing so, teaches us to find patterns in the disorder; music in chaos.

The Spanish version of this essay can be found here.

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Here you will find opinion pieces, essays about NIDO and profiles of entrepreneurs. Our mission is to share our vision for the world of VC and the role we want to play in it.

-Jose Luis

Making AI music from the noise of exports

The story of Auba is based on a fundamental tension. One that seems like a lie, but is ultimately true. There is a certain music in noise; a surprising order that lives within chaos. It is not easy to find it and, perhaps, it is impossible for us as a species to do it on a daily basis. But, even if it costs us to find it, that music is there. Hidden, in everyday life, order waits to be found. Walking through wealthy streets, there will always be the beginning of a good love story. The words of a politician hold signs of changes to come. And, as we will soon see, among a company's messages, there are signals of improvement along with possible cautionary alarms. We cannot, with the naked eye, find those lovers among the crowd, decipher, with certainty, the odd language of the politician or detect, in a company, every possible error. Although sometimes—and only sometimes—we are lucky enough to distinguish the brief notes of a song. In specific cases, you can even create scores to understand the melodies of chaos; make tools—like Auba—that give us the power to understand what lies hidden in plain sight.

?????????This story—that of Auba—is precisely that of that last sentence. A business made symphony, only that its notes, instead of harmonious, are of confusion and its chords, more than sensible, are those of chaos.

?????????Let's leave the metaphor for a moment and go, specifically, to the story. The first noise—the first movement—came from conversations a couple of years ago. In closed circles, people began to hear, like a murmur, an acronym that could change the world. Diego Solorzano heard it, briefly, in a presentation on the subject in Mexico City. He was, then, CEO of Carrot, a startup that sought to change the way Mexicans got around in cities by using rented cars that did not need keys to operate. Curious about the topic, he went to the talk and learned, from it, those two words that are now on the lips of the entire plant: Artificial Intelligence (AI).

?????????As days passed, that murmur would only grow. In Mexico everyone talked about the subject without understanding, specifically, what it was about. Companies like IBM were already bringing their own model to the market, called Watson, and even presented it to Diego in Carrot for its possible use. But, outside of those rare moments, it continued to be another topic of conversation in the nascent Mexican entrepreneurial ecosystem. What endured, above all, was confusion paired with immense interest.

?????????The noise of artificial intelligence would continue to accumulate, tirelessly, until, in 2017, Diego took a subtle turn to understand the message hidden within voices everywhere. That year, Carrot was formally sold and, trying to make sense of the endless talks of artificial intelligence, he headed to Stanford to study for a master's degree related to the topic. There, for the first time, he would understand that this growing interest in artificial intelligence could really change the world.

?????????What was then chaos was beginning to be sensibly formulated. After Stanford, Diego joined Blend, a promising startup in the financial sector, where he led the creation of artificial intelligence products. They were years of learning, but also of preparation for the next step; to understand, to a greater degree, the noise around you.

The second movement of this chaos, as so often in music, is that of retreat; a memory that leads to action. After years at Blend, Diego knew that he wanted to create something of his own and, with this, stop hearing about artificial intelligence and be an active part in its creation. What was missing was the inspiration that lay hidden in the noise of his personal life.

Growing up in northern Mexico, among exporters and producers, Diego's childhood was spent on sugar trucks and discussions of problems along the border. One week, due to a paperwork error, the delivery of an order was delayed; the next, a protest in some distant port created the same problem. Although now, with more sophisticated tools, the general transportation process had been improved, the same production risks remained.

Speaking with businessmen and exporters, he realized that there was an infinite world of possible errors in the transportation process. All of this is made worse by the sea of databases existing in each company and the fact, above all else, that the essential currency for an exporter is that of communication and countless platforms to do so. Each one must handle dozens of emails or messages with all its suppliers, port operators and its own workers. If one even expresses some casual detail that could delay the order, it could easily get lost in the flood of paragraphs to be read in any worker's inbox. Again, the problem is finding, amid mountains of chaos, a path to reason.

?????????Thus, finally, comes the third movement of the song; that of creation. Uniting those scarce memories of exporters in the north with their recent years in the world of artificial intelligence, the complete tune of this melody began to form. Together with Austin Poore , whom Diego met at Blend, he would found Auba to solve those problems that were so distant in his memory, but still present in the reality of exporters. Shortly after, Fran?oise Lavertu Stevens would join the team, after being introduced to an early version of the company as an angel investor and, in true fascination, jumping on board.

?????????Put plainly, Auba's idea is to make visible, to each exporting company, all possible opportunities for improvement. It goes back to the problems Diego observed in those initial interviews. From among mountains of messages and thousands of news items, it is impossible for a single person to predict with certainty every place where there could be an error. But, for an artificial intelligence, trained specifically for the problems of said company, it becomes the score for an ideal symphony.

?????????The process is simple. The company gives Auba access to all its communication channels and, in combination with information in the public domain—news, weather data, security reports—they can predict, with great accuracy, the places where they may face setbacks and outline them so they can be avoided. It seems like an act of magic, but now, it is reality. Each company can understand possible defects in its supply chain and, thereby, save immense amounts of money thanks to artificial intelligence. And not only that, it has an interface where you can ask any details of the process as well.

In the end, this is just the story of how to find the initial notes of Auba in the life of its founder, the trends of an ecosystem, and the mistakes of the export sector. But, in doing so, it leaves us with a machine capable of giving reason to what was previously lacking. If it must be put, in a concrete way, this is the beginning of a magnificent order for general chaos. Auba manages, with its platform, to find for each company the music that lies within uncontrollable noise. All that remains for us is to rest and listen to their songs.

From the Nido,

José Luis S.