DeepBench’s Expertise Matching Platform — A Modern Solution for a Fundamental Human Need
Did you know that the average knowledge worker spends nearly 20% of her day looking for information? Or that Fortune 500 companies lose roughly $31.5 billion annually by failing to share knowledge effectively?
Knowledge is critical. An enormous amount of value is wasted because expertise is trapped or hard-to-find.
Our story — It all began at MIT
DeepBench began in early 2017 at MIT with a mission to unlock the world’s knowledge. We began as an expert network, and we developed software that made expertise cheaper and more accessible. (Featured in Forbes)
Interestingly, as we grew, we started receiving requests from large enterprises who wanted to license our expertise matching & management software.
We did some research, and we realized that there was a small handful of forward-thinking organizations who had built their own in-house systems to share expert knowledge with customers. But there was no 3rd party vendor building expertise matching systems as effectively as we could.
We saw the opportunity, and we decided to make a bold bet.
DeepBench is betting that over the next decade, expert knowledge sharing will be increasingly critical to how organizations engage with both customers and employees.
A radically new approach to finding the right expert
Essentially, we are flipping the traditional expert network model on its head.
DeepBench’s software enables organizations to offer expert knowledge to customers on-demand in order to build better relationships & generate more revenue. It identifies who knows what and connects those who have questions with those who have answers. Our software can be used to connect employees to each other or externally to help customers.
Our early customers include consulting firms, investment banks, universities and Fortune 100 tech companies.
What ties all this together is that these organizations are 1) in industries where knowledge is critical, and 2) sell to businesses.
For example, DeepBench is working with an investment bank’s research division, which sells insights to hedge funds and corporates. Also, we are working with a major university’s corporate engagement department, which matches enterprises needing knowledge with faculty members and other university resources.
A fundamental human need with profound implications
To an extent, DeepBench is defining a new product category — the expertise matching platform.
But on the other hand, our technology simply reimagines and improves a process that is very human and natural to us all.
I’m referring to a need that existed before even written language was invented — the difficulty of finding and asking someone more knowledgeable to help us.
We humans are evolutionarily hard-wired to maintain relationships with a maximum of ~150 people. As a result, any company with hundreds or more employees needs tools to match & manage expertise and help knowledge workers like you get the answers you need when you need them.
It’s a hard problem to solve alone, and DeepBench is addressing a fundamental need that pervades any medium-to-large organization. And if you are intrigued by our story, I’d like to conclude with our own request for help:
- If you work for an organization that might be interested in trialing our expertise matching & management solution, please let me know.
- We are hiring engineering, product and sales talent in Boston — if you or anyone you know is interested in joining our mission to unlock the world’s knowledge, please let me know as well! (Yishi Zuo, CEO — DeepBench, yishi [at] deepbench.io)
