Today we’d like to introduce you to John and Andrew Dahlberg.
Hi John and Andrew, so excited to have you on the platform. So before we get into questions about your work life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today.
I came from a blue-collar neighborhood in a blue-collar town. I know the people that we’re helping with Talknician because growing up they were my friends and neighbors. We have a very clearly defined goal: to preserve and expand organizational knowledge within the manufacturing/industrial workforce and allow employees to use that knowledge at the drop of a hat. Our ability to enhance knowledge transfer capabilities both within and across organizations greatly improves the speed and efficacy of onboarding, upskilling, and servicing activities.
Andrew and I grew up in St. Cloud and launched our first start-up during our freshman year of college at St. Cloud State University. The Summer after our sophomore year we took that company through Great North Ventures’ (then Great North Labs) inaugural start-up accelerator in St. Cloud. It was there that we learned about how to run a tech start-up: lean startup methodology, how to lead an agile development team, what SCRUM was, how to implement user feedback, etc. It was also the first time we got plugged into the MN startup ecosystem and we attended our first BETA.MN showcase event that falls.
The company that we founded back in college eventually shut down and coming out of school we knew that we’d have to find jobs somewhere. It just so happens that somewhere was in the manufacturing tech space for Andrew. He was in a SaaS sales role and found himself talking to a lot of companies that had issues dealing with knowledge transfer within their organizations. It stuck with him, and it seemed like an omnipresent problem that nobody seemed to be addressing it. We sat on that information for a while and even looked into a couple of other startup ideas until I had an idea about how to solve the problems my brother uncovered.
What we came up with was Talknician. To refine how the product would function and what it would look like, we had to conduct dozens of interviews with prospective customers and adjust our prototypes based off of feedback. We even had a full pivot, originally, we were focusing on knowledge transfer focused on machine servicing but we eventually realized that we wouldn’t have enough differentiation or value add to justify a buying decision in most cases. We went back to the customer interviews and reassessed the core underpinnings of the issues we wanted to address.
A lot of how we progressed to this point and dealt with adversity came from the excellent programming we received going through ILT Academy and BETA.MN cohorts; they’ve helped us immensely. Talknician is in a position now where we are raising our first round of outside capital, we’re excited about what the future looks like. We believe the problems Talknician is solving are morphine problems, not aspirin problems, giving the companies the ability to put local talent to use and upskill people rapidly will pay massive dividends for said companies and the communities that they call home.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Most startups don’t have a very smooth journey, we are no exception. There have been a lot of things that presented challenges, The biggest one was the pivot away from remote servicing.
It was more difficult than other adjustments we’ve made because we didn’t completely invalidate our initial assumptions. The reception just wasn’t as enthusiastic as we wanted it to be.
We were taking a risk when we decided to pivot but we conducted a lot more customer interviews going into that decision, so we felt it was the right move.
As you know, we’re big fans of Talknician. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
Talknician is creating pathways for more efficient knowledge transfer within the industrial workforce via augmented reality. Our ability to enhance knowledge transfer capabilities both within and across organizations greatly improves the speed and efficacy of onboarding, upskilling, and servicing activities. We empower employees at every level of the organization to operate with collective expertise and confidence in a world of ever-increasing complexity.
A typical use case would look like this: the most experienced operators put on a headset (HoloLens 2) and go about their job duties like normal, POV recording their work. Managers can go through the recordings and create step-by-step write-ups based on the operator recordings. This write-up is paired with the recording and makes up a training module for that procedure. Modules can even incorporate things like CAD files that can be used to highlight components that an employee interacts with at specific steps in the procedure.
New employees can then pop on a headset while doing the same procedure and can be walked through the process, referring to step-by-step written instructions, POV recordings clips of specific tasks, and other supplemental materials. This reduces time to proficiency drastically, allowing companies to upskill their workforce rapidly and lets businesses retain and utilize their organizational knowledge.
How do you define success?
We define success in terms of our customer outcomes. Success looks like Talknician played a defining role in the resurgence of American manufacturing and industrial operations throughout the fourth industrial revolution.
Pricing:
- $150 per operator per month
- $250 per admin per month
Contact Info:
- Website: Talknician.com
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/talknician
Image Credits
BETA.MN, ILT Academy
