Ana Laguna began to interpret her son’s cries during her maternity leave. Out of pure hobby, she tried to classify them from a very basic catalog: hunger, sleep, gas, stress and attachment. “There are algorithms that make it possible to interpret the song of birds and even communicate with chimpanzees. I thought there should also be a way to do it with babies, ”she says from her house in Ciudad Real. As she compared her results to those of her friends and family, she began to realize that there really were common patterns. she started like that zoundreamthe start up which analyzes why newborns cry and applies artificial intelligence and sound recognition to decipher messages.
It all started when he presented his findings in an informal meeting where entrepreneurs talk about their personal projects. “The presentation had an incredible media impact. It was then that I decided that this could not remain a simple hobby”. A few months later, she left her position as a data scientist at BBVA to dedicate herself exclusively to the project.
Zoundream was officially founded in 2019, coinciding with her second pregnancy. To do this, he had the support of his current partner and CEO of the company, Roberto Iannone, and the incorporation of Matteo Ingravalle and Paolo Ingratio in the technical part. The team was closed by Stavros Ntalampiras, a professor of audio processing in Milan who is currently a consultant to the company.
Laguna’s vocation for artificial intelligence is actually quite recent. In fact, she is a translator. “I studied translation and interpretation because I loved learning languages. After taking a turn in my career shortly after finishing my studies, it just so happened that I finally ended up dedicating myself to translating. But not in the way I expected.”
Its potential customers are technology companies and the sector of home devices, such as Alexa or Google Home. “We developed technology to make that interpretation effective. From here, the software It can be applied to a large number of devices and tools”. For now, they are only capable of transcribing the hunger, sleep, gas, stress and attachment needs of babies between zero and six months of life. When they exceed half a year, says Laguna, the needs multiply and become much more difficult to catalog. They also work with pediatricians to try to diagnose possible pathologies. They have raised 1.75 million in various rounds, and although in 2022 they have billed practically nothing —barely 16,000 euros in a pilot test with Catalana Occidente—, they hope to start to have stable income this year: “In 2024 Zoundream should already be a profitable company”.
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