Brendan Roberts Founder and CEO of Aider Discusses Specialty Assistants for Small Business - Voicebot Podcast Ep 150

Brendan Roberts founded Aider in 2017 after more than 15 years
helping small businesses with their communications and IT needs.
Roberts hacked together a specialty voice assistant using
off-the-shelf technologies in 2017 to prove that it could help
address common problems faced by small businesses. He then
launched Aider as a specialty assistant for small business
managers more than a year ago in New Zealand and Australia and
then in July expanded to North America.


Aider helps small businesses by integrating with a variety of
third-party solutions they already use today ranging from
accounting to inventory and marketing. The assistant makes it
easier to access the information in those systems today and soon
will also enable the execution of voice-directed actions. The
assistant can be accessed via the Aider mobile app or through
popular general-purpose assistants such as Alexa and Google
Assistant. In December, the company closed a seed round of
funding which included Coca-Cola's investment arm. 


Previously, Brendan was a co-founder of 9 Spokes an IT services
company in New Zealand. Before that he spent many years in
telecom at Vodaphone in New Zealand and Carphone Warehouse in
London. We talk getting started, the role for specialty
assistants, build or buy decisions for technology, managing
through COVID when you see your customer's revenues fall off a
cliff before they do, and more.