PE Stack Chats with KnowledgeNet.ai's Mehdi Tehranchi

PE Stack's Tim Friedman sat down with KnowledgeNet.ai founder Mehdi Tehranchi to learn more about the new relationship intelligence product.

By facilitating and automating the collection, connection, and centralization of conversations, relationships, and data, KnowledgeNet.ai provides organizations with the context and intelligence to make informed decisions.

- - -

PE Stack: What was the initial inspiration that spurred you to build this technology?

Mehdi: The basic concept of building a more intelligent community social network inspired us. Having teamed up with VC and PE firms on multiple projects, they were shocked when they learned the team was planning to build a social network that respects privacy, connects users, and uses AI to help make your community smarter. Though surprised, the investors made a seed investment, kept an eye on where we were going with it, and sure enough, it didn’t take them long to realize, “We need this for our teams and PortCos we are managing!” – Boom! We teamed up to create KnowledgeNet.ai.

PE Stack: Can you give us an overview of what KnowledgeNet.ai does? Is it comparable to other products in the market?

Mehdi: Simple – our motto is users will have more intelligent and informed conversations when they know more. KnowledgeNet.ai builds a knowledge map from every conversation that adds value to your team’s collaboration. What’s unique is that KnowledgeNet. ai does this in a non-intrusive way, using plugins and add-ons requiring little to no impact on the user’s behavior. KnowledgeNet.ai learns, connects conversations, and creates an easily accessible conversation knowledge map, allowing users to draw on the latest information and grow from there.

Some PE organizations use monolithic collaboration engines like Slack channels or Microsoft Teams. These applications do not have an AI-enabled engine and do not offer users intelligent mapping of others’ conversations. These collaboration applications create separate streams of messages that lose their value within a short period. When companies add KnowledgeNet.ai to their collaboration stack, our AI engine takes every message and adds it to a corporate-wide neural network. Our algorithms help your team with suggestions of relevant conversations, relationships, and news, instantly allowing users to become more attuned to the business’s direction.

PE Stack: How did KnowledgeNet.ai work to create features that benefit PE and VC firms?

Mehdi: There are three areas in which KnowledgeNet.ai can benefit any firm:

1. Visibility – Ability to know before you decide

2. Growth – Ability to grow without hiring more

3. Management – Ability to retain intellectual capital A PE firm needs to master all three above areas to make intelligent investment decisions.

KnowledgeNet.ai is the only application that enables PE teams to excel in all three areas.

PE Stack: What are some of the weaknesses you saw in existing products that were not designed specifically for the private capital asset classes?

Mehdi: The weakness of existing apps is their combined complexity. The PE industry revolves around three key areas: collaboration, strong relationships, and human intellectual capital.

There are two categories of applications that control these key areas:

1. Collaboration apps such as email, Slack, MS Teams

2. Customer Relationship Management applications such as Salesforce and DealCloud

A common complaint among PE firms that use DealCloud or Salesforce is unnecessary complexity and a lack of connectivity across their organization. Outlook, Slack, and MS Teams lack the ability to either A - surface information that a user does not directly “own” or B - save conversations across multiple “channels.”

This leads to siloed information, reduced team effectiveness, and a lack of transparency, especially for higher-up decision makers. When we designed KnowledgeNet.ai, we learned that social networks’ simple, non-intrusive design is a crucial differentiator. We successfully designed an AI engine that allows users to continue conducting their daily work using email while KnowledgeNet.ai learns. As KnowledgeNet.ai learns more, users can take advantage of more platform features and benefits. This gradual approach leads to a higher adoption rate and a quicker return on investment.

PE Stack: How does KnowledgeNet.ai manage user data and the compliance/security requirements that are so important for private capital firms?

Mehdi: KnowledgeNet.ai manages user data privacy and compliance/security by giving policy control and settings back to the companies. Our innovative solution allows users and administrators to customize their own data collection and consumption parameters. Administrators can tailor the KnowledgeNet.ai framework to meet the specific needs of their organizations. For example, KnowledgeNet.ai email server integration allows users to filter sensitive content out of their inboxes. This capability makes our solution powerful and palatable for all organizations. KnowledgeNet.ai has also successfully completed a SOC2 compliance audit. We realized early on that this is a critical baseline security requirement.

It’s time to change the way we look at communication networks. Collaborative intelligence knowledge-sharing platforms like KnowledgeNet.ai are new, innovative, and understand that there is tremendous value in making it easy and intuitive for a user to create and access intellectual capital across an entire organization.

PE Stack: What do you think users neglect to think about when choosing communications technology?

Mehdi: Users generally neglect to evaluate the benefits of an intelligent collaboration engine for their communication needs. They measure performance in terms of the number of messages and participants. These are the same two network KPIs used since Alexander Graham Bell created the first phone network! Seriously! It’s time to change the way we look at communication networks. Collaborative intelligence knowledge-sharing platforms like KnowledgeNet.ai are new, innovative, and understand that there is tremendous value in making it easy and intuitive for a user to create and access intellectual capital across an entire organization.

PE Stack: How did remote and hybrid work change the need for an internal comms tool like KnowledgeNet.ai?

Mehdi: The impact has been significant. Conversations by the coffee machine where people shared thoughts and ideas, spoke about their latest projects, and mentioned who they were or were talking to is no longer a daily event. Some of that experience is irreplaceable, but a lot of that becomes discoverable by AI. We have to learn from our experiences and that starts by sharing them across the team. When we shatter inbox silos and feed communication through an AI engine, the entire team benefits from the conversation, just like good old coffee break conversations from before.

To learn more about KnowledgeNet.ai, click here.