Neurons Lab

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of a healthcare platform. We have a mobile app that scans the pictures of a user’s posture and gives our office a diagnosis of the user’s posture problems and free exercises to solve the asymmetry that the AI has detected. This solution wasn’t easy to solve because many variables had to be considered, including how the photos are taken, how the angles are measured, and so on.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Neurons Lab?

We needed someone to handle UI design.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Neurons Lab has created a web interface for us to test the AI. It allows us to look at the results to get our machine learning working to correct the exercises and diagnoses so the AI can learn from it. They’ve exclusively made the AI parts of the project. They’ve used Python and Airtable. 

What is the team composition?

We’ve worked with about 10–15 people, including developers and data scientists. 

How did you come to work with Neurons Lab?

We found them through a referral. 

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve spent between $150,000–$200,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working with them in July 2021 and are still collaborating together.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

We’re working on the proof of concept right now, but we’re also partnering with a government clinic in Portugal that wants to create a peer-reviewed study on AI with their own resources. They trust our concept and Neurons Lab’s AI work — they love how it works and want to use it for their patients, which is a significant milestone for us. 

Additionally, there are some free clinics in Germany where this AI is being used, and it works very well. So far, we’ve generated 2,000 downloads with a CPI of $3.5.

How did Neurons Lab perform from a project management standpoint?

Every company has the same issues: there’s a long discovery phase, and you must pay for it. This is what I dislike about AI development, not about Neurons Lab. We had to take time to find precisely what solution we wanted to build; the timeframes we had initially weren’t realistic. We’d estimated three months to build the AI solution, and they delivered. Afterward, we had to develop it further. In three months, we’d just done the MVP, which was just a demo.

After a whole year of working with them, we had just a two-month delay. Overall, they’ve been quite good. When it comes to time management, they’re great. However, the proper estimation of the project can only be done after the discovery phase.

Neurons Lab uses Notion to manage tasks; we always know what they’re doing. On the other hand, we use Jira and Slack for management and communication.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Many data scientists are out there, but many don’t know what they’re doing. Neurons Lab does really well in this regard. They’re technical players who think 2–3 steps ahead, and I love that about their work.

Also, they’re great at solving complex issues. For example, they built a 3D spine model in AR, which was really cool. It was a big project that took four months, and the main challenge was accurately detecting the spine. A great data scientist helped with this, joining 2–3 algorithms to work together, which was impressive.

Are there any areas they could improve?

They could improve by offering more benefits to their long-term customers regarding payment schedules and overall flexibility. They’re a really nice team, but we don’t get any benefits like this. I’d like them to value their long-term customers more.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Start the work immediately and don’t wait to get estimations. It’s better to start with a small scope of work and then enlarge it. They don’t work like this, but it’d be good to ask for it. Get the discovery process done; after that, you’ll have a better overview of the cost, timeframe, and so on. Nonetheless, I would tell anyone working with an AI company to add 20% more to their timeline.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO of SemanticForce. We are a holistic media intelligence company.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Neurons Labs?

We were looking for automation of the aspect-level sentiment analysis, specifically the complexity to scale. There are numerous clients within a similar vertical, like consumer electronics, posing a challenge for human analysis to scale due to millions of reviews for some data sets, thus requiring automated analysis.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

They created a machine learning engine, taking the annotated data sets done by human analysts and using an algorithm to do it automatically on a large scale. Their solution labels reviews on multiple different aspects and can analyze data in several different languages. 

The development language used was Python. There is an internal cloud they leveraged, and the algorithm used BERT, a deep learning technology from Google for advanced text analysis tasks.

What is the team composition?

There are two people working with us.

How did you come to work with Neurons Labs?

We found them on Facebook and reached out to them.

How much have you invested with them?

We’ve invested more than $25,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We began working together in January 2019, and the relationship is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

The product works and we’ve been able to demo it. We’re still scaling it for additional languages. One of the outcomes of working with them was getting an in-depth analysis of this specific scientific area, which is still an emerging space to some extent. We are very satisfied with the outcome.

How did Neurons Labs perform from a project management standpoint?

They’re good at delivering on time. We use Google Sheets for prioritization, estimation, and other things. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

It is an engagement that goes both ways; we collaborate to find the best solutions. Their willingness to learn in a new subject area is impressive. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

They need to grow their market presence by increasing the size of their team and adding areas of expertise. Also, it would minimize time to market if they have the microservice related development being done in parallel with the algorithm development.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Ask them to give all the possible approaches and solutions rather than just defining the task to them. Take their recommendations. They can be good for a startup, to help recruit and move the project further along. They also work well for long-term engagements, or, if you prefer to continue internally, they can help bring in the right resources.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CEO and head of production of iLogos Game Studios, a mobile game development service provider. 

We offer full development, art production, live operations, and porting for our partners and customers. However, our main focus is free mobile games.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Neurons Lab?

Our internal R&D project required the development of an AI-based tool that could track a game player’s behavior and predict their actions.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We described our idea and the goals we wanted to achieve, and Neurons Lab collaborated with us to build the solution from the ground up. We provided our own business perspective of the concept, and they were able to create the tool using mathematical models and other data capturing strategies. 

What is the team composition?

We worked directly with their CEO, who was our main point of contact, and one senior data scientist. 

How did you come to work with Neurons Lab?

They were recommended by our partners.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent $20,000 on this engagement.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project took place between February – April 2019.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

Though we’re currently postponing the development of the tool itself, the product we’ve received so far works perfectly. We’ve been able to compare real data with our predictions in internal testing, and we’ve received great results. 

How did Neurons Lab perform from a project management standpoint?

Neurons Lab’s project management is very effective. We had daily calls to discuss progress and planning, kept in touch with Skype and email, and tracked reports in tasks in Jira. We worked together almost in real-time, and never had any delays as a result of communication.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Even though Neurons Lab’s expertise is in technology, they understand the project from a business perspective very well. They have an excellent ability to connect tech with our final goals as a company.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, everything was perfect.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Preparation is really important, so spend the proper amount of time in pre-production. Think about your goals and the tools you’ll use.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm one of the investors and stakeholders at the quantitative trading boutique.  We trade on the cryptocurrency market using automated trading systems.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Neurons Lab?

We hired Neurons Lab to develop the automated trading system with trading algorithms, risk management and monitoring system. This ATS had to generate for us at least 25% per year.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

We asked Neurons Lab to develop several trading algorithms for us for better diversification and the ability to generate returns on both bullish and bearish phases of cryptocurrency markets. The system needed to be very stable because we were planning to attract big investments for our fund. Neurons Lab developed for us a few algorithms: news-based, sentiment analysis (using NLP), based on alternative data, trend following based on machine learning, and arbitrage & statistical arbitrage. For secure and effective money management they developed risk management, monitoring and notification system, and order execution system for more than 10 top exchanges.

What is the team composition?

I think there were seven or eight people: the CEO, CTO, two quantitative researchers, two quantitative developers, and one or two business analysts.

How did you come to work with Neurons Lab?

We spoke to different companies and teams that could help us with development. Neurons Lab has some performance on the US stock market, and it was necessary for us to find someone experienced in the cryptocurrency market.

How much have you invested in them?

We spent around $300,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from December 2017 till December 2018.  Time-to-time we ask guys from Neurons Lab to help us with risk management and model evaluation.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

It is all about the investment metrics. The average monthly performance is 1.96 %. The maximum drawdown was 6.2 %. The Sharpe ratio is 2.1.

How did Neurons Lab perform from a project management standpoint?

In general, everything was good. We had weekly meetings and planning sessions, as well as reviews with one meeting a week. They did a good job of understanding our requirements and we're satisfied.

What did you find most impressive about them?

They met the goals we needed.

Are there any areas they could improve?

Everything was good.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

They're good and they know what they're doing. Anyone working with them will have a good experience.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Owner at aten tech.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Neurons Lab, and what were your goals?

Mobile app development and consulting

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

Referral from MLDEVS

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

Aiming to deliver a mobile app that uses AI and an avatar to simulate / mimic users speech, behavior and mannerism based on memory extraction with the end goal of posthumous interaction.

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

5

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

We have an MVP and have developed / built out three sprints that have generated , sample avatars sets, initial ui design templates and memory extraction data sets.

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

It’s a mix of agile and scrum. With slack for communication and notion for sprint planning , tracking and data storage . Very timely, professional and experienced .

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Their commitment to developing not just an mvp but fully understanding and contributing to my vision for the application. Their flexibility and willingness to deliver the highest quality in a customer-centric fashion impress me the most

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

At the moment , no. I’m extremely satisfied with our work together so far and hope to work together on more projects.