Interview with Maurice Bachelor, Founder and CEO of BOT-IT
We recently conducted a Founder spotlight interview with Maurice Bachelor, the Founder and CEO of BOT-IT. During the interview, Maurice discussed the challenges faced by his company and highlighted the opportunities in automation platforms for both consumers and businesses. He emphasized how BOT-IT allows users to create custom online bots easily without any prior coding expertise.
Welcome, Maurice Bachelor! To begin, could you provide an overview of Bot-It and its mission in empowering both consumers and businesses to effortlessly create custom online bots, even without any prior coding expertise?
We live in a world today where businesses and consumers are finding it impossible to manually book appointments, generate leads, buy concert tickets or get the best price for products/goods because they are competing with online robots also known as a “bot”. Bot-It is an automation platform that allows anyone to build their own bot with no technical skills required. At its most basic, we developed a platform that allows our customers to easily set up what they would like to automate online and our software handles the rest.
What inspired the founding of Bot-It, and what specific challenges or opportunities in the automation platform space were you looking to address, particularly for individuals or businesses struggling with online tasks?
It all started when I had a friend who on an everyday basis needed to complete this easy yet annoying online task. I jokingly mentioned (knowing that they were not tech savvy) to build a bot. I started to explain what a bot was and how it could help them with their task. I started looking around online for a solution and noticed that everything was very pricey, requiring you to have a vast knowledge of software coding or you had to download some sort of tool in order to set up the automation. This was a big eye opener for me as I saw a big opportunity for consumers to start automating. So I started to build out the proof of concept for Bot-It. I wanted to build an affordable web and mobile application where you could simply tell the system what website you want to automate and the system would handle the rest. That is how Bot-It was born.
How does Bot-It work as a direct-to-consumer technology platform, and what unique features or capabilities does it offer to users who want to automate online tasks?
We wanted to make our direct to consumer platform as easy as possible to set up a bot. Consumers simply would go on our website or download our mobile app. Select the website they are trying to automate (Golf Tee Time, Tennis, Camping Site, Dinner Reservation, and more). Give their new bot personal information and let the bot know when it should run and That’s it! We offer unique features such as, setting up custom automation on any website, along with competitive timing techniques that can help anyone beat other bots on the market. Some of our capabilities include, bypassing captcha, booking competitive appointments, and picking up canceled reservations.
As the Founder and Lead Software Engineer of Bot-It, how has your vision shaped the platform’s development, and how do you envision it making an impact on the daily lives of millions of users?
The demand for Bot-It continues to grow daily because users know that we are offering them a service that is geared towards their automation needs.
What sets Bot-It apart in the automation platform landscape, and what strategies or features differentiate it from other platforms offering similar solutions?
Bot-It is relatable to this generation of web consumers as we focus on customer support, ease of use and affordability as our main objective. Most of our competitors require a heavy upfront fee for any type of small or large automation which ranges from $1,500 – $30,000 on average with a complicated or outdated user interface. The alternative to paying a high upfront fee is to hire a development team. This can be very expensive and also require extensive changes over time without software warranty.
Can you share insights into recent developments or initiatives at Bot-It that contribute to the platform’s growth? Are there specific industries or use cases you are particularly focused on serving?
Recent powerful developments with Bot-It include our API AirBot and our AI Smart Label features. An AirBot allows any business or consumer the capability to implement custom bots into their own application. You will be able to pass pre-set custom information to your AirBot to change while it runs. You can also tell the bot to present itself to a customer to finish at a particular step. Our AI Smart Label feature allows the bot to be able to read a specific price or other value on a website and make a decision on if it should move forward. This powerful feature can be used to calculate logistic time for large businesses or make purchase decisions over time. The more the bot runs the smarter it will become as it’s teaching itself.
Congratulations on the recent funding round! How do you plan to utilize this recent funding to further the goals and drive the company’s growth?
We plan on utilizing the funding in many different ways. We will expand on our AI capabilities to help our bots continue to build, repair and support themselves. We want to ensure that every customer that signs up with our platform has a custom experience with our AI virtual assistant. Also we will be expanding our sales team. We have helped consumers all over the world with our service and we want to do the same for businesses.
What are your aspirations and goals for Bot-It in 2024, and how do you plan to further empower users to automate online tasks seamlessly?
We are bringing hope to consumers and businesses here at Bot-It. We help their business automate complex workflows at an affordable price. Help consumers to win back their missed online reservations and purchases. We have very big plans for Bot-It 2024 to help continue building hope by investing in newer AI technology to help customers get bots setup and supported much faster and introducing new features that will help businesses stay competitive in the market. We also look to partner with online retailers to help their business fight off bad business bots that buy up all the merchandise and give their customers a much better experience using their service.
As the Company grows, could you mention the importance of the cap table management system in dealing with relationships among founders, investors, shareholders, and others?
As we continue to grow here at Bot-It we want to ensure that we are raising capital at a valuation that we as founders are comfortable with. Raising capital is important for all businesses but you want to make sure as a founder that you continue to own the majority of your business so that you stay motivated, especially in the early stages. Ensuring a good valuation and having a good relationship with your investors, shareholders, advisors and other founders is very important as it will take everyone on the team to help the company be successful. Managing who is on your Cap Table can be the difference between a successful business and a failed business.
Do you have advice for founders in the automation and technology space, particularly in developing user-friendly solutions like Bot-It? Also, any advice for founders looking for outside funding?
My advice for founders in the automation space is listen to your customers and build fast. You want to build a product that is centered around your customer needs as automation/A.I. changes day by day. Doing so will save you a lot of time guessing what you believe your product should be or how it should function. If you are a founder looking for outside funding, I would first ask the question, did you accomplish everything possible to build the company where It is today (time, money, talent, resources). Outside funding is great for scaling but remember it comes with a cost. The more you can build internally yourself or with your team before raising capital will give you a much better term sheet with a future investor.
