"Hello Alice" … Meet the World's First AI-based Virtual Advisor for Women Entrepreneurs

LAS VEGAS, May 9, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- DELL EMC WORLD 2017 --

News Summary:

• Data-driven platform powered by Circular Board, connects female founders in real time with mentors, resources and events that help scale their businesses
• Machine learning will predict users' needs and curate hyper targeted content as Alice populates and users engage
• Insights from Circular Board's and Dell's combined network of women entrepreneurs, matched with Pivotal's cloud technology and software development expertise, brings this global platform to life

Full Story:
Today at Dell EMC World, Circular Board unveils Alice, the first-ever artificial intelligence platform for women entrepreneurs. Developed in partnership with Dell and Pivotal, Alice is on a mission to make it possible for significantly more female founders to succeed at unprecedented levels. Women-owned businesses currently employ 7.8 million workers in the U.S. and generate $1.3 trillion in revenue overall, yet only 2% of women entrepreneurs in the U.S. have reached more than $1 million in revenues. Alice and her partners will work to flip this stat to 98%.

"Alice is a female founder's best mentor, guide and consultant. The current startup ecosystem continues to cycle resources among a very small percentage of well-connected entrepreneurs, making it difficult for less traditional founders to navigate," said Carolyn Rodz, founder and CEO of Circular Board. "Alice instantly filters millions of resources down to the personalized, verified content that enables founders to scale to the highest heights, no matter where they are located or who they know."

Meet Alice:
Driven by data analytics, Alice is a virtual advisor that connects women entrepreneurs in real time with the resources needed to scale based on startup stage, location, industry, revenue and individual needs. As Alice populates, machine learning will allow her to predict founders' needs to guide them to referrals, events, mentors and access points to capital and ecosystems.

Alice offers its users the following:

• A conversational user interface to express different areas where women entrepreneurs need help (e.g., financing, legal, marketing, technology)
• Static and machine learning based on user input
• Personalized dashboard with real-time modules based on user activity
• User profiles with data collection capabilities for personal and company demographics 
• An extensive library of resources, network of global experts and leaders and events calendar
• Robust search pages with stored results that sort and filter by location, industry, annual revenue, employee count, years in business and content publication source
• Bulk and single upload of resource(s) and mentor(s) by trusted partners and the Circular Board team of experts for easy content aggregation and suggestive analytics

The relationship with Dell Technologies:
In 2016, Circular Board approached Dell with an idea to disrupt the startup world by building an entirely new ecosystem for women founders. Built on its existing commitment to support growing businesses, Dell grabbed a leadership seat at the table to lend its expertise, capital and innovative spirit to create Alice.

"Entrepreneurship is part of Dell's DNA. We're always looking for ways to bring entrepreneurs the best technology solutions to help empower them in the new world of digital transformation," said Karen Quintos, EVP and Chief Customer Officer, Dell. "Through the power of the Dell Technologies network and the expertise of the Circular Board, we're driving innovation to help women entrepreneurs take their businesses to the next level."

Pivotal, the company accelerating digital transformation for startups and enterprises, developed and deployed Alice's software in near record-setting time – just over three months from concept to launch. The Circular Board team successfully adopted Pivotal's next-generation software development methodology, as well as used Pivotal's cloud technology, to ensure machine learning capabilities allow Alice to evolve and continue to provide targeted resources and mentorship for female entrepreneurs.

"Circular Board is leading the way in helping female entrepreneurs turn ideas into fast-growing businesses," says Rob Mee, CEO, Pivotal. "Working with us, the Circular Board team have successfully adopted Pivotal's next-generation methods and technologies to ensure their ecosystem and platform thrives. We're thrilled to be able to help Circular Board on this important mission."

Availability:
Alice is now available globally.

Additional Resources:

• To meet Alice, please visit www.helloalice.com
• Photos, video and screenshots available via Google Drive
• Connect with Circular Board on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Vimeo and with Alice on Twitter. Follow #HelloAlice for news on Alice's release.
• Connect with Dell Entrepreneurs on Twitter and LinkedIn
• For more information Dell EMC World and #DellEMCWorld

Circular Board
In less than two years, Circular Board has helped 250 founders raise a total of $28 million+ in capital through the first virtual accelerator for women entrepreneurs, hosted two global summits, built a community of more than 13,000 female founders on six continents and established strategic partnerships with enterprise companies, government agencies and global foundations. In 2017, Circular Board launched the world's first AI-powered platform to help women entrepreneurs succeed. Last year, the Circular Board's virtual accelerator was named the fastest growing accelerator for women and minorities.

To meet Alice, please visit www.helloalice.com.

Dell Inc.
Dell Inc., a part of Dell Technologies, provides customers of all sizes – including 98 percent of the Fortune 500 – with a broad, innovative portfolio from edge to core to cloud.  Dell Inc. comprises Dell client as well as Dell EMC infrastructure offerings that enable organizations to modernize, automate and transform their data center while providing today's workforce and consumers what they need to securely connect, produce, and collaborate from anywhere at any time.

Pivotal
Pivotal's Cloud-Native platform drives software innovation for many of the world's most admired brands. With millions of developers in communities around the world, Pivotal technology touches billions of users every day. After shaping the software development culture of Silicon Valley's most valuable companies for over a decade, today Pivotal leads a global technology movement transforming how the world builds software.

Dell EMC World
Join us May 8-11 at Dell EMC World in Las Vegas, Dell Technologies' flagship event bringing together technology and business professionals to network, share ideas and help co-create a better future. This is the first time the Dell Technologies family of brands will be all in one place, at one conference. Meet our experts and more than 12,000 IT practitioners and business leaders who are making Digital Transformation a reality. Learn more at www.dellemcworld.com and follow #DellEMCWorld on Twitter.

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SOURCE Dell