The second team we would like you to meet is Team Toni! Klemens is founder and main developer of Toni! He, Kathi who is responsible for UX and marketing, and Scott, their mentor, make up Team Toni at the moment.
Please give us a short description of your chatbot:
Toni is a personal football buddy on Facebook Messenger. He gives you information on all the scores, the latest results, upcoming games and news on soccer. He can provide you with real-time information or round-ups of past games. With Toni.ai we are going to redefine fan engagement by creating virtual buddies that sports fans can engage with on the popular messaging platforms. This is not just limited to football.
Why should someone use your chatbot / What is the problem that you are solving?
The thing about football information is, that it requires a lot of time to get all the information you want and often it is not personalized. With Toni we offer you your personal assistant that gives you the information you are searching for directly in the channel you already know and use – Facebook Messenger. You don’t need to install an App or log-in at a website. For leagues, clubs, and players we’ll provide a platform for increasing fan engagement and interact with fans on a personal level.
How did you guys meet?
The idea behind Toni arose last year for the European Football Championship 2016 where we built the first prototype. We already gained a lot of users and media coverage there. This was the beginning of the project, and now we are developing Toni further to be a general football chatbot and Toni.ai as a fan engagement platform for sports leagues, clubs, and athletes. This is also where the other teammates entered. I wanted to also include more of the business and UX side into Team Toni and therefore expanded the team.
Why did you choose Elevate?
Because it’s awesome! The guys are really motivated and we have the feeling that they can really support us and push Toni to a highly successful level! ELEVATE was the perfect fit for us. We had our first MVP and were thinking about how to market it and how we are going to build a business around it – and this is exactly where ELEVATE stepped in to support us.
What are your expectations for the program?
We really hope to have the big players of the soccer industry engaged in Toni – the big clubs or betting companies! And we want to give Toni a unique personality and attract as much users as possible!
When and how was your first experience with a chatbot?
My first experience was a news bot. It was very nice to get information, but it was not really personal. That’s something we want to do better with Toni – we really want to personalize the content. The user should feel welcome and see Toni as a friend.
What would you recommend to applicants interested in ELEVATE batch #2?
Do it! If you think about applying – just apply! Have fresh ideas, find a good team and then you will get support from TheVentury and it will give your product a push.
Do you have any advice for peers interested in building a chatbot?
The chatbot scene is changing very fast. You can now create bots without needing any coding skills. If you are living in Vienna, there is a lot going on: there are monthly meetups in the bot scene, there are hackathons and so on.
And if you want to talk about bots, just get in touch with us!
Want to know more about Team Toni? Visit them on Facebook or check out their homepage!
