Be My Eyes is an app that has been working with visuals for a long time, and has focused on helping blind people use the smartphone to see and identify objects in the real world. Now apparently that technology is helping to create completely new features for ChatGPT.

“The image features is in preview, it is not yet publicly available. It is something we work with one partner, Be My Eyes, in order to truly develop it and get it ready for prime time,”

said Greg Brockman, co-founder at OpenAI

Be My Eyes released some info earlier this week, on what they want to build. This gives some insight into how they are using OpenAI for their tool. It did however not mention how they help the OpenAI team develop their feature, rather on how it will improve Be My Eyes service.

“We are entering the next wave of innovation for accessibility technology powered by AI. This new Be My Eyes feature will be transformative in providing people who are blind or have low vision with powerful tools to better navigate physical environments, address everyday needs, and gain more independence,”

said Mike Buckley, CEO of Be My Eyes.

The new tool from Be My Eyes integrates OpenAI’s latest generative AI technology, with the goal of providing an unprecedented level of accessibility and power to the hundreds of million people who are blind or have low vision globally.

“We are thrilled to work with OpenAI to further our mission of improving accessibility for the 253 million people who are blind or have low-vision, with safe and accessible applications of generative AI.”

The Virtual Volunteer feature will be integrated into the existing app and contains a dynamic new image-to-text generator powered by GPT-4. Users can send images via the app to an AI-powered Virtual Volunteer, which will answer any question about that image and provide instantaneous, conversational visual assistance for a wide variety of tasks.

Be My Eyes was launched in 2015 – if you want to read what we said about it back then, you can find that article here.

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At the awards ceremony selected winners in various categories from Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway and Iceland were narrowed down to one absolute winner in each category. And while all the nominees and finalists deserve the title of winners, here are those who are voted to be number one:

• Startup of the Year: Falcon Social (Denmark)
• Best Social Entrepreneurship Tech Startup: Be My Eyes (Denmark)
• Startup Journalist of the Year: Neil Murray (Denmark)
• Developer Hero: Martina Elm (Sweden)
• Best Professional Investor: Creandrum (Sweden)
• Best Accelerator: Startup Reykjavík (Iceland)
• Best Bootstrapped: Dirtybit (Norway)
• Founder of the year: Kristo Ovaska (Finland)
• Best Newcomer: Smartly.io (Finland)

Both Danish companies in the best startup categories have shown impressive growth.

Back in March Falcon Social, with its SaaS social media management platform, closed funding deal in Series B which amounted to 15 € million. The financing round was led by Prime Ventures and joined by existing Falcon Social investors Northcap and Target Partners, bringing the company’s total financing to date to 23$ million.

Be My Eyes, an app that helps blind people via connection them to a sighted person through a video call, was launched back in winter. The project generated a great deal of interest, and in just one day after the launch the new app had over 10.000 users, the number which is counting.

Neil Murrey won the category of the startup journalist for his contribution through The Nordic Web, a website that takes an in-depth look at the Nordic technology scene and provides data-driven insight and analyses.

Congratulations to the winners!

About Nordic Startup Awards

Nordic Startup Awards is a series of events in the Nordic countries to recognize and celebrate startup ecosystem of the Nordic region. The award focuses on Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway and Iceland, where each country nominates startups and entrepreneurs who are later selected by a jury, where public votes count for one jury members. The Nordic Startup Awards are a part of Global Startup Awards and are powered by Nordic Innovation.

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The Town Halls – a grassroots movement

As with all other things #chpftw does, it is a ‘by startups, for startups’ initiative, made possible by the foundation that so far over 90 startups have supported. It is impressive how much that is achieved drawing on connections, contacts and volunteers. Not just the Town Halls, but also the VC arrangements, events like AngelNext, and the sharing groups.

As usually, it was an event packed with startup people, both senior entrepreneurs, engineers, angels and VCs, as well as those just exploring ideas. A mixture that enables a lot of knowledge to be shared.

New for this Town Hall was that there was a startup corner, with 6 booths. Exhibiting there were Audiocase, Mono+, Airhelp, Davuud, Usertribe and the Seedcamp Accelerator.

Also new was a job board, where anybody could post a job offer or request, using the analog methods of pen and papper.

Zendesk engineering insights

As with the other Town Halls the program included 2 keynotes, a series of short presentation by startups that have achieved something special recently, and a series of short presentation by community events or places.

The first keynote was by Morten Primdahl, Co-Founder and CTO of Zendesk. He shared a lot of insights into building a tech organisation and developer teams that scale globally, with offices in San Francisco as well as the Copenhagen, Melbourne and Singapore.

“We have built autonomous teams, working after their own goals and objectives”

He also talked about differences with hiring developers in SF compared to Copenhagen:

“You learn that recruiters in the tech scene are more like real estate agents”

– was his remark on the SF scene, continuing:

“In Denmark people actually apply if you but out a job, you don’t have to chase them down.”

He also shared insights into how Zendesk was started and grew. He talked about the milestone, and technical problems, they got from getting Twitter as an early costumer in 2009. And about funding, and how it was impossible to raise money in Denmark back then.

“Funding in Denmark was very dry. For a long time our live was about to get by as good as possible with what we had.”

Startup presentations: Bitcoins, Motorcycles, Football and more

After Mortens talk, 5 startups got 5 minutes each on stage. These were:

Tonsser – A social network for football, especially youth clubs, founded in 2014. Peter took the stage and talked about how they have grown to over 10 000 users, with a 10-20 % average weekly user growth, and a great 50 % active weekly users. He also mentioned that they already cover 90 % of all Danish football teams for 14 – 19 year olds, and that the next step is internationalisation.

Coinify – talked about bitcoin and how Coinify handles bitcoin transaction and exchanges. They announced they had just closed a new deal with a credit card service provider, to be able to provide bitcoin services. And also that the team has been expanded to 15 people at the startup now.

Nordic Power Converters – A startup that just won the Danish Tech Challenge, with it’s technology that enables a large improvement in power converters. They are focusing on the LED market, and can make LED lamps lighter, cheaper, and increase their lifetime. A great innovation, with a huge market, that can save both a lot of costs as well as energy. They announced they are currently 15 at the startup, and are looking for raising a $ 2 millions round.

Be My Eyes – The app that helps blind people see and has gotten a huge deal of media attention. Christian Erfurt talked about how they have grown to 200 000 users in 50+ countries. That they got so much media attention that they have held over 100 different interviews since launch, and the plans for the future.

Future Electric – Probably the talk that left the biggest impression. Jesper Vind talked about his startup, which aims to be the Tesla of motorcycles! He talked about his racing background, and the huge advantages electric motorcycles had over regular ones when it comes to torque, speed and handling. He said they have created a motorcycle without liquids or vibrations, with a top speed over 300 km/h and insane acceleration. He also announced that they had just secured and angel round, with one of the Podio co-founders investing in the company!

The best impression was of course the live demo of the motorcycle that they had brought to the stage. By far the most popular object for pictures during the evening.

Community

After the startup presentations, and some beer (with Zendesk’s employees handling the bar), 5 community initiatives from the region where presented as well. This included Creative Morning, Mindpark (transparency – I, Karsten Deppert, am the owner of Mindpark), Thinkubator and Design Thinking Copenhagen. All gave short presentations on how they are relevant or of use for the startup scene.
The Nordic Next event was also presented, by Michael Hoy. As the Nordic Next is an invite only event for investors, he gave it an appropriate introduction:

“I am the asshole standing on stage talking about an event most of you will not be invited to…”

Michaels remarks that the event will be held in ‘Malmö, the Brooklyn of Copenhagen’ also drew a lot of cheers.

Jens Karstoft

Final keynote was Jens Karstoft, who talked about his journey with Zmags, and about starting a venture and making an exit.

He shared 3 main lessons learned: How to become a market leading solution, how to get into the U.S. and how to exit the business. About how the grew and expanded to the U.S., he mentioned that it was not as hard as they believed:

“The U.S. is not rocket science.”

– Jens said, before continuing:

“We did it before we raised any money.”

Other insights to building a great SaaS startup was to

“A relentless focus on execution”

He ended his talks with insights from being acquired, and how there is a big difference if you make an exit to a private equity company or to one of the tech giants, such as Facebook or Google.

A great event

Overall, it was another great Town Hall meet-up. We look forward to the next one already, planned to be in June!

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But how come an app registers users as sighted or blind? The idea of Be My Eyes is to help blind people in situations where you really need to rely on your sight. In these situations the app helps blind connect to a sighted person via a video call, whom they can ask and show the question they have. It could be anything from asking about the expiration date of the milk or asking about the way to the right railway platform.

“It’s my hope that by helping each other as an online community, Be My Eyes will make a big difference in the everyday lives of blind people all over the world” says Hans Jørgen Wiberg, Founder

The praises in social media didn’t wait long; Twitter is filled with admiration for Be My Eyes’ usability and creativity. And this does of course not only come from people occasionally in need of an extra pair of eyes. Wiberg hopes that the app will also help the helper through creating a feeling of happiness to assist a fellow human being.

The combination of creativity, technology and application area provides a fantastic outlook for the nonprofit app. And with such a record start, Be My Eyes’ popularity is only believed to grow!

You can read more what others are saying about the app: Trendsonline, TechCrunch, HuffingtonPost and many more.

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While the idea of app is innovative and interesting, the project had issues securing funding for its realization. Through the Danish Association of Blind and crowd funding the project has received 50.000 kronor and about 37.000 pounds respectively. However, it is only together with 1.7 million kronor from the Velux Foundation that Be My Eyes will get moving forward.

“I have always believed in the project. The need is there but it was difficult to raise the money. When making a social-economic project, you can not just borrow the money in the bank. So I have wondered if anyone thinks it’s such a good idea that they will give us the money. And we are very excited about the Velux Foundation donation,” says Hans-Jørgen Wiberg

Having the money, the team now can shift its attention to realization of the project.

“What we are doing now is looking for a company that can do it for us. So we are initiating an open dialogue with potential companies. It is important that we find the right person to do the job,” explains Hans-Jørgen Wiberg

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