Mark Taylor, CEO at Automated Analytics: Our goal for all of our clients is to attribute all the sales they generate from their online clicks. So really being able to report your return on investment, being able to prove, you know, the return you're getting for your marketing budget. When I first set up Automated Analytics, it was a manual process for tracking calls from clicks. Now it's all done automatically using AI. I can now analyse 10,000 calls in 0.2 of a second. And it's been a game changer for our clients because we're probably one of the only systems that they're using that gives them real-time information on how their sales and customer service efforts are going. We got the stage where we probably hit, I don't know, about a million pounds worth of revenue, but I needed more investment, more cash than I had personally to put into the business to get it to the next level. Private equity is a great way to transform your business. And so for me, finding Maven was an absolute pivotal part of my journey. What you want in a private equity investor is somebody that's sitting shoulder to shoulder with you. Challenging you, yes, but also pushing the business forward together. I was really impressed with the way that Maven invested in very much startup scale up businesses and they got a good track record. 

Jenny Linney, Portfolio Director at Maven: Automated analytics had already proven that there was a real demand for the product in the market. And with increased focus on return and investment and  marketing spend, it was a really attractive proposition. The business had built proprietary technology particularly in their large language model which have and continues to have market leading accuracy. The business had shown traction in the UK and there was still opportunity to scale but the US market was pretty untested. We believe that there was clear opportunity there and that's proven to be the case. 

MT: That first investment from Maven was pivotal in helping us employ the right coders and really grow our software from 20 grand of sales through to 3.6 million contractors as it is today. But it was Maven who was saying, right, we need to take this from being Mark Taylor's business to being automated analytics And they really were central in kind of helping us grow. And adding a different perspective and bringing out knowledge made a big difference to us. 

JL: Maven's expertise in this space, particularly in terms of expansion into the US, is we know where you can burn cash unnecessarily. So we help them think about how they tested the products in the market in a relatively low-cost way. So we identified a need, I think, to bring in somebody more senior who could keep the business focused and operating, encouraging Mark to think about where he created most value. 

MT: The biggest milestone we've achieved since the investment is really that pivot from being a media optimisation company to being a software business. Our attention's 99%, so we've become much more profitable as a result.

JL: Automated analytics has really big ambitions to grow, opening a direct channel which gives Mark the opportunity to make sure that the customers are really understanding the product and being able to evolve that product to meet their needs, I think gives them a massive opportunity. 

MT: For me, it's just scaling that business and moving it forward and really establishing ourselves as an AI thought leader, not only in the UK, but also in America as well.