Always evolving

When did Monoceros Labs start?

It feels like only yesterday that we excitedly set out on this path of exploring products and speech technology that led us to found Monoceros Labs. In December 2018 we built our first voice app in Spanish, Veo Veo, and in spring 2019 we incorporated the company, alongside the official announcement that we were a featured Amazon Alexa agency.

We’ve officially turned three (although the seed was planted in October 2017), and we’ve been evolving constantly, just like the technologies we research, use and build into products. Those products have evolved too, some more than others, and they’ve also shown us how the market and consumers are changing.

So today we want to share part of that internal and external evolution with you, including our brand, which has evolved along with our value proposition as a team of people and as a startup.

What is our mission at Monoceros Labs?

Our mission is to break down the barriers that technology (sometimes) puts in front of people. We want to bring humanity, naturalness and usability to the relationship between people and machines (human-computer interaction, or HCI). We also want to bring the latest advances in artificial intelligence for natural language and speech technology to Spanish, our language, to make technology more accessible to Spanish speakers.

How has the Monoceros Labs brand evolved?

First, in case you didn’t know, let’s explain where our name comes from: Monoceros is the name of the unicorn constellation. Like other constellations, it’s made up of groups of stars, clusters and nebulae that form a pattern in the sky. The patterns or shapes we see depend on our point of view. In ancient times, constellations were used for navigation and for telling stories. Like a constellation, Monoceros Labs connects dots, ideas and people with different knowledge and experience. It’s a connection between creativity and technology to discover patterns of innovation that help us navigate uncertainty.

Since we started, our digital identity has gone through three stages. Our first logo, in 2017, showed an M made of interconnected stars. Then, in 2019, our logo included our name along with a symbol made from the phi symbol, which looks like a 0 and a 1 on top of each other, the basic digits digital technology is built on. Phi represents the golden ratio, present in countless things in nature, art and design. And it also looks like a unicorn’s horn.

How the Monoceros Labs digital identity has evolved.

Our new brand identity, thanks to the excellent work of Abel Guzmán at Colectivo Melón, reflects our internal evolution while staying true to our origins, to who we are and to our relationship with technology. The symbol combines three elements of our DNA: the Monoceros constellation, the letter M as our initial, and voice as an audio signal. The result is a simple composition that identifies Monoceros and alludes to voice technology.

This new brand will be with us from now on, both online and in person (thanks to custom stickers from Sticker Mule).

Our new brand identity on stickers.

How has our value proposition evolved?

Today, we’re pioneers in Spain in products built on speech technology and conversational experiences. We don’t just build voice apps for Alexa (Alexa Skills) and Google Assistant (Google Actions). We create conversational products used by thousands of people every day. We help other companies, like Grupo Planeta with DIANA, build digital products on voice and multimodal technology, from strategy and conversational experience design to technical architecture.

We also research and work with state-of-the-art algorithms and models in conversational AI to help people through products and conversations. Over the last year, thanks to Núbica, we obtained funding from CDTI’s NEOTEC program, which has allowed us to develop this activity, so important to Monoceros Labs, working with companies and universities. We’re also looking to grow the team (if you’re interested in joining us, get in touch below). We’ll tell you all about it soon in a more detailed post.

We also know it’s important to evolve in how we communicate progress in this field. Outreach and communication break down barriers too. That’s why we started our project “No solo ciencia ficción” (“not just science fiction”), where we’ll talk about advances, products and voice technology.

We’ll keep a close eye on the constant evolution of speech technology. The pace of progress in artificial intelligence pushes us to change and iterate in ever shorter cycles. These advances will let us have more and more fluid and natural conversations with systems we build ourselves. Since the earliest science fiction stories, we’ve dreamed of machines that could understand us and communicate with us like another human being. Conversations that help us answer our questions or solve our problems. And we believe that, in this future, the model of collaboration between artificial intelligence and people will move closer to the idea of augmented intelligence, bringing us personalized, empathetic assistants that extend our abilities as human beings.

Follow us and keep up with the evolution of voice technology.