Even a leading-edge artificial-intelligence tech company can sometimes require some human intelligence from the SBDC to help it operate successfully.

Just ask Jyotiska Biswas, who founded an AI-related small business called ThinkTrends in Northern Virginia in 2018. “Right now, we’re living in an age of artificial intelligence,” he says. “It’s all around us, whether we realize it or not — in our smartphones, our laptops, and the internet.”

Jyotiska describes ThinkTrends as a “data mining and AI workflow platform” that makes the power of artificial intelligence available to everyone, not just the big tech firms.

With his company now surging, it’s obvious that Jyotiska excels as a computer science innovator. But there have been times when he needed help with some of the non-tech aspects of running a small business. “In 2020, I was trying to get a Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loan and was having a lot of trouble getting it to go through,” he says. “I reached out to the SBDC @ Community Business Partnership in Springfield. With their help and guidance, I got the loan.”

With that solved, Jyotiska found himself leaning on his advisor, SBDC Director Vijay Vaswani, for advertising and marketing counseling. Jyotiska explains. “Vijay has been giving me some really great marketing advice, which has been very helpful.”

Vijay’s assistance with loan applications and marketing allows Jyotiska to focus on his passion — artificial intelligence.

He describes his company’s niche in AI this way: “To use artificial intelligence, you need to do data science and machine learning, which require a very specialized skill set. ThinkTrends makes this process much simpler. Without writing any code and with just a little training from the platform, anyone can create artificial intelligence to analyze data in a robust way and essentially be able to do what a data scientist does.”

High tech is Jyotiska’s thing, but he feels that any small business could benefit from reaching out to their area SBDC.

“I really like working with them.” Jyotiska says. “We are excited to grow this relationship with the SDBC and see where it takes off!”