Founded in 2017, Anota AI provides restaurants and food entrepreneurs with an affordable, AI-driven way to streamline and improve the delivery process. The idea can be traced back to five students struggling to order food and innovating around the problem. “When we were students, we always tried to order lunches through Facebook without any success,” says cofounder and CEO Jonas Casarin. “So, we built a robot to meet our demand for a snack shop we used to order from.” The new venture soon boosted orders for the restaurant and improved the process for delivery people, sparking the decision to support food and delivery services across Brazil by developing a diverse set of AI-powered tools.

As with many startup stories, Jonas and his team developed the technology and company structure in a garage. One of the key challenges Anota AI faced, especially as the company grew rapidly, was building out the right teams and finding managers to match. “The best way forward for us was to find people who had already gone through this process,” says Jonas. “They were and still are an inexhaustible source of knowledge.” Jonas also recognized how much hidden talent there was in the Rio Grande do Sul region, despite it being farther from more recognized innovation hubs. As an investor and mentor within the WOW Aceleradora ecosystem, he has worked to highlight and leverage that talent to help startups in the region reach further markets and make a bigger splash.

Since founding Anota AI, Jonas and his original team have grown the company tenfold, which was challenging amid the disconnected pandemic period. During this time, Jonas made a point of encouraging online events and building affinity between employees online. The effort to create meaningful cohesion has developed into a highly engaged and driven company ecosystem filled with people who can achieve goals autonomously, enjoy facing challenges and are passionate about technology. Anota AI puts a lot of resources into boosting cohesion to ensure that everyone within the company feels connected to one another, even as the headcount continues to grow rapidly.