Tell us about yourself:
Victor Chapela has over 20 years of entrepreneurship experience. During this time, he has founded six technology companies, three of which have been successfully acquired. As part of his previous experience Victor founded and led Sm4rt Group, that included Sm4rt Security Services (Security Operation Centers), Sm4rt Predictive Systems (Card Fraud Prevention) and Sm4rt Game Studios (Videogames). The security company was acquired by Kio Networks and the fraud prevention technology was acquired by a bank consortium. Previously he also founded and served as CEO of TrueCentric, an Austin based consumer analytics company where he lead a development team of over 90 engineers in the creation of an AI customer relation software product for the financial industry.
Victor has served in 14 different boards of directors in the technology industry and has invested in several more. His main expertise lies within the area of artificial intelligence, machine learning, risk modelling, and information security. He is an active startup mentor and co-author and contributor of courseware, study material and papers for several organizations and media companies. He is a frequent speaker at international events and has been featured in business and trade magazines, television and radio.
What is your innovation/idea?
Poor dietary choices have led 55% of adults in the US to diabetes or pre-diabetes and over 70% to being overweight. Motivation is not the problem.Diets are hard to understand and even harder to follow. Choosing the right meal out of a menu, selecting the right groceries or cooking the right food is extremely hard when not familiar with a program or diet.
At Suggestic (www.suggestic.com), we have created an adaptive-learning chatbot that filters the world in real time to help people make better choices and adhere to their diets. Using artificial intelligence we suggest highly personalized choices for what to eat at over 500k restaurants, what to purchase at the grocery store, what to cook from over 1 million recipes or what to snack on right now.
Why are you participating in this competition?
I lost my father to diabetes a few months ago and sharing his life I've learned that our lifestyle choices and our diets are behind most heart attacks, cancers and diabetes worldwide. Almost nobody really knows how to eat healthier or that some of our activities or exercise choices can actually make us sick. Personalized nutrition and lifestyle guidance is broken and neither the food nor healthcare industries stand to benefit from preventing or curing these diseases. It is my mission as a person and it is our mission at Suggestic to help people lead healthier, happier and longer lives.