Nov 05, 2018 – Journey Begins
During my doctoral program at Oregon State University, I wrote over 40 papers. The frustration of formatting these technical journals and conference papers was overwhelming. I shared an idea with my lab mate and friend at the time, and we decided to start a company that could format these papers in seconds, serving the research community. Both of us were nano-photonic scientists who knew nothing but engineering and research. As immigrants, building a startup and investing significant time and money—especially in the software field, where neither of us had ever written a line of code—seemed like a crazy endeavor. But we thought, ‘Fuck it! Let’s do it anyway.’
We pitched our idea to the OSU Accelerator, a program with over 40 teams, of which only 3-5 typically graduate. We were one of the teams that began with just an idea and emerged as a registered startup. We brought on a software developer as our third co-founder, although he left the team in less than three months. Alongside, we hired a full-time software development team in India, who were eager and aggressive to build cutting-edge tools. And that’s how Wisedoc was born. The name is meant to be ‘Wise-document’, i.e., a document writing software for wise people (in our case researchers and scientists).
2020 – Market Infected by Covid
After our tech co-founder left, we were essentially at a standstill, with no clear idea of what to do the next morning. One idea that surfaced was to shut everything down and let our tech team in India go. However, our team in India was too talented to give up on. In fact, one of them eventually stepped up and took on the role of co-founder and CTO of Wisedoc. Within a few months, we regained our strength and got close to developing a fantastic document-writing software for researchers. We began winning local pitch competitions, and a few investors showed interest in helping us accelerate our growth.
But then 2020 hit us hard. When COVID-19 arrived, universities across America started losing research grants due to the pandemic. Without research funding, universities were unable to purchase our software for their professors and researchers. This wasn’t just a temporary setback—it seemed like it would be at least a 5+ year struggle. In the meantime, it would have been impossible to keep burning cash for survival without generating any revenue. COVID crushed our vision, our software, and any hope of generating revenue from the universities.
2021 – The Major Pivot
During the peak of COVID, I needed to keep my company alive. I reached out to an investor to explore the possibility of raising funds. However, due to the lack of a revenue forecast, the rejections were overwhelming. At one point, most investors in Oregon started to avoid me at networking events. I realized we needed to pivot to an industry that could benefit from the technology we had already developed, with only a few adjustments.
We made a strong pivot to the career industry. Graduating students were struggling to find jobs, and COVID-19 had made the situation even worse. Many students were submitting poorly formatted resumes, which were often automatically rejected by the applicant tracking systems used by companies. We decided to simplify our software to make it suitable for creating documents like resumes and cover letters. The timing was ideal, as people urgently needed tools to help them secure interviews and jobs—needs that were far more pressing than researchers saving time on formatting documents.
Our team was motivated by this new purpose, and by mid-2021, we had completely pivoted Wisedoc into a career platform.
2022 – First Client
By the time we pivoted, the competition in the career industry had already started to take off. While most companies were offering resume reviews using so-called AI—which was often just a marketing gimmick without real AI involvement—none of them were focused on resume writing or cover letters. The opportunity was still there, but it was a classic chicken-and-egg problem. Wisedoc wasn’t a recognized brand, as we had no track record, and we struggled to land our first customer because we had no previous clients.
No matter what methods we tried—B2C, cold calling, emailing—we failed miserably. One day, I decided to take a different approach and be completely open and honest during my next cold call. I reached out to the director of career services at Northwest Missouri State University and shared the technical details of our software. I also admitted that she was speaking to a CEO who wasn’t great at sales but was committed to delivering a valuable tool for her students. Honesty paid off! We secured our first paid licensing deal with Northwest Missouri State University, which later became our most loyal client. The first check I received is still framed on my desk and will stay there forever.
2024 – Labeled the ‘Best AI Software’
As we settled into the new reality of being a post-revenue company, we knew we had to be aggressive. We focused on the quality of our software to genuinely help students and job seekers, while most competitors prioritized the quantity of features, often at the expense of quality. We eventually integrated AI capabilities into Wisedoc and rebranded it as Wisedoc AI, enabling students with no resume-writing experience to create a perfectly tailored resume for every job application in under 30 minutes.
Before long, universities such as Purdue, Kennesaw State, Oregon State University, and many others took notice and provided glowing testimonials, stating that ‘Wisedoc was indeed the smartest and best AI software tool for job seekers and graduating students.’ This was incredibly fulfilling from a product development standpoint and led to acquiring approximately 10 clients in just one year.
What lies ahead
Well, the script is still incomplete as of today, and the vision continues to evolve. I can’t reveal the storm that’s coming, but I can say this: Wisedoc has already changed the lives of tens of thousands of people, and we’re only getting stronger. Our small, passionate, and determined team is ready to make waves in this industry, one way or another…
Akash Kannegulla 