A chance meeting with internet legend Dennis Jennings provided the founders of Peroptyx with the runway to launch, writes Gerry Byrne

Despite having the imprimatur of its chairman, Dennis Jennings, the UCD academic inducted into the Internet Hall of Fame, Mayo startup Peroptyx isn't an internet pioneer. Yes, it serves the online sector and operates off a SaaS platform, but its purpose is use human intervention to source for machine learning systems the type of quality data required to improve the effectiveness of algorithms.

Internet platforms such as Google and Amazon depend on algorithms to deliver personalised and accurate listings for product searches. One problem with machine learning models is that they let users down when they don't deliver locally relevant responses or recommendations.

Peroptyx aims to improve the local relevance of digital platforms by providing a solid foundation of machine learning training data and model evaluation, delivered by a team of evaluators.

They enhance the machine learning model output (or algorithm results) to reflect the real-world behaviours and expectations of each company's users in every market, with domain-specific training data and model validation on the Peroptyx Engage platform.

Here's a hypothetical example. A search query on Amazon for 'rubbers' is entered by a user in Ireland. Instead of listings limited to erasers, the buyer in Ireland is offered condoms. Words and phrases can have different meanings all over the world, and the Peroptyx datasets narrow down possible confusion.

In Association with

Evaluating and validating an internet platform's algorithms is a form of localisation, a process familiar to Peroptyx's founders, CEO Paul McBride (pictured) and chief operating officer Maeve Bleahane.

They both worked previously with Lionbridge, the translation and localisation multinational. In 2006, McBride's horizons were widened significantly when Google invited him to visit its Mountain View HQ in California.

Local Relevance

"Google was trying to figure out how they could deliver more locally relevant search results," McBride recalls. "I participated in the design of an experiment to help the Google Search team figure out if it was possible to infuse their search results with local relevance based on feedback from evaluators across a number of countries.

"This was before machine learning and cloud computing, so it was quite a challenge to execute. Once we demonstrated what was possible and the experiment became a success, the business of doing this in more countries grew from there."

The Google experiment signalled the start of McBride's transition from the hardware side of localisation to the software side. Following the takeover of Lionbridge in 2017, McBride and Bleahane decided to do their own thing.

"Doing more of the same isn't in our DNA, and rather than subject ourselves to the vicissitudes of corporate strategic planning by the managers, Maeve and I departed in 2018 to start developing the Peroptyx concept with Dennis Jennings."

McBride is coy about naming his venture's major customers, although in conversation he mentions Apple, Google, Microsoft, AirBnb, LinkedIn and Twitter as typical of the sort of tech platforms Peroptyx is servicing.

"Our feedback is very important for them to ensure their platforms are behaving appropriately based on the expectation of local users," McBride explains. "We help them in that process by validating the data they are using, to ensure that it represents the culture, location and so on of their individual users. This helps the platforms to build products and services that are personalised."

Decentralised Model

The Peroptyx operating model is decentralised. Its gig economy evaluators can be anywhere the internet platforms require Peroptyx's validation services. Subject to a test, evaluators are invited to sign up to work for up to 20 hours per week from home in their own time. They have to be fluent in two or more languages and resident in their country for over five years.

"The ability to analyse information and assess its relevance or significance is the central component of a competent evaluator," says the Peroptyx website. "Being a Peroptyx evaluator or data scientist offers a unique opportunity to be part of something bigger — to improve the quality of data for a better online experience or predictive model — so it can have more relevance to you and those around you."

Evaluator tasks range from data curation and voice recognition to image labelling, personalisation features to validating locations for digital maps.

One evaluator explains: "Concepts such as 'relevance drift' and 'data drift' are part of my everyday role, and understanding how and why machine learning models underperform in the face of drift is a key part of my job. The effects of drift will be felt for some time. The models will need to be adjusted and the training data refreshed more often, just to maintain performance."

'Ideal Chairman'

In other circumstances, Peroptyx chairman Dennis Jennings (76) might have become a famous astronomer, as his physics PhD was for research into neutron stars. Instead he became director of computing services at UCD. He took leave of absence in 1986 to work in the US with the consortia which bolted together the modern internet.

It was originally destined to serve as a private connection between a collection of academic supercomputers, and Jennings was one of the people who steered it into the publicly accessible internet we know today.

Bleahane met Jennings at an internet conference and outlined the plans for Peroptyx. He was, she says, very enthusiastic. "I thought if we were to choose a most ideal chairman for the company he would be it," she says. "He has been invaluable to date and been very instrumental in helping find investors."

According to Bleahane, Jennings took the view that Peroptyx is building a "global ground truth for data". Not only did Jennings introduce the duo to investors, he was also the charter investor, and paid €50,000 to buy shares in the company in September 2019.

The backing of the internet legend was a comfort factor for other investors, who ponied up €800,000 in December 2019. Participants in that funding round included taxpayers through an Enterprise Ireland payment (€300,000).

Could the founders have sourced their seed capital without Jennings? "No," is McBride's emphatic answer. "Dennis introduced us to the funds in Dublin, and Delta came on board as the lead VC. That created a domino effect of sorts and gave us credibility that allowed us to quickly build the business and the infrastructure."

Startup Losses

The Peroptyx balance sheet for December 2020 shows equity invested of €550,000 and the EI shares classified as a liability. Also in long-term creditors is a loan amount of €650,000, which presumably references Delta. Startup losses to end 2020 amounted to €440,000, with the two founders shared €90,000 in pay and pension remuneration.

"We have developed an online recommendation engine using machine learning and it is proving extraordinarily attractive to many in the e-commerce space," says McBride, adding that "money is on the table" for a further funding round. "Marketing the service will require investment," he explains.

Pic: Michael McLaughlin