New Greek Startup Twiddle Will Transform Your Videos

Several Greek startups have stood out in the past few years, somehow able to break free of the fetters of the economic crisis and the mass exodus of educated, skilled individuals to other countries.

One of these enterprises is Twiddle, a group of four talented Greek computer whizzes who want to not only make videos sound better but also have a greater impact on the viewer.

The idea was simple: Most videos posted on social media, whether they are amateur personal videos or commercial marketing videos, suffer from the poor choice of music used with them. As a result, they may not have the overall effect the maker intended.

To address this issue, Co-founder and CEO Christos Tsikoudas says:

“Twiddle is a platform that uses Artificial Intelligence with a focus on sound, for content creators. We apply the most innovative AI technologies and advanced neural networks to automate the process of identifying, recommending and positioning the best matching sound effects and music in videos. We are making our technology available in two phases:
Phase A: The already available Twiddle Mobile App, which is meant to showcase the core of our AI-powered technology by organically attracting users which also helps in building synergies with music & sound licensers. The Twiddle Mobile App is already available in 40 countries and in 7 languages, in both the Apple App Store and Google Play where it entered the top 10 Trending Entertainment Apps soon after its release. The Twiddle mobile App also houses a social-interaction feature, where users can upload their creations, follow other creators, interact with the uploaded content, message each other and more. This feature is currently available in a limited number of regions.
Phase B: In anticipation of our next funding round, we are further developing our AI-powered technology to be made available through plugins in established video editing software. That plug-in offering will allow professionals to save up to 60% of the time it takes to create content will also offer to novice creators the opportunity of creating quality content without the steep learning curve of sound embedment. It will be available with simple subscription for consumers and custom case-by-case pricing for Enterprise accounts.”
The other three Twiddle co-founders are Manthos Kotsiopoulos (COO), Zafeiris Bampos,  (Chief Artificial Intelligence Officer) and George Tsoumalis (CTO).

The work of the group gained important international recognition in 2019, when earlier in the year they were chosen to represent Greece in the “Get In The Ring” global finals event in Berlin, where they took third place in the “basic” category among finalists from 80 countries.

An even greater distinction came to the group of AI innovators in July, when Twiddle won first prize in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s “Enterprise Forum Greece competition 2019.”

Would the international recognition lure the Twiddle creators to move abroad where there are more opportunities to expand? Tsikoudas believes otherwise:

“We have ambitious plans as the Twiddle services are some of the most scalable among enterprises in a global scale, and our technology helps drive new media in a market that constantly grows. Thus, recruitment and marketing need to gradually be shifted towards the U.S. and this is why we incorporated in Palo Alto in the first place. However, we have a strong will to keep the core development in Greece because we believe in the available talent in our homeland. Greece offers an ideal combination of high level development resources alongside relatively low costs and vast opportunities for expansion.”

When asked about his view on the brain drain that Greece has suffered during the crisis years, the Twiddle CEO said that he believes in the brain gain instead, and explains:

“Preventing brain drain, and turning it to brain gain, is one of the most important and challenging issues our country is facing, and is essential for the growth of its economy in the years to come. A focus on startups is one of the best ways to help inverse brain drain, as these ventures serve as an incentive for the young workforce to stay in Greece in the first place. As these companies progressively grow, they have the potential to retain an environment that will attract Greeks living abroad.” 

And he adds: “The startup ecosystem in Greece is relatively young but it is growing quickly. There are already a number of accelerator programs working towards that direction. That we can say from experience since we had the honor of attending the workshops of MITEF Greece and receiving the highest level of consultancy from the accelerator program. In many occasions, we also found a helping hand in the prestigious world-class companies that cooperate and support the forum via provision of in-kind services.”

The way it appears now, 2020 will be an even better year for the Greek startup.