When custom AI and software services company NLP Logix was founded in 2011, many in the business world didn’t understand what the company was offering.
CEO Ted Willich, 58, one of the company’s three co-founders, says natural language processing, a form of artificial intelligence, hasn’t received as much attention as it does now. .
It had been on his radar for years.
Willich said Medical Development International (MDI), which he co-founded in 1993, used machine learning to estimate healthcare costs in correctional facilities.
Because MDI knew healthcare, NLP Logix’s original business plan was to use natural language processing, a type of machine learning, to integrate disparate siled healthcare data, he said. said.
“We knew the value of machine learning. It was just a matter of teaching it.”
He and co-founders Matt Barseth and Robert Marsh started the company with a small amount of seed capital from angel investors.
Creating the business was “more of a consulting sale, a long-term sale, a hard sale,” Willich said.
NLP Logix CEO Ted Willich says NLP stands for natural language processing.
“The first few years were really bad. It was terrible. Nobody knew what machine learning was.”
Then they took a few breaks.
The first was a collaboration with the Florida Poison Information Center Network.
In 2013, NLP Logix presented at UF Health Shands on building a data model to predict the probability of being readmitted to an addiction center for treatment.
After the presentation, Dr. Jay Shoben, director of the Florida Poison Information Center in Jacksonville, met with Barseth and Willich and asked if NLP Logix would consider a “data challenge.”
“Working with Dr. Schauben and the FPICN staff, we were able to track which costs were co-managed and which were not,” Willich said.
“Ultimately, co-managed costs were much lower and demonstrated the tremendous value poison control centers bring to the state of Florida and the nation.”
The success of this study led to contracts with three poison control centers in the state, and NLP Logix is now installed in 14 of the nation’s 54 poison control centers, he said. .
“That was our first big break, but we got a few others along the way. We got lucky.”
NLP Logix currently has nearly 50 clients and over 100 employees. Its 2023 annual revenue of $17.5 million is nearly double its 2021 annual revenue of $8.9 million.
Willich said the company is active in many sectors and industries. Those include health care. Government; Education; Human Resources; Property and Casualty Insurance. defense; and nonprofit organizations.
Ted Willich, CEO of NLP Logix, said: “We’re a work-from-home company for the most part,” he says, recognizing the value of collaboration and “the ability for people to be able to whiteboard and interact.”
“Our customers are all over the world,” he said. “That’s the beauty of technology.”
Approximately 60 employees work out of the company’s headquarters at 9000 Southside Blvd., Building 700, in Gramercy Woods Office Park, which also houses the Bank of America campus.
The remainder is made up of employees working remotely in other states and teams in the Philippines and Serbia.
NLP Logix’s mantra: “Data science is a team sport.”
“We are truly a people-focused company,” says Willich. “We’re a work-from-home company for the most part,” he says, recognizing the value of collaboration and “the ability for people to be able to whiteboard and interact.”
NLP Logix moved into a 10,800 square foot office in December. Previously, it operated out of his 5,900 square foot space at 4215 Southpoint Blvd. 12 years.
“We literally surpassed it,” he said.
The company recently signed a lease for 10,888 square feet of additional space at its headquarters.
Willich, a California native, lived in Northern Virginia, where MDI is headquartered, when he and his company moved to Northeast Florida in 2003.
MDI, which Willich co-founded with his father Richard, faced financial and legal problems and went into liquidation in 2012.
The issue was primarily caused by litigation between Wells Fargo and MDI over loans, company management, and the bank’s expense claims against Richard Willich.
“Co-founding MDI with my father was a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” said Willich.
“It was amazing to see a company that started as two people in a family room in Oxnard, Calif., talking about their vision for the company, and over the next 20 years grew to over 200 employees and significant revenue.” He said.
“It didn’t end well for many reasons, including the theft of intellectual property which caused significant damage, but it taught us that technology-enabled service companies can deliver and create great value. .”
MDI is also where Mr. Barthes and Mr. Marsh met, as well as the company’s chief operating officer, Fallon Gorman, who said, “Mr. ,” Willich said.
“It was also at MDI that we first started using machine learning to optimize our internal business processes, which are core to our business model today. We were definitely early adopters of the AI movement in our business.”
Willich said his wife, Julie, suggested the Logix part of the company’s name. He believes that Barthes suggested his NLP.
NLP stands for natural language processing and is “the core technology for teaching computers to speak and read,” Willich said in an email.
“Every time you say ‘Hey Google or Siri,’ you use this. It’s the core technology that powers ChatGPT and other large language models, and it’s something that everyone, including us, is very excited about. ” he said.
“What’s interesting is that it was criticized quite a bit at the time, because no one knows what natural language processing is. It should be something else, not a name,” Willich said.
“We were like, ‘Yeah, okay, we’ll just keep the name.'” And now people think it’s great. ”
The company has a three-member innovation team responsible for three tasks, Willich said. One is to stay on top of technology and think about how you can use it to solve your customers’ business problems. Prototyping techniques to build proof of concept that works for customers. Educate your company on the “latest and greatest” developments happening in your industry.
“It’s one of our growth techniques,” he said. “We’re not inventing technology. We’re just staying on top of the latest and greatest information and applying it to corporate business and government.”
