We had Markus Waghubinger as our guest, a dynamic entrepreneur from Upper Austria who spends his time between Linz, Vienna and San Francisco. Markus began his career in banking but soon discovered a passion for innovation and entrepreneurship. This led him to co-found HalloSophia, a platform that integrates AI with human expertise to transform professional services.
In this interview, Markus shares his journey from banking to startups, the vision behind HalloSophia, and valuable advice for aspiring founders.
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Question FT: Who are you, where are you from, and what is your background?
My name is Markus Waghubinger, born and raised in a small village in Upper Austria. I currently live in Linz, Vienna, and San Francisco. My professional journey began in banking, where I worked as an account manager, investment professional, and later staff manager for strategy and project management. My startup journey started with an idea from my time in the bank, which we developed with Erste Group and CONDA, now known as fundnow.
I then took on fractional roles in startups, twice as interim CFO, and consulting jobs mainly for banks and insurance companies. When the pandemic hit, HalloSophia started as a volunteering project to help small businesses negotiate with banks and assist with grant applications. The technology we built for online consultations became the foundation for HalloSophia as it exists today.
Question FT: How did you become a founder, and what motivated you?
Once I felt confident in my understanding of banking, I wanted to create new things. Initially, I tried within the bank, but it lacked the necessary dynamics. I got restless until I met the founders of N26 and had my “oh, I could do this as an entrepreneur” moment. I never thought about building things from scratch because it wasn’t an option in the banking environment. But once I started, I realized it was in my DNA, and I loved the freedom to create, but also to support others’ visions through fractional roles.
Question FT: What is the name of your startup, and what do you do?
HalloSophia stands for “Hallo, sophisticated advice”. Our mission is to make professional services accessible to everyone. We think services are broken today. Traditional service providers act inefficient and digital alternatives usually only cover the basic needs. With a HalloSophia integration SaaS can upgrade to full-service and offer even personalized services at scale.
Today, we mainly achieve this through our hybrid service platform, which allows digital companies to create service chatbots with our framework and combine them with professional services integration. Imagine managing your books and creating your tax report with an AI-powered SaaS. The AI detects that you might want to talk with a tax advisor specializing in your field. The AI coordinates everything, so you and the expert join the meeting well-prepared, removing the overhead of professional services while maintaining personal interaction. This integration and facilitation are HalloSophia’s core today. We also power various digital professional services, like tutoring portals for universities, service centers for chambers of commerce, and mentoring platforms for incubators.
Question FT: What distinguishes your startup from the competition? What is your USP?
Our unique approach integrates human expertise into systems where creators might not consider the human factor until users demand assistance beyond software support. Other support solutions usually only connect you to the next available inhouse service people or to call center agents, with us, users have access to the most qualified people from the whole network of the SaaS company.
We offer out-of-the-box solutions covering everything from first-level assistance with custom AI to scheduling, payment, identification, video rooms, reviews, direct client-advisor connections, and effortless offer/acceptance processes.
Our happiest customers are those who started building similar solutions and realized it’s not easy to cover all aspects of human integration in digital channels and then got everything they needed by building on our platform.
Question FT: Who is your target group, and how do you reach them?
Our target group is SaaS providers. Software-as-a-Service covers many fields where users need to leave the platform and call a consultant for special cases. We empower SaaS to become hybrid service providers and keep customers for all cases. Currently, we reach them through personal sales at networking events, but we’ll start our first marketing campaigns soon. Call us if you know how to do that 😉
Question FT: Can you explain your business model? How does your startup generate revenue?
Our revenue model is a mix of subscription fees for the infrastructure and service fees per booking.
Question FT: Where should your startup go, and where do you see yourself in 5 years?
We believe in the need for a qualified human factor in the AI-powered software revolution. Without it, we’ll end up in an AI vs. Human Experts situation. Software gets smarter and will cover more and more of our needs, but for special cases we still need to call human experts.
We aim to combine these seamlessly, create a digital-first, AI assists, human experts on-demand standard for services.
And of course, work towards being successful leaders in this market.
And this is a huge field and we are pioneering it, the IPO is the long-term goal rather than being acquired.
Question FT: What tips can you give young founders?
Do what you are passionate about, or you won’t survive the startup roller coaster.
Launch imperfectly. It will never be perfect, but it will never succeed if you don’t put yourself out there and talk to people worldwide, not just locally.
For those leaving school or enterprise jobs: you’re in charge now. Be open to opinions from people who are where you want to be, but remember, they are not your boss. It’s your responsibility to assemble these inputs into one strategy.
Product-market-fit is tough. Find a mechanism to check if you are being stubborn or persevering. The former costs you time, the latter leads to success, and they feel similar.
Question FT: What is your favorite quote or your own quote?
“Work for a cause, not for applause”
Your book recommendation for young founders:
“From Good to Great” to prepare to be a great leader.
& “Blitzscaling”
THANK YOU for the great Insights in your Entrepreneurial Journey !
WEBSITE: https://www.hallosophia.com/
LINKEDIN Markus: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markus-waghubinger/
HalloSophia LINKEDIN: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sophiaadvisory/
