At Neuro-ID, Jack Alton wants to change the way customers interact with businesses.

And, equally as important, he wants to show that a tech startup can thrive in Whitefish.

Alton is Chief Executive Officer of Neuro-ID, a Whitefish-based startup that analyzes user behavior on a webpage to help businesses better engage customers.

“At a fundamental level, we’re a real time behavioral analytics company, and what we do is we help consumers and businesses take the friction out of them doing business with one another,” Alton says. “So we identify [friction], we explain it, and them we help hem improve that process.”

Neuro-ID’s technology was created in 2010 when founders Joe Valacich — a University of Montana graduate — and Jeff Jenkins made the link between user indecision and anomalous neuromotor responses. The company was incorporated in 2014, and Alton came on board in 2017 as CEO of the company, having previously worked with Kount and Cradlepoint Technology, both also based in Whitefish.

Neuro-ID’s software works by analyzing the way a user interacts with a webpage or form, much in the same vein that traditional focus group research would watch how a potential customer interacts with materials.

“The technology can be used for any interaction that we used to do in person,” Alton says. “As we move to digitize those interactions and move them online, our real time analytics observe how somebody interacts with a mobile or a desktop device, and we can detect the frustration or confusion they’re experiencing, and we can also detect fraudulent behavior as well. It gives both the consumer and the business the confidence to do business with one another when they can’t see one another.”

A fifth-generation Montanan himself, Alton says he’s prioritized building tech businesses in the Flathead Valley since returning to the area 13 years ago.

That’s the case with Neuro-ID as well, which he says is funded mainly by locals who believe in what the company is doing.

“Most of the funding comes from people here in Montana. We haven’t gone to venture capitalists or private equity firms. It’s a cool story where over 20 individuals have funded the company up to this point,” he says.

It was also important to headquarter the company in Whitefish, he adds, and “prove that software doesn’t know where it lives.”

Setting up shop in Whitefish, or elsewhere in Montana, seems like the trend moving forward.

As priorities in the workplace, as well as outside the workplace, shift, more people are going to gravitate toward the less-populated, more desirable locations, Alton says.

“I think Montana and other desirable locations will disproportionately participate in what is happening right now. I think people and companies are going to be moving away from major metropolitan areas to areas that offer a better work/life balance, not so much congestion and the ability to have space,” Alton says. “I see Whitefish and Missoula and Bozeman certainly becoming the headquarters or the regional offices of more and more companies as they look to move some of their operations out of larger metropolitan areas and more into areas that they want to live, work and play.”

Just as the tech industry within the state is growing, so too is the versatility of Neuro-ID’s products.

The company on May 5 inked a partnership with TransUnion, a globally-leading credit bureau.

The deal utilizes their behavioral dashboard, which charts and displays user data for companies by adding a JavaScript script to a webpage. In the case of TransUnion, that script should help to smooth out online processes within the insurance business.

“Let’s say we install [our script] for an insurance company during their quote process, today they’re trying desperately to understand, ‘Why do so many people start this process yet so few of them finish it?’” Alton says. “What the friction index will do is essentially give a higher fidelity view into the customer behavior. It’ll specifically show where the issues are occurring in the customer journey, and as importantly it will tell them why.”

Insurance is just the start of Neuro-ID’s push to branch out into other online business spaces, Alton adds.

“For the first three years we really focused into the consumer lending space and we looked at over 40 million digital customer journeys to train our models and build all the behavioral models,” he says. “Our first vertical was online consumer lending, our second vertical was merchant onboarding, and now this partnership with TransUnion is taking us into the insurance space. The next spaces we’ll focus on are e-commerce and healthcare.”

All of this is done anonymously with regard to the individual user, he adds, noting the rising concerns over the privacy of online activities.

“One of the beautiful things about our technology is we don’t collect any personal information,” Alton says. “Every user looks anonymous to us.”

As the business continues to grow, Alton says he’s positive about all the different applications their technology can take on moving forward.

But most importantly, he says, he’s just pleased to do his job here in town.

“When we go to work everyday, we’re doing it for our team, for our customers and we’re also doing it to show you can create great jobs and a great culture right here in Whitefish,” he says.

For more information, visit www.neuro-id.com.