"We were well oversubscribed," she says. "It was one of the fastest capital raises that [lead investment partner] Bell Potter had ever conducted, which I believe is testament to Australia's growing interest in artificial intelligence and machine learning."

More than chatbots

The start-up's flagship technology is its artificial virtual assistants Rosie and Maggie. Rosie is a virtual sales assistant which guides customers through their purchase, application or quotation experience while Maggie is a virtual inquiry assistant which answers questions across multiple products that customers might have.

Wallace says Rosie and Maggie are more than chatbots describing them as "conversational commerce platforms".

"They can have a conversation with a customer, make a decision, accept payment and guide customers through the journey they are on," she says.

Several significant clients including Nationwide and AMP have signed up to Flamingo.

Cathie Reid is the chair of Flamingo making it a rarity in the ASX with a female chief executive and chair.

"The sector that is the strongest is insurance and the reason for that is because insurance is now highly commoditised," Wallace says.

Analysts Gartner predict 40 per cent of insurance jobs will be automated in the next 10 years.

"That is a very hot sector followed by banking, retirement and wealth management," says Wallace. "These sectors are prime for this type of automation."

Flamingo's main competitors are IBM's Watson and Microsoft but Wallace claims Flamingo's nimble approach and vertical expertise means it is "a good year ahead" of the tech giants.

Women led

It was one of the fastest capital raises that Bell Potter had ever conducted which I believe is testament to Australia's growing interest in artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Catriona Wallace

Flamingo listed on the Australian Securities Exchange in 2016 through its holding company Cre8tek.

It's a rarity on the ASX with a female chair, Epic pharmacy co-founder Cathie Reid, and chief executive, Wallace.

The only other company in the ASX 500 led wholly by women is financial services business OneVue which is chaired by Gail Pemberton with founder Connie McKeage the chief executive.

"[The capital raise] was a very strong indicator that the capital markets have clearly supported a women- led business," says Wallace. "I don't even believe that would be a factor on the radar for these investors which is very positive."

Flamingo's market capitalisation sits at $49 million and since the capital raise the start-up's share price has increased by up to 50 per cent and at the close of trading last week was sitting at 6.2¢ a share.

"It's kept stable and we have great volume and liquidity in the stock," Wallace says. "It exceeded our expectations with how positive the market has been."

Path to revenue

Wallace says with this funding in place she can now concentrate on running Flamingo.

"We have five big client go-lives across Australia and the US," she says. "My real goal is path to revenue and I just need to focus on that. Now we have a very good runway through 2018 to get the business to scale."

The major challenge for Flamingo remains corporate procurement, with Wallace and her team struggling to convince big corporates to engage with an early-stage company.

But Wallace is undaunted and says entrepreneurs need to have a bold vision.

"In the day we were told just prove out the product in your own back yard and then go global," she says. "You should be global from day one."

An earlier version of this article incorrectly listed the share price as 62¢.