Behind the scenes: ConnectID

Hear the startups participating in Collider’s first Startup Booster Programme. We’re taking you behind the scenes.

Who are you and what do you do?

ConnectID are a London based start up tackling the age-old problem of maintaining up to date contact details for the people you know. You’re really busy right? Yet you’re still responsible for maintaining everyone else's details. Contacts are scattered everywhere and people change jobs, numbers and addresses all the time. Everyone’s address book, therefore, quickly gets out of date.

The 15th Century business card to exchange contact details still has its place but ultimately it doesn’t stay up to date. Everyone stores contact details in their smartphone, yet still in todays digital age it quickly gets outdated, we think that’s not very smart.

We have developed an app with patented technology for both people and businesses to access, share and automatically update contact details for people who store their address book in their smartphone. The app is supported by a dashboard for organisations, which enables them to send messages direct to their members mobile devices.

Who are your co-founders & give us one line about each of you.

Tassos Papantoniou is a successful Yacht Broker by trade and believes the business card has its place but contacts need to be redesigned for our fast paced and dynamic lives.

Allison Wightman is a modern marketer of all things digital who has worked in the corporate world all her life before successfully jumping ship to a start up.

Where in the world are you from and what drew you to London?

Tassos the company founder studied in America, UK and Greece, however, London has been his home since he studied at Cass Business School.

Allison was born in Birmingham and then moved to Yorkshire, Cheshire, Nottingham, Manchester, London and then Brighton.

What excites you most about London (one startup point and one non-startup point!)?

London is working hard to earn the number 2 spot on the map for tech businesses behind Silicon Valley, not least through the work of Tech London Advocates.

London is a forward thinking, multi cultural place, just like our company. However, as I write this on the dawn of the BREXIT result it seems like an island compared to the rest of the UK and tech skills and services may be all we have left to export!

Explain why your company is a MadTech company, and how you plan to disrupt the larger ecosystem.

Every marketer relies on an up to date database to be able to market to – we believe our product at critical mass has the potential to extend to brands with users express permission to share their contact details with the brands they love. ConnectiD has a vision to organise the worlds contact information by giving people control of their own information and then syndicating it to people and brands they are happy to have access to it.

What is one challenge you have had to overcome since beginning your journey?

We have done 3 versions of this product web based, hybrid and now native – its taken a long time and a lot of money but we have learned a lot along the way, however, we should have failed faster!

Tell us about where you think Collider can add the most value to you over the next four months.

Help us get the positioning of our product and brand right and to help us develop our business model further alongside brands to understand what pain points they have and how ConnectiD could potentially address them.

What advice would you give to founders who are applying to accelerator programmes?

Find an accelerator that has aligned values to your company – shop around as all accelerator programmes are not made equal

Behind the Scenes: Duel

Hear the startups participating in Collider’s first Startup Booster Programme. We’re taking you behind the scenes.

Who are you and what do you do?

I am Paul Archer and I am the founder of Duel. Duel is a fully automated, AI powered tool that lets brands manage user-generated content with absolute control. They can run photo, video, GIF and idea competitions, polls and automatically post highly engaging interactive display adverts featuring the best of this content.

Where in the world are you from and what drew you to London?

I started the company in Bristol and moved to London now it has begun to scale and I need to be closed to our clients. It’s also one of, if not the most exciting cities in the world.

What excites you most about London (one startup point and one non-startup point!)?

London has everything you need. Every company has a major office here, and it’s perfectly positioned to travel to markets all around the world. It also never stops. There’s always something amazing and interesting going on every hour of every day (and night).

Explain why your company is a MadTech company, and how you plan to disrupt the larger ecosystem.

We help brands let their customers tell their stories. Our product allows brand managers unlock the power of their audience and brings them into the conversation on a platform that is safe for the brand.

What is one challenge you have had to overcome since beginning your journey?

Finding product market fit. We have under taken 1 major and a number of minor pivots to get to this point. However, the learnings along the way have been completely worth it.

Tell us about where you think Collider can add the most value to you over the next four months.

I think collider will open up doors that we could previously never do. It is also a huge stamp of approval, giving us extra validation as we roll out to brands.

What advice would you give to founders who are applying to accelerator programmes?

Look at the kind of businesses that they accept and only apply to ones that are relevant to you – you could waste weeks filling in forms and wasting time when you don’t fit the mould. Then when you find one that works, through everything at it!

The EU Referendum and Innovation

With the most important vote of our generation within 24 hours, the Collider team would like to tackle the issue through the innovation lens aimed at startups. Whether that be in or out of the EU.

Bremain

The ‘Brexit’ anxiety has seen the FTSE 100 dropping daily. Similar trends have been mirrored in start-up investment, as many worry companies may struggle in a post-EU London. Many believe a connected Europe is important for investment in UK start-ups. London Mayor Sadiq Khan claims London has the opportunity to become “tech capital of the world” but worries tech development will struggle to maintain its exponential growth without initial investment.

Techcrunch writes a “closed-off Britain could threaten your very existence” as a start-up.

Start-ups must decide where to base their company and the answer is almost always London. But an EU exit may see this change. John Bradford’s poll on Twitter asking followers which city they would move to next had Dublin coming out on top. Also foreign entrepreneurs may look elsewhere as leaving would “stop young scientists from migrating freely within Europe”.

Also, EU funding will be lost if the UK public decide out is best. With the EU’s Horizon 2020 promising approximately 74.8 billion between 2014 and 2020. This will go directly to science, engineering and technology developers. If Thursday’s vote see’s us out, this research could cost 20 percent more. For start-ups and MadTech, this may not be significant in the short term.. But future technology may suffer, as this may be a deterrent seeing entrepreneurs less likely to take a chance.

Brexit

‘Brexit’ campaigners question EU regulation effects on innovation. Continued imposing of standards will affect the “most innovative economy in Europe”. Indirect taxation (“costs associated with the bloc’s endless regulations”) is an example of this. The effect is hard to measure, but it could be valid in terms of seeing a larger margin to reinvest back.

EU membership could affect start-ups through weekly payments from the UK. At £163m weekly, austerity measures could be lifted. But, this is speculation and we must confess austerity is made in Westminster, not in Brussels. So it’s a stretch to assume leaving the EU will result in a Keynesian approach to government spending.

A major element to the ‘Brexit’ debate is that the UK should follow the Norway model who gets access to Earth’s largest single market without sacrificing its sovereignty. Innovation in Norway has not been limited, despite being separated from the EU as they are leading growth in health innovation.

The EU debate is very current, but the future of remaining is often ignored; many assuming few changes. As in 2017 the EU aims to open the Unified Patent Court, which The Register have claimed “will make it much easier for patent trolls (a company that specialises in suing legitimate innovative businesses) and corporations in the US to reach into the UK and strangle your startup at birth”.

So…?

We encourage you to go to the polls today regardless of whether you’re for Bremain or Brexit. Still unsure? Collider portfolio company Miappi are curating some of the social debate. Check that out here

rtobjects Partners with Drive Automotive Design Consultancy

LONDON, 20 June 2016

rtobjects, the visualisation start up, and Drive, the leading automotive design and visualisation studio, today announce their partnership.

Humans are intensely visual creatures, and better imagery delivers clear commercial benefit — both in speeding the design process and helping people research products before they buy them. But the nature of imagery online has not changed significantly in the last 20 years — websites typically just deliver pre-shot images or videos.

rtobjects has developed a ground-breaking technology to deliver personal interactive movie experiences into the web-browser on any device without the need for plug-ins or downloads.

Drive develops and delivers outstanding design and digital visualisations across a range of sectors, with a primary focus on automotive.

The partnership will allow the companies to deliver incredible cinematic and fully interactive visuals in the browser on PCs, tablets and smartphones.

This will allow their clients to conceive, create and deliver entirely new visual experiences on the devices that people already use as part of their day-to-day internet use.

For example, it will allow people to look around and configure a personalised version of a vehicle in real environments with photo-realistic detail, and then see that vehicle driving through any number of locations — desert, forest, city, or off-road. All delivered as movie-quality CGI into the consumer’s browser, and fully under the consumer’s control.

Chris Longmore, Director at Drive, commented: “We’ve worked with pretty much every visualisation tool you can think of, but rtobjects is really offering something new. We were impressed by the technology and the team, and want to work with them to bring completely new forms of visualisation to the market.”

Darren Poore, Visualisation Director at Drive, added: “Clients are constantly looking for more impressive, more immersive and more interactive visuals, and rtobjects deliver just that. And they do it on the devices that people already have — their desktops, tablets and mobiles. This partnership gives us direct access to a cutting edge technology and a significant competitive advantage.”

Craig Walmsley, Co-Founder of rtobjects stated: “Drive is one of the UK’s most respected design and visualisation studios — their track record of incredible work speaks for itself. Using our technology, we can now deliver these incredible visuals as part of a personal interactive movie experience. We are pleased and proud to partner with them — together we can realise our vision of making the Internet cinematic.”

ENDS

About rtobjects: rtobjects delivers personal interactive movie experiences in the browser so people can really see and experience things before they buy them. Combining the rich visual worlds of games and movies, with the interactivity of digital, rtobjects makes the Internet cinematic in the scope and quality of its visuals. The company was created by Craig Walmsley, first and founding Strategist at AKQA, and Ian Monaghan, Neil Hutchinson and Matt Rubin, formerly of Black Rock and Big Bit Games Studios.

www.rtobjects.com

About Drive: Drive has established an enviable reputation for providing quality design and visualisation services to major automotive manufacturers. Their Creative CGI Studio works with automotive brands and their advertising and marketing agencies to create emotive, visual content for advertising, PR, web and print.

www.drivecgi.co.uk

Top Cannes Lions tips for Founders

 

The advertising industry will be swarming the beach fronts of Cannes next week in the hopes of having their dreams fulfilled - taking home that golden Lion. And for first timers this can be an intimidating adventure. So we have compiled a list of things first-timers should know before hopping on the plane.

Prepare

Your prep for Cannes should have started three weeks ago. If you're just getting started, fear not. You can still make it a profitable experience. Set measurable and achievable KPIs for your trip. Be that a set number of meaningful connections, follow-up meetings or journalist encounters. Set up individual meetings with your target list of customers outside of the regularly scheduled Cannes conference. Do your research on the people you'd like to meet. Serendipity can go far, but being prepared for it will help you achieve results.

Look for connections everywhere

Chances are, 50% of the flight you're on are going to Cannes. Your job doesn't start just on arrival at the hotel, but just past security. Start by making small conversation with the person next to you on the flight. Find out what sessions they'll be going to, which parties and why they're going to be there. Maybe they'll even invite you to tag along!

Ask Questions, No Pitching

You’re going to meet a lot of people, some will be potential customers, others maybe even investors. Don’t put them on a pedestal. Be respectful and have your one-liner ready explaining how you might be able to help them solve their problem/challenge.

Think about the questions you’ll ask them before explaining what you do to better tailor your one-liner– are they a connector, a customer, or a potential investor? Remember to keep the pitching to a minimum – no one likes to be talked at. Brush up on your industry knowledge to make starting conversations flow more easily.

Sell Solutions

These people want solutions to existing problems, not products. They don’t care about your tech, they care about whether you can make the famous (we are in Cannes, dahling)! Tell them how you’ll be able to make them more money or save them a ton of it.

Hustle Your way In

Hustle – big time. This is where your preparation will come in to play. You’ll know exactly who you want to meet, and where to be prior to checking in for your flight. Have your business cards at the ready. Want to get into that exclusive party? Make sure you know who to ask about that. Can't decide between the sponsored beach, and going off with your newest pals to maybe get into that brand party? Choose wisely. Keep a level head and don't float away with the hype. Though do go with the flow.

Take cards

As they’re always handy, but there’s a high chance you’ll lose them. Use LinkedIn there and then rather exchange cards if you can – the internet doesn’t get lost as easily. How about that Cannes Connect app? Have you downloaded it yet?

Reach out

Don’t stay put in one place. People move around, and you might miss an opportunity by staying at that party for one more drink. Go with the crowd, but also know when it’s time to walk your own path through the festival. Set up a messenger group with friends before going down so you can rely on multiple sets of eyes to know what's going on.

Aqua, Snacks, Data

Dress for a 14 hour day filled with walking. Take everything you'll need to go from conferencing, to partying on a yacht. Bottles of water are always handy to refill, food will be fleeting when paid for, and expensive when it's out of your own pocket. And pay for those four days of data - wifi is reliable at best.

Sleep

Make sure you are well rested before heading to Cannes. You need to be on your best form. And be sure to get some sleep in Cannes. No one likes an early morning meeting where you’re still boozy from the night before.

Smile & Have Fun

You are in Cannes after all. Allow yourself to get wrapped up in the hype to get your adrenaline pumping, but keep your feet firmly planted on the ground. Enjoy the buzz of the industry celebs, but always keep your objectives in sight.