Tag: #sixtysecondstartup

Our latest #SixtySecondStartup is with Demos Co-founder of Blazon, a new social media service for startups. We spoke to him about why they set up the company, how they started to grow it and what effects Covid-19 has been having on their business.

Our interview with Demos:

What does your company do?

We are a social media services company to help startups be more active on social media channels with a low cost and flexible solution.

Why did you set up this company?

We were frustrated with the types of social media agencies out there not catering for startups. Solutions were expensive and not adaptive to the constant changes in a startup. We know what it’s like to build a startup and we want to champion startups in any way possible to give them a greater chance of success.

How did you get your first customer? 

While at an event trying to build another startup our first customer asked us who actually did our social media. When we told them, we did it all ourselves, they asked for our help because they loved our content. That was the catalyst to start a new service targeting startups just like them.

We knew we were onto something when:

We started asking startups if a service like this was available would they use it. When they said yes and then signed up when it was available, three of them in just two weeks we knew we were onto something.

Our business model: 

Startups £150 per month for us to post across their social media platforms regularly, engaging with their followers and producing 1 x blog per month for them.

We think that there’s growth in this sector because:

Social media is used by almost half of the planet. Many people often look to social media to validate a business or support them if they are customers. In order for that to happen a startups content has to be interesting and engaging for followers. There are so many startups who just do not have the time to get involved in the engagement as they are busy building their startup.

How has coronavirus impacted your business?

As our business is all about other startups, we’re governed pretty much by their business activity during this time. Some of our clients, particularly those based in countries or localities worse hit by the virus, have understandably slowed down their efforts during this time, so we’ve been making sure their social media reflects that and is kept managed despite everything else – but there are other founders we work with who have flourished despite the crisis and their startups are continuing to gain traction and grow. We’re flexible in everything that we do for our clients, so we’ve altered our business accordingly during this time – offering support and guidance to those startups who need it and reacting to the requirements we’re faced with.

How are you coping with lockdown? What is your strategy?

We’re actually really grateful that we’ve been able to trade at all during this time, as we realise not every business has been so fortunate. Our team work remotely anyway, so social distancing hasn’t affected us in that respect (plus we’re already firm friends with Zoom and other work-from-home resources!), plus working with startups at different stages in different sectors means we’re already used to adapting to different circumstances. Lockdown for our team has involved various strategies, depending on the client we work for and events going on.

So, whether that’s creating new content for social media, filming new videos to offer advice and support to the community, writing blog articles on current trending topics, strategising new ideas for when ‘normal life’ resumes or anything else that’s required of us – we’ve been non-stop! Lockdown has its fair amount of challenges as both our co-founders are working parents, but we’ve been able to support each other and our team and make the most of the situation in hand.

Is there anything your business is doing to help in your community or with the wider crisis?

Most of our time ordinarily is spent chatting with other founders, and during this time that hasn’t changed. We still talk to startups, about everything to do with their journey – their concerns, their challenges, their triumphs, etc. But we’ve enjoyed, particularly more so now, being able to offer them advice, tips or find ways to connect them with people within our network. Some people just need a sounding board, and founders are no different – talking through a situation with someone who just “gets it” can often give rise to new ideas or help solve problems. 

Our regular features, #startupshoutout and #just50, create opportunities for us to champion startups and give them a bit of free promo on our social media pages – and during this time, we’ve tried to ramp that up. It’s hard for some businesses to attract those customers when so much has shut down, so anything we can do to give them a voice, we’re more than happy to do so. The most recent feature we posted was a link to the Save Our Startups petition that is challenging the UK Government to support and save startups from collapse. It’s important to get startup businesses thinking as a community and helping each other – it’s the only way you can grow and economy to flourish.

For more tips on dealing with the impacts of coronavirus, visit our Startup Survival Guide.

This week’s #SixtySecondStartup is with Giuliano, the Co-founder of Get Groomed. He started Get Groomed with his Co-founder Sabrina after moving to London and realising how inconvenient it was to get an appointment at a barber shop. Spotting a gap in the market, he started Get Groomed which allows people to book a barber to their home or office. Since starting 2 years ago, Get Groomed has now rolled out across London.

Our interview with Giuliano:

What does your company do?

We connect mobile barbers with customer. Customers can book barbers to come to their home, office, a hotel or where ever they may be. We also provide male beauty services for weddings and events. 

Why did you set up this company?

When I arrived in London, I tried out different barber shops and salons and noticed some issues with them. Most shops are only open between 10am-5pm, making it difficult for customers to find the time to go. If they go at the weekend, there is often a long waiting time. I also found it difficult to know if a barber would be any good and able to do the hairstyle I was after. My Co-founder Sabrina mentioned that there are apps for women to book hair appointments, however we realised that there was a gap in the market for men. We built a prototype, hired a few barbers and found customers very quickly.

We knew we were on to something when:

A few months after we started, we got approached by a famous Fintech startup to provide male beauty services at one of their events. This was despite us having no marketing budget, and not sending a single email or doing any cold calls. It showed us that there was demand at a corporate level.

Our business model:

Our business model is commission-based. It helps us to keep working hard to connect barbers with customers: the more money they make, the more money we make.

The biggest mistake I’ve made is:

Establishing a strategy to increase revenue at all costs. It might be attractive for people who can burn a lot of money each month, but it is not sustainable over the long term. We believe in lean ways to improve the business: we are now profitable every month and we are growing every month.

We think there’s growth in this sector because:

One word: convenience. We have a lot of customers contacting us because they can’t find the time to go to a salon or it’s inconvenient for them to go as they have caring duties or are ill. In the same way that there was a boom in food delivery services in the last decade, customers are looking for on-demand, high quality male beauty and grooming services from the comfort of their own home.

We worked with AIN because:

We have been running our platform for 2 years and we are operating across London. So we are confident that this is the right time to scale-up and expand to more cities in the UK. We are looking to partner with forward-thinking investors who share our vision and AIN is one of the best tools to connect with those kind of partners.

Get started today and view pitches from entrepreneurs around the world.

In this week’s #SixtySecondStartup, we spoke to Will Ross who is the Founder of Tendo, a skills passport for frontline workers. Will started Tendo to make frontline work more secure for employees and to make it easier for companies to hire, retain and train their workforce.

Our interview with Will:

What does your company do?

Tendo allows frontline workers to generate workplace credentials while they do their jobs, building a verified, portable history of skills and hours at the end of each week.

Why did you set up this company?

We started Tendo to make frontline work more certain. For the worker, this means improving their long-term economic security. For the business, certainty comes through having a loyal, dependable workforce and an ability to encourage employees to learn new skills.

What is your business model?

We bill businesses on a per user basis. This monthly charge is a way to offset the cost of workforce churn.

We think that there’s growth in this sector because: 

Frontline workers remain offline. By bringing them online, visibility of supply provides a major step forwards. We also consider this workforce to contain a massive amount of untapped operational and creative potential – we aim to empower.

How did you get your first customer?

By building a feature that removed an administrative overhead for a training provider.

We knew we were onto something when:

When employees indicated that they would be motivated by having a trusted way to generate and retain a record of their work reputation.

Our most effective marketing channel has been: 

Going to events where we can speak directly with decision makers.

The biggest mistake that I’ve made is: 

Spending time marketing to cities where Tendo can’t have a repeatable physical presence.

What we look for when recruiting: 

A willingness to experiment and an inclination to speak more in terms of immediate actions than long-term plans.

We worked with AIN because:

Angel Investment Network provide a clear way to signal company type to a list of investors, ensuring that angels can search for early stage companies where they can significantly influence growth.

Get started today and view pitches from a huge range of entrepreneurs around the world.

This month our sixty second interview is with Firdaus Mogul, Founder of Check An Invoice. Check An Invoice uses AI and machine learning to identify invoice fraud. Firdaus set up this business after one of his friends was a victim of invoice fraud and he realised that there were no products addressing this problem.

Our interview with Firdaus:

What does your company do?

We identify and prevent invoice fraud using the latest advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Why did you set up this company?

When I ran my own B2B payment business, which I sold in June 2019, many of our customers spoke about instances of invoice fraud. On researching, we could not find any companies that offered solutions to this problem. So we decided to launch our own SaaS application that addresses the needs of both small and large businesses.

We knew we were onto something when:

Every prospect we met and investor we spoke to started complementing our market positioning and how the product is addressing an unsolved need.

How did you get your first customer?

Like all startups, our first customer was an acquaintance, who found the solution very helpful for his business as it reduced the manual workload of checking the invoices

Our most effective marketing channel has been:

Forming partnerships with accountancy firms, FinTechs and banks. These partners then offer our solution to small and large companies as a value added service on top of what they already offer.

The biggest mistake that I’ve made is: 

Assuming that there was already a good understanding of invoice fraud among SMEs. Although our research suggested that over 50% of SMEs are affected invoice fraud, when we went out and spoke to people, we discovered that awareness levels were relatively low.

We think that there’s growth in this sector because: 

Invoice fraud results in over $26bn of losses worldwide (Source FBI) yet, there are very few solutions which address this issue. Our platform operates globally giving us the ideal first mover advantage.

We worked with AIN because:

We worked with AIN because they have the largest and most engaged network of angels.

Get started today and view pitches from a huge range of entrepreneurs around the world.

Welcome to the first in the series of our #SixtySecondStartup blog. Each month we will be profiling a different founder with some quick fire questions.

This week we are talking to Julian Hall, Founder of Ultra Education C.I.C. Ultra Education teaches young people aged 7-18 entrepreneurial skills to help them grow or start a business. Through their app they ensure that all young people, regardless of their background, have access to the tools needed to develop their entrepreneurial skills.

Our interview with Julian:

What does your company do?

We teach entrepreneurship to kids aged from 7-18 years old. We have developed an A.I. powered chatbot that can deliver entrepreneurial education to kids at scale through a native mobile app.

Why did you set up this company?

We believe that entrepreneurship is a great vehicle to help increase the life chances of children and young people. It helps them to develop life and work skills.

We knew we were onto something when:

A parent told us that their child never concentrates in school but we had captured their imagination in less that 20 mins. 

How did you get your first customer?

Word of mouth! I told the story about how my own daughter picked up entrepreneurial skills by watching me working at home. After we realised these skills could be taught and started sharing that idea, we got immediate demand from both parents and schools.

Our business model:

Is a subscription based mobile app powered by A.I. and supported by human mentors in the chat. 

Our most effective marketing channel has been:

Word of mouth through social media. We promote the successes of our ‘kidpreneurs’ and which other people also share on their social media channels.

The biggest mistake that I’ve made is: 

Not growing our team early enough and not capturing the impact of our work.

We think that there’s growth in this sector because: 

More and more kids want to work for themselves and have ambitions that schools are unable to currently support on their own. Entrepreneurship is becoming common place, but kids and young people still don’t have access to on demand support. 

We worked with AIN because:

We believe that angels are not just thinking about a monetary return but also a social return.

Get started today and view pitches from a huge range of entrepreneurs around the world.