Campus Quick Fire!

Ian Napier and Craig Cooper — TalkBe

1.) Who are you and what do you do? — Ian Napier and Craig Cooper, we are Talkbe which is CRM/CMS tool for messaging apps like WhatsApp. We help media brands like Man City, The Mirror, Vogue use these platforms to engage millennials.

2.) How long have you been doing what you’re doing? — We formed the company in March 2015. We came up with the concept in mid-June and launched mid-August.

3.) What brought you to Campus North? — Ignite accelerator. We stayed because: Campus North was the best community we’d worked in. The overheads are considerably lower than somewhere like London which is a big positive as well.

4.) What’s your favourite thing about Campus North? — The building, I love the space.

5.) Have you been to any of the events at Campus North? — Which are your favourites and why? — Coding class with Phil Jeffes. I don’t know how to code, Phil runs a 101 course on html/css. He does this off his own back and doesn’t get paid. one of the many people in Campus North who have this mentality and make it what it is. Do Digital drinks class as an event? They’re pretty good. Potlatch — which is a monthly get together where everyone brings in a dish, one of my favourites because I get to try out everyones cooking skills.

6.) What gets you through a tough day? The Dart board/ Brownies from bunker next door

7.) What are your top tips for: sparking creativity; staying motivated; working fitness and health into your day; getting through your to-do list; problem solving (choose one, or two, or as many as you like!) -

• Sparking creativity — go for a walk at lunch time preferably a park.
• Motivation — seeing what other people achieve in this building, working fitness and health — bunker does the health bit for me with their Zenboxes
• Fitness- I try to do at least 20 mins first thing in the morning of some form of exercise, it gets it out the way and makes me feel like I’m being productive
• To-do-list — make the list, turn everything else off for 20 mins. Once you’ve done that you should be into a flow and find it easy to keep going.
• Problem solving — surround myself with people a lot smarter than me.

8.) What was your favourite project or greatest achievement of 2015?- Raising our seed round the day before Xmas.

9.) What are you most looking forward to in the next 6 or 12 months? — Hitting a million messages sent a day. We’re a long way off but we’re going in the right direction.

10.) Campus North is all about community and knowledge sharing — what topic should people pick your brain about? — Bouncing around early stage ideas, whilst someone is still trying to find product market fit. I made a lot of mistakes during this period and some of what I learnt is transferable.