CrowdEmotion & Brexit

Like most businesses, I wrote a letter to my team and shareholders on the impact of Brexit for our 3 year old emotion intelligence company. The reality is that any new trade agreement will take 2–5 years to impact. We are used to facing change and iterating, so that’s what we’ll do. Not much changes.

Short term — we’ll sell.

With a weak pound, it makes our services more accessible abroad. A good time to lock in strategic partnerships and rates.

We’ll also seek investment.

UK investors are relatively inactive on AI investment (see here) but strong on AI companies, talent and acquisitions (ex. Deepmind, Magic Pony). A volatile pound with an early stage, breakeven company like CrowdEmotion provides an opportunity for investors to own a primary market play on emotion artificial intelligence. It also provides a good opportunity for strategic investment and partnerships.

Mid Term — we’ll expand.

18 to 24 months will be the earliest that Brexit could negatively impact our company if we stick to relying on EU talent. A Brexit will reduce the amount of talent moving to the UK because the pound is weaker and the governmental system is out of tune with its people. So, we’ll need to work with our investors to expand into the EU market and abroad. However, a strained EU relationship strengthens Commonwealth and non-european ties.

We may need to move employees who are foreign as well, but that is unlikely.

This is no different than our plans anyway, we’ll just need to adapt for changes in EU trade agreements.

Long Term — we’ll move.

The plan was a UK IPO. Unfortunately, the government and people are not aligned. This instability threatens the protections, investor and FTSE strength needed for an IPO strategy.

We’ll simply need to start exploring relocation options with other country trade entities unless we can get some guarantees on immigration and public re-investment.

Whilst a consideration, this will have little impact immediately.

Final Thoughts

Personally, the challenge is interesting and there are opportunities for CrowdEmotion and other entrepreneurs who operate well in the face of fear driven economies.

There is also an observation on our beloved democratic system. I very much believe in democracy. It, however, fails to differentiate campaigning vs governance.

Perhaps that’s the next challenge to take on. In the meantime — stay calm, sell on.

Matt Celuszak CEO CrowdEmotion