4 Startups To Make A Splash In 2019
From hiring Instagram influencers to decentralising tech talent, these new startups are diving into the deep end. But have they got their armbands on?
Shoreditch’s most popular monthly pitch event gives early-stage entrepreneurs the chance to sound-out their business plans and respond to a tricky Q&A from fellow tech enthusiasts.
February event featured five diverse startups, including an app for securely hiring Instagram influencers and a decentralised platform to recruit high-quality developers.
Let’s take a look at each startup and then reveal what you can learn from why they are set to progress in 2019.
Hiring Instagram Influencers
Hiring Instagram influencers to promote a brand is seriously big business: $2.38 billion a year, as per latest stats. But as something still in it’s relative infancy, it has the air of the Wild West about it. Influencers pick their fees out of thin air, payments go missing and promised posts don’t make it. That’s why, founder of XPO APP, Lotanna Ezeike, might be on the cusp of something extraordinary.
Ezeike says, “XPO takes the risk out of hiring Instagram influencers”.
XPO provides a secure Escrow service to its users. This means XPO holds the brand’s payments in a wallet and only releases it when influencer completes the promotion. The app also makes it easier to scout influencers. Once contacted through the app, the influencer only has 24 hours to respond. Otherwise, the request is automatically declined. This time limit gives influencers a sense of urgency and increases their response rate: something novel in a world where influencers are literally swamped with requests and messages.
XPO is only going into its second quarter and is at public beta stage.
Decentralising Tech Talent
Indorse is an Ethereum-based skills assessment platform that helps tech companies recruit high-quality developers through a peer review service. Essentially, Indorse believes that a coder is only as good as their code — not their CV — so they built a platform to uncover thousands of bedroom coders and help land them amazing jobs.
CEO Gaurang Torvekar tells the story of Arif, an Uber driver in his native Singapore who became one of the leading Blockchain developers in the world.
“Arif did not have a degree in Computer Science,” says Torvekar.
“Hence, he couldn’t validate his case: he couldn’t get a job as a coder”.
But when Arif submitted proof of his code anonymously to the Indorse platform, a group of randomly selected users evaluated his code in return for coins.
Indorse is decentralising tech talent by empowering people from disadvantaged backgrounds — who don’t have access to expensive degrees — to compete at the highest level.
Insuring Against Cyber Attacks
“This is the moment that you’ve all been waiting for”, jokes Sioma founder, Alex Margolin: “a pitch about insurance.”
But don’t be fooled. Insurance can be (kind of) interesting. Especially when Margolin’s talking about the genuine risks digital startups face from cyber attacks.
The fact is: if a hacker wants to get into your system, they will. No firewall is going to stop a determined hacker. And if your business harvests people’s personal data it is ethically conscientious to ensure against this being breached. Moreover, if the data is compromised, the business owner is accountable and fines can be high.
Thankfully, this isn’t a scaremongering speech, just genuine insight on something we need more info on.
Margolin says “GDPR is the worst acronym in the English language”.
If you work with data and GDPR means absolutely nothing to you, it’s probably best to brush up on your General Data Protection Regulation.
Happy Reading!
Redistributing Library Books
What’s this: two young entrepreneurs building a business relying on books and people’s love of long-form reading?
Bookb founders Jibril Gudal and Abdikhaliq Ige deliver a breakneck presentation that explains their two weeks old MVP in under two minutes. They are recruiting product from local libraries. And finding customers happy to pay £6.99 a month for up to eight books delivered to their door.
In truth, BookB has righteous competition from all the other subscription models in your home (Netflix, Spotify, etc), and the services that are digitalising storytelling (notably Kindle and Audible), but for a busy family, this service could be a godsend.
Gudal says, “As we’ve seen through the Netflix model: greater convenience means greater consumption. We believe the same applies to books”.
Indeed, arguably the most challenging thing about hiring library books is going to an actual library and then avoiding late returns. With BookB’s free pick up service, this headache is remedied all together.
Plus, their model of ‘redistributing’ library books provides a small windfall to the libraries who are credited by the council every time a book is borrowed.
And saving local libraries is a very good thing, right?
What You Can Learn From These Startups
- XPO Founder Lotanna Ezeike comes from a finance background (which always helps when starting a business), but, crucially, he is also an Instagram influencer. Therefore he knows the market. Being embedded in the industry you are disrupting is the smart move for any entrepreneur.
- Most people are quite suspicious of ICO’s, but as Indorse raised $9 million in their 2017 ICO, and have since acquired 46,000 users, they have clearly captured the imagination of their target audience. Despite how this profound use of blockchain will generate some inevitable backlash from the powers-that-be, with that sort of user base, Indorse is only set to grow.
- “The world’s most valuable resource is no longer oil, but data” reported The Economist, in 2017. Insuring this resource is therefore of paramount importance and as so many people are unaware of its value — and, therefore, it’s risk — Sioma are perfectly placed to lend their expertise.
- The boys at Bookb are in a highly competitive environment. However, as a business model that relies on an existing product, they have very little overheads: literally only delivery fees! That means, with enough subscriptions, their margins could be very healthy indeed.
Craig is a writer for Metier Digital, a London-based company that helps founders build cost effective apps and grow digital businesses. If you’d like to get in touch, email him at craig@metierdigital.com
