How this Forbes 30 Under 30 Winner Is Bringing New Technology To The Sponsorship Industry
From humble beginnings, Brizi Co-Founder and CEO Anna Hu has forged an entrepreneurial path, that has led her to the excitement of the sports industry and capitalizing on fans’ desire to commemorate and share special moments with family and friends.
After Hu completed her studies in mathematics at the University of Waterloo, she signed on to work with tech giant Apple followed by Microsoft. But after a stint in the corporate world, the entrepreneurial dream pulled Hu into the unknown when she and her co-founder launched Brizi (pronounced Breezy) in 2014.
Many entrepreneurs will tell you that their product or service started as one idea, but with time, and many variations, find that it is better suited to solve a different problem (like Twitter, that started as an SMS service and quickly evolved into a dominant social platform). Brizi is just the same. The idea started out as “the world’s first social drone” where users could direct a drone over to themselves with their phones to take an aerial selfie. But Hu says they were too early to market in such a nascent industry, so they posed themselves the question, “what is a more conservative application of this technology that we brought to life?”
Fortunately for sports fans everywhere, Hu and the Brizi team put on their entrepreneur hats and pitched variations of the product to dozens of prospects, including sports teams. One variation, a stationary robotic camera system that would swivel over to your seat in the stadium, caught the attention of three teams who agreed to be beta customers.
Once BriziCams are set up, Brizi comes to life on users’ smartphones where they see a livestream of themselves and control the BriziCam to capture photos that are sent straight to their phones. High in the sky, everyone looks up and the BriziCam produces a hi-resolution photo ready for social sharing. The joy comes from giving fans the excitement of being on the big screen without waiting on luck, but instead is instantly available to anyone with a ticket.
But Brizi isn’t just for the fans, sponsors and venues reap value too. “We aim to help businesses create an ongoing relationship with the consumer; but built around these moments that [consumers are] going to take home as memorabilia, that are going to resonate with them.” By creating branded photo overlays that become a part of the memory, sponsors are able to “amplify their exposure in a venue in a very authentic and organic fashion.”
And venues find value in the consumer data that is collected in the process of using Brizi. “When users opt in their information, it results in hundreds if not thousands of leads…personalizing their direct marketing and generating ticket sales leads and measuring the impact of the sponsorship asset as a whole.” This data is highly impactful because today venues can only identify a small percentage of the fans in their venues. When a group of fans attend a game, perhaps only one person provided their data in order to purchase the tickets. And perhaps one or more of those tickets were sold on the secondary market. By gathering data in real time through in-seat photography, Brizi is able to produce accurate information about the person presently sitting in the seat.
While Brizi has found its home in the sports industry, it certainly won’t be its only home. Hu mentioned that they’re constantly looking for new ways to use the technology and integrate it “everywhere that moments are worth capturing.” Already offered in more than seven countries and boasting users from over 95 countries, Brizi is on its way to being a technology staple at venues across the globe.
An entrepreneur’s journey is never complete. And if you’re seeking an entrepreneurial path, Hu gave the advice, “It’s all about being resilient and adaptive to new data. When your business is not growing at the rate you think it should, don’t be fearful of scrapping everything you thought you knew and making a pivot.”
Recently, the Forbes 30 Under 30 Class of 2018 was released, and Hu was honored as a recipient of this prestigious award. As one of 600 recipients, Hu is recognized as one of the brightest young entrepreneurs, trailblazers, and rising stars.
Congratulations, Anna, on this well-deserved award!
