Presenting the 10 finalists for Vator Splash London!

Bubbles Online Services Ltd

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on October 18, 2013

For videos about Bubbles please see below

Background

Bubbles is a marketplace created around a proprietary matching engine. Its core solution and ‘problem solver’ is ‘time’, utilising the time we are not able to search whether we are ‘on’ or offline, bringing results in the form of products or services to significantly reduce the overal time spent searching but with features that dramatically improve accuracy in finding the right product (or service) at the right price.

It is being rolled out in 3 stages starting with the availability of products, followed by services and thereafter combined with an application developer store (similar to an App store) realising the hundreds of thousands of programmers and their solutions through 3^rd party applications. 

For the retailer Bubbles unique 24/7 matching process delivers unprecedented product exposure, for the shopper a unique, entirely intuitive and seamless answer to the rapidly growing need for personal search. For the advertiser Bubbles is combining product and services into a global marketplace with able to deliver highly targeted solutions that in turn will herald a break-through opportunity in customer acquisition and sales.

Introduction

Bubbles is a virtual personal shopper for consumers who buy online. Based on what’s being searched it works in the background, continuously looking for better products and deals on behalf of the shopper even after they log off. Results are then delivered to the user at their convenience. As the shopper’s search remains live in the system, the search is constantly being matched to products ensuring buyers never miss a deal and retailers never lose a sale.

Bubbles’ solution binds commerce covering B2B and B2C. It is global, scalable, substantial in size and has a revenue potential worth hundreds of billions of dollars.

Consumers

For shoppers, whether purchasing as a consumer or business, the problem is the time and effort required to ‘shop’, i.e. to find the right product at the right price and to make sure that it is available. Consumers have come to expect instant gratification and have little or no time to browse, manually filter results, or to compare and contrast a raft of products against one another. And yet most fear and will regularly miss out on a deal.

Bubbles has solved these issues through a proprietary process allowing consumers to shop without the need to be actively browsing online for hours on end – we call it ‘Search without Searching’. In essence, Bubbles solves the limitations of traditional search whilst retaining its helpful elements. Using Bubbles delivers a faster, easier and crucially, a far more engaging and enjoyable shopping experience than the currently available alternatives.

Retailers

For retailers, the Bubbles service ensures that their products are available and matched 24/7. In other words the product is brought to the search (term) so the problem of missing a potential sale is averted.    

Bubbles instantly matches products (to searches) that may even have only just been added into stock, whose prices have changed, or where deals have been created. These revisions to products that impact buying decisions would be lost on any other platform, where the search ends once the user logs off.

Advertisers

For advertisers, Bubbles will be in a position to provide trend and data analysis showing the complete shopping journey from start to finish. This will include invaluable information showing when, where and what influences buying decisions. Something which occurs during a typical shopping experience. We learn about our search from the results received and if these are imperfect we’ll narrow down or amend our search terms (e.g. adding a brand name or specific feature). On other shopping platforms each amendment would constitute a new search and no trackable connection would exist. With Bubbles, this journey or ‘quest’ will be monitored from start to end on the platform, providing a phenomenally marketable insight into shopping behaviour.

Monetisation

The primary revenue stream is a sales commission of 5% plus sales tax on the total transaction value (including delivery). This is charged to retailers at the point of sale.

Advertising, cross-promotion and complementary marketing with and between products and services offer one of the most significant revenue streams for Bubbles. With features that include, ‘Shoppers Paradise’, ‘Daily Deal’, ‘When it’s gone... it’s gone!’ and ‘The 60 minute deal’ Bubbles will be able to fine-focus marketing messages to buyers throughout the entire shopping process, including prior to the point of decision making, at the point of buying and post-purchase. This degree of interaction has never been accomplished by any other marketing agency.

Additionally, there will be significant value in the data that Bubbles will collate around consumer behaviour, buying habits and trend predictions. Bubbles will track, monitor and report the entire shopping process from start to end. Analysis will be available on what influenced buyers to move interest from one product to another, what shaped their decisions, how and why they altered their search terms and ultimately what level of incentivisation, if any, was used to drive the purchase. This is highly valuable data that will have a direct impact on product development and marketing.

Team

Bubbles was founded by CEO Julian Fisher who launched the UK’s first internet exhibition in 1995 which he sold to IDG. Just as smartphones were taking hold he developed Kwickee, Europe’s first mobile publishing platform, raising €1m, exiting to BNP Paribas.

Julian is supported by CTO Martin Adams with over 10 years of technical development experience with a focus on user experience, web architecture & software development. Martin was previously a software engineer at Ericsson and IBM.

Alex Azarov, Head of Development - 10 years IT development experience, a degree in Computer Sciences.

Anton Shabanov, Lead Developer 7 years development experience with a strong relational database skill set, “big data”, essential for Bubbles.

Mandy Cornick, Product Promotions Manager - 10 years’ experience in frontline retail management.

BUBBLES Advisory Board

Scott McGinley, Dalepak - formerly Operations Director at Play.com, is the eCommerce Director at Dalepak second only in fulfilment distribution services to Amazon.

Robert Jarrett, BIRA - Board Director at BIRA, the British Independent Retailers Association (7,500 retail members).

Mike Fauconnier-Bank - angel investor, previously at Citigroup where he advised clients on transactions in the Consumer, Retail and Leisure industries. 

Sara Galloway - former senior buisness analyst eSellerPro (UK's largest independent ecommerce business management provider)

Traction achieved

Bubbles v.2.0 has been operating in beta since end August 2013. Since then the team’s focus has been on onboarding merchants to the platform. A limited run of social media campaigns to attract consumer activity and feedback, for test purposes, was highly successful.

- 175+ merchants onboarded in less than 2 months, offering over 300,000 products

- High merchant demand with 300+ retailers in pipeline offering over 2 million products

- Average of 20,000 unique page views per week pre-promotion

- Numerous partnerships agreed with major players in the e-commerce and fulfilment space, including 

eSellerPro 
3P-Logistics
Dalepak (video)

VIDEOS












 

TwoTen

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on October 24, 2013

We provide realtime guidance for younger children browsing the Internet, ensuring they only encounter age-appropriate content, yet never stopping them from exploring. Just like the expanding boundaries parents and teachers put around children as they grow up in the offline world, but online.

Browser, operating system and device agnostic; whatever the child is using to browse, TwoTen is always looking after them.

Thumbtack.com

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on September 18, 2009

Thumbtack helps you accomplish the personal projects that are central to your life.

Whether you need to paint your home, learn a new language, or plan your daughter's birthday party, Thumbtack is the easiest and most dependable way to hire the right professional for your projects.

Get started by answering a few questions about your specific needs. Within hours, Thumbtack will introduce you to several available and qualified professionals. Compare custom quotes, reviews, and profiles and hire when you’re ready.

By connecting customers like you to the right pros, we enable independent professionals to grow their businesses and do what they love. We’re proud that many of our pros have doubled or even tripled the size of their businesses through Thumbtack.

Thumbtack is available nationwide for more than 700 project categories.

SQR Systems Limited

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on October 25, 2013

SQR Systems is a cybersecurity company that develops encryption technology for secure wireless communication over low bandwidth networks to prevent cyberattacks.

THE OPPORTUNITY

The increasing use of wireless communication devices, cloud computing and data centres have presented a new frontier for cybercriminals.

The use of such a variety of devices and networks causes two key problems; (1) current encryption solutions leave security loopholes by generating decrypted data at certain points in the network, and (2) the variation in devices and networks makes it difficult to ensure a consistent user experience.

We have developed a new technology that allows data to be adapted in encrypted form to suit the requirements of each user, regardless of their network connection or device. Our technology consistently secures data from the instant it is created to the instant it is consumed, and ensures the best user experience on a range of devices from desktop PCs to smartphones over a variety of networks such as WiFi, 3G or 4G. By shifting the emphasis from protecting the network links to protecting the data itself, we drastically reduce the number of points in the network at risk of cyberattacks.

THE TECHNOLOGY

Our proprietary technology is implemented in software. The four key features are:

Traxo

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on August 13, 2012

Traxo is the world’s most advanced personal travel organizer.  

The free service automatically detects and aggregates travel information, including: itineraries, miles, points, and elite status, directly from over 200 different travel websites, and accepts travel confirmation emails from over 1,000 travel providers, organizing everything into a single, comprehensive travel dashboard  -- essentially a next-gen Tripit or Mint.com for travel.  

Traxo users become part of a smart, savvy online travel community and are rewarded with rich and informed social travel experiences. Conceived by founders Andres Fabris, Andy Chen and Richard Pendergast, Traxo’s executive team is comprised of business veterans with years of industry experience at companies such as Sabre and Travelocity.

For more information, please visit www.traxo.com. 

Check out Splash NY Dec 2012 Winner, Traxo's presentation

ringpay ltd

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on October 24, 2013

at a glance (video) 

DIGITAL POCKET MONEY

With our API you can replace cash to purchase anything in physical shops, digital shops and vending machines not necessarily connected to Internet.

Transaction is quick, simple and safe. 
You can integrate our API into any thrird party app and into POS/CASH REGISTER software.

Flexibility and openness are our keys to distribution.

BUSINESS SUMMARY

RINGPAY has a patent pending technology for mobile proximity  commerce. It aims to replace cash in everyday transaction reducing counter time and eliminating coins in everyone pockets.

Our solution is suitable for closed loop circuits based on cash and credit cards but it is also suitable for open loop circuits adding bank accounts as a funding source. It uses barcodes and it's suitable for any kind of shop, for e-commerce, for mass retailers and even vending machines.

PRODUCTS AND SERVICES

Our technology can even be used as a complete mobile payment solution thanks to our own APP. Otherwise our API will allow any integration into third-paties APPs or appliances such as cash registers.

Advantages in app usage are reduced counter time (14" vs 30" with pos and much more with cash) and a new communication channel with existing and new customers since we are transforming a blind payment tool into a shared interactive channel.

TARGET MARKET UK 2015

mobile proximity commerce 2016

€5-11bn transactions in Italy

>£5bn transactions in UK (assumed)

48% CAGR

65M smartphones in Italy

69M smartphones in UK

DISTRIBUTION CHANNELS

Direct
We’ll develop our own “shells” (stereotype APPs) to let people use RINGPAY for specific purposes. We used the word shell to identify the interaction between our core technology (API) and the ergonomics we may craft around it for every different needs and/or profile.  As a start we are going to deliver 2 shells for 2 of the most suitable sectors we individuated: coffee shops and charities. The latters will be contacted by our social partner while coffee shops will be contacted using multilevel marketing and targeted events.

Marketplace - Crowdsourcing
our technology will be distributed using a marketplace where developers can download templates (shells), customize them and resell the result (their own service APPs). Retailers who just want to use the RINGPAY as a payment tool can download our general APP from our marketplace.
They can also choose a shell available on the marketplace.
Finally they have the option to ask a developer to customize a shell for their own use and needs.

Resellers
We’ll partner with software houses responsible of retailers software to integrate our technology into their products.

BUSINESS MODEL

We provide the app for free both to merchant and customers and we charge a transaction fee. To spread it quickly we partner with counters software houses, marketers and organizations that have high leverage on end users (e.g. charities). Our model is based on revenue sharing.

REVENUE MODEL

Freemium model with try and buy formula and transaction fee.
After a small initial amount of free transactions we charge a small percentage on each sale.

COMPETITORS

There are some general purpose mobile wallet such as O2 wallet or Barclays Pingit. The most similar product, though not yet present in UK, is cashcloud.  

We are different in terms of: mass customization, cash management and superior ux.

COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGES

• Usability (the real key to success of any mobile payment app);
• Patent on the user experience;
• Added value for merchants in terms of loyalty;
•  Added value for customers in terms of cash reduction and direct discounts;
• regulations: our model is compliant with EU Payment Service Directive.
• customization: instead of being a one-fit-for-all solution we provide various blends for different needs.
• Communication: since we are a API we can vehicle in it communications feature such loyalty, promotions, messages.

UXCam

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on October 23, 2013

Getable

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on September 18, 2009

Meet your mobile toolbox. Getable is like a remote control for equipment management. We let construction professionals order and manage equipment from their smartphone. We let rental providers increase overall utilization of their assets. The company serves the tool & equipment rental industry, a $32B space that is projected to grow to $46B by 2016.

Glipho

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on October 22, 2013

Glipho is a social platform for long-text bloggers who have found it difficult to achieve their desired audience and engagement, or who have been disenchanted by the complexity and isolation of existing blogging platforms.

Answering the needs of bloggers in the social age, Glipho offers a user-friendly platform with community-oriented features. Bloggers find the audience and traction they want thanks to our unique integration of: social connectivity, a simple interface, SEO optimization, and the fact that Glipho is also a content destination.

Glipho's concept has been proven by our high levels of engagement and the hundreds of endorsements from press and users across a myriad of blogs and social media sites.

Writing on the internet can feel like an incredibly isolated experience despite the fact that billions of people do it every day. Most bloggers struggle to find an audience for their posts and, if they do, need to put nearly as much time into promotion and design as they do into writing. It’s frustrating, disappointing, and lonely.

Glipho was created to answer this problem.

It combines a blogging platform with a social network approach, providing its writers with a built-in audience and easier engagement. So how does it do this?

Creation of great content is easy. The desk, with integration into other photo and video sites, enables beautifully annotated articles to be created and published. On publishing, the articles can then be shared to Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter all at once, at the click of a button.

Not only is writing hassle-free, but finding new content to read is easy too. From personally-curated feeds of writers or topics, to viewing anything and everything written on Glipho, you have a range of reading options.

Finding out more about writers is as simple as looking at their profile. Here all content they have created, followers, and people they follow can be found. Glipho believes that it should not be an isolated island in the social network world, so any other social networks a writer associates to their profile can be accessed from here.

With the release of the Glipho mobile app for Android and iOS users can read and interact with all the content in the platform from their Smartphone.

Currently in beta stage, the ability to publish posts directly from the Glipho App will be rolled out in the next few weeks.

Jukedeck

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on October 23, 2013

Jukedeck provides unique, personalised music at the touch of a button. Our technology composes original music based on a user's settings, giving video creators, games developers and other users a simple way of sourcing music. Our mission is to give every experience the perfect soundtrack.

Rackspace

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on April 24, 2008

Rackspace is a recognized leader in the IT hosting market. We deliver enterprise-level managed services to businesses of all sizes and kinds around the world. Serving more than 14,000 customers in eight data centers worldwide, Rackspace integrates the industry's best technologies and practices for each customer's specific need and delivers it as a service via the company's promise of Fanatical Support®. We serve as an extension of our customers' IT departments, enabling them to focus on their core business. We got started in 1998 and since then Rackspace has grown more than 50 percent a year. There are currently 2,000 Rackers around the world serving our customers.

Udemy

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on October 21, 2009

Udemy is a website that enables anyone to teach and learn online. Udemy tries to democratize online education by making it fast, easy and free to create online courses. Udemy is an open platform, so anyone can build an online course by posting videos, presentations, writing blog posts, or hosting live virtual classroom sessions.

Udemy tries to solve a simple problem: there are millions of smart people in the world (authors, speakers, coaches, trainers, subject matter experts and teachers) who want to teach over the internet. Currently, it costs $10,000 to create a website to teach, and there are thousands of instructors doing this (we've talked to them; they hate it). We provide instructors with the ability to create their own course without any up-front costs. That way, they no longer have to deal with the technology and can focus entirely on teaching.

Udemy Live is Udemy’s live virtual conferencing and classroom tool. It is entirely web-based and built on component architecture. Each component was built separately, and there is an internal API so third party developers can build components on top of Udemy’s virtual conferencing tool. The API is not currently public.

Udemy was founded by MobileCrunch writer Gagan Biyani, Eren Bali and Oktay Caglar. Eren and Oktay worked at SpeedDate.com, an online dating site that has received over $8M in funding from Menlo Ventures.

Udemy will start by focusing on a specific niche: Poker education. We will roll out Udemy to enter the $100M business of online poker education. Udemy has deals with more than 15 extremely popular poker instructors to teach on Udemy Poker over the internet. After that niche, Udemy will begin to enter additional markets in which there is a willingness to pay by consumers and a clear set of high-quality instructors interested in teaching.

PokitDok

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on January 15, 2013

Provider of a cloud-based application programming interface (API) platform designed to make healthcare transactions more efficient and streamline the business of health. The company's platform enables third-party developers such as payers, health systems and digital health companies to process eligibility checks, claims, scheduling, payments, and other business transactions, enabling hospitals and health systems to build new patient-centered experiences. With DokChain, an evolution of PokitDok’s platform utilizing blockchain and other distributed technologies, PokitDok seeks to remove even more waste from healthcare administration while enabling new value creation by healthcare and other industry stakeholders for the consumers they serve.

Turo

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on September 17, 2009

RelayRides is the world's first peer-to-peer carsharing service. Our revolutionary service provides the technology, infrastructure and marketplace for car owners to securely and conveniently rent out their vehicles when they are not using them personally. This provides people seeking convenient transportation with a new option, and makes it easier for urban dwellers to enjoy mobility without owning a car.  

As the average US car is driven only 66 minutes a day, RelayRides represents the first opportunity for car owners to monetize this underused asset. By providing the infrastructure, technology and marketplace for car owners to rent out their vehicles, RelayRides gives current car owners the means to monetize a largely underused asset. By enrolling in RelayRides, owners turn a car from an expense into a cash machine, with average profit of approximately $3,550 annually (net of depreciation costs).

How RelayRides Works: 

Car owners list their vehicle on the RelayRides website, designate availability, rental price, and who may rent the vehicle (via Facebook and other social networks).  Car renters browse available vehicles on RelayRides.com, reserve a car by the hour or day, and swipe an issued card over a card reader sensor on the vehicle for access during rental. 

To streamline the rental experience, gas and insurance are included.

Seed Jobs

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on October 22, 2013

Seed.jobs is an inbound marketing platform for talent acquisition. We give recruiters the tools and technology used by marketing professionals to engage, convert and nurture inbound talent. 

By really focusing on the candidate experience using optimised and relevant content, A/B testing, workflow automation and analytics - we enable companies to run effecting recruitment campaigns and convert the best talent.

Passion Capital

Angel group/VC

Joined Vator on October 11, 2013

Whatever you do, do it with passion.

Fluency

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on October 22, 2013

Fluency is a learning platform that helps young people aged 18 to 25 get into work. Our intuitive learning platform, teaches skills that small businesses, agencies and startups need and allows learners to put their skills to the test with real-world digital challenges. Insight from our platform allows us to match-make young people to employers and freelance opportunities effectively.

As a startup with a social mission, we want to help some of the 1 million unemployed young people in the UK (and the 5.6 million in Europe and 75 million worldwide) into work. We think our young people have a killer app that businesses need - they get digital. Fluency solves youth unemployment and the lack of digital capability in businesses by bringing them together.

Website: http://www.fluency.io/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/getfluency

Our Demo Day pitch from Bethnal Green Ventures:

Demo Day Presentation-Fluency from Fluency on Vimeo.

TableCrowd

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on January 19, 2013

What is TableCrowd?

TableCrowd is a real life social network where you can meet people over food for business networking, common interests, romance or friendship. 

People join ‘crowds’ that interest them (e.g. startups or new to town) and then members of the ‘crowd’ organise dinners for the group to meet offline in restaurants. With TableCrowd, users turn online connections into real life relationships.

Our vision is to become the market leader of real life social networks.

What's the opportunity for TableCrowd?

There is an increased need to form new business, platonic and romantic relationships caused by changing social factors, including:

1. Increase in career changes: A job for life is now a thing of the past (average of 10 jobs in a lifetime).

2. Increase in romantic relationships: A partner for life is a thing of the past (marriages are down and divorces are up!).

3. Increase in population mobility for work or personal choice.

This increased need provides an opportunity for a platform that turns online connections into real life relationships - and this is TableCrowd!

The market

The market is 18-60s with online profiles - 32m people in the UK and 150m+ in the US. Our target markets include:

1. People who want to network for business (10m now networking on LinkedIn in the UK).

2. People who are new to town (1.5m people relocating within, or to, the UK each year).

3. People with common interests (2m people with shared interests networking in the UK).

4. Singles (9m people have online dating profiles in the UK).

The social dining market sits between the social networking market and dining out / restaurant market (combined worldwide market valuation in excess of $100bn).

Marketing & user acquisition

We have in-house capability for pay per click and have used Facebook's self service advertising platform since they opened it - and we have used it effectively.

Where are we now?

Our site is live in beta using responsive design, with the launch of our first app imminent.

We have run over 400 tables.

We have over 10,000 members.

We have 3,000+ restaurants in our database.

We have over 200 growing crowds, the largest with over 1,000 members.

We are revenue generating from 4 proven revenue streams.

We have a relationship with ClickTonight, so can market to its six figure database.

We partnered with companies including including TimeOut. TechCityNews, Eyedea, Taylor Wessing & Startup Direct.

DogVacay.com

Startup/Business

Joined Vator on April 27, 2012

DogVacay.com is a community marketplace that addresses the $5B market for dog-boarding and pet-sitting. Instead of paying for a crowded and overpriced kennel, our users book with experienced hosts who watch dogs in their own homes. In two months since launch the we have gained national coverage with thousands of approved hosts. 

We provide multiple layers of quality control, a comprehensive insurance policy, emergency support, photo updates, and other pet services like daycare and walking. 

We were founded in 2011 by a husband and wife team who boarded over 100 dogs in their home to make extra money while saving for their weddin. We are now venture capital funded by First Round Capital, Science, and several angels. 

Stefan Glaenzer

Joined Vator on September 9, 2013

Richard Muirhead

Joined Vator on October 15, 2013

Joseph Hawayek

Joined Vator on October 11, 2013

Rory Stirling

Joined Vator on November 3, 2013