#50Changers by louizeconnect

Fifty Game Changers in the Thames Valley

Thank you to our supporting partners Foreword

What a difference a year makes in building a connected digital ecosystem. The engagement and positive response to the 2017 Game Changers project has been a little overwhelming. I’m also really heartened to see a fundamental shift in mind-set across the Thames Valley, as we encourage a more open and collaborative approach. It’s at last starting to feel truly connected; it has always been my vision to crosspollinate the start-ups with the original Silicon Valley arrivals. Seeing some of the region’s corporates start to engage locally could be transformational. The map is back, and it’s even bigger! Comparing the 2017 map to last year’s, you’ll see the touch points have grown significantly. There’s more work to do, starting with more affordable incubation space—a cause ConnectTVT will continue to champion. People always ask me what makes a Game Changer. It has always been more than a list of highest turnover companies—it’s about those championing change. To survive in the

competitive digital landscape, we have to encourage a diverse mix of businesses across our innovation layers. We love giving a louder voice to those supporting community projects, the early stage start-ups right through to those heading towards their exits. Fairsail graduating from Game Changers to our alumni through their acquisition by Sage UK is the start of a new journey. I’m also personally delighted that ConnectTVT is closer to our vision to connect innovative companies with digital talent. In September 2017 we welcome our first cohort to Digital Gum, an initiative created to plug the digital skills gap with apprentices and return-to-work parents. It’s about taking ConnectTVT’s mission to the next level. We very much hope you’ll be part of this. Louize

ConnectTVT

50 Game Changers in the Thames Valley 2017

In March 2017, Sage acquired Fairsail, the UK’s fastest growing tech scale-up, for £115m. In the last three years we have grown from 15 to 140 people and £1m to £10m revenue, setting the standard in the Thames Valley and beyond. This is a huge step in our journey, just short of 10 years since Colin Cooper founded the business.

As Sage People, apart from the new name, our business hasn’t changed. We’ll still be continuing to transform how organisations acquire, engage, manage and develop their employees through our global HR and People system. But, as part of the UK’s largest software business, the opportunity in front of us is much, much greater. We’re setting out on our mission to be the leading provider of cloud HR and People solutions to midsize businesses globally. As part of the 50 Game Changer family, we’re super proud of what we have achieved so far and we’re an example of the potential that remains in this fast-changing region. Hand on heart, I hope the Fairsail story inspires each and every Game Changer today. It shows what the right technology, people, customer focus, and vision can achieve.

Adam Hale EVP, Sage People

ConnectTVT

We’ve long been a supporter of ConnectTVT and the work that Louize is doing to transform the tech and digital community in the Thames Valley. In less than three years, we’ve seen ConnectTVT help create a shift in culture, grow confidence, and foster the desire to invest here. Later this year we will be moving from the Reading Enterprise Centre to the new Thames Valley Science Park and look forward to that becoming another centre of innovation and business success in the region. As a Game Changer, your business is already on track to drive more innovation, build an amazing team and create customer excellence, really be a trailblazer within your industry. As Sage People, our intention now is to grow this vibrant ecosystem as more Fairsails, Gigaclears, Artesians, Safetonets thrive and create success for their people, their customers and partners. Congratulations to you all.

50 Game Changers in the Thames Valley 2017

/ Unprecedented Times, Unprecedented Opportunity

/ Growth strategy for the Thames Valley

By Richard Baker, EY’s Office Managing Partner across the Thames Valley. It’s clear we are living in unprecedented times, with the UK entering into Brexit negotiations and devolution deals supporting regional growth and economic rebalancing – all of which offer an unprecedented opportunity for the region to build a successful modern economy that is competing on the world stage. EY’s region and city economic forecast highlighted the exciting prospects for the competitiveness of the Thames Valley, with the region expected to grow ahead of the UK average in terms of Gross Value Added (GVA) until 2019. Reading is set to be the UK’s fastest growing city during this period, with annual GVA of 2.5% – growing faster than London’s 1.9% GVA and the Thames Valley’s 2.1%. Reading is also set to experience the fastest employment growth of all UK cities, with 0.9% growth and 3,000 more jobs by 2019.

/ Attracting the next generation of Game Changers Although the Thames Valley may have a long-term track record of doing well in terms of its competiveness as a UK region, it has done so without having a conscious plan. Going forward, the Thames Valley needs an integrated growth strategy articulating our priorities and plans to respond to not only the macro-economic and political shifts, but also, the disruption to business caused by digital and other technological and scientific developments. This plan should be formed in partnership with government, third parties and the local business community, all of which are individually doing great things to put Thames Valley on the map. Now is the time for local businesses to collaborate and create a unified plan that retains and supports local businesses, as well as attracting the next generation of Games Changers to the Thames Valley.

ConnectTVT

EY is undertaking an initial study to understand the strengths, weaknesses and outlook of the Thames Valley across five pillars that we believe outline the region’s priorities for an integrated growth strategy. However, this is not a process that we should do alone and I am keen to discuss and enhance our approach with members of the ConnectTVT community so that your voice, energy and insights are placed at the heart of a much needed unified story and compelling investment case for the future health and success of the region.

Economy

People

Infrastructure

Quality of living

We are keen to work with ConnectTVT and the local business community to contribute to and truly embed a culture of connectivity between start-ups and corporates, where EY’s brand has been more traditionally associated. / Speak to EY’s Thames Valley team:

Investment & innovation

Governance

Richard Baker, Managing Partner Thames Valley & South rbaker2@uk.ey.com David Rutherford, Director drutherford1@uk.ey.com Graham Smith, Director gsmith5@uk.ey.com

The map is back

CBRE – Creative Regions

Bigger and better, the Thames Valley is also performing well on the national stage.

“A report evaluating the current competitiveness and future potential of UK regional locations (outside) of London as destinations for the creative industries”. The top 25 were identified and Thames Valley had 20% of the slots!

Tech Nation Report 2017 Now in its third year, the Tech City UK Annual Report shining “a spotlight on the UK’s digital economy” highlighted; • #1 Reading and #5 Oxford – Digital business concentration top 10 • Total Digital Turnover #2 Reading £12.5bn • Leading clusters for Digital Tech Investment #4 Oxford

Reading

Oxford

#16

Newbury

#17

Bracknell

#22

Slough

Key Universities Science Facilities Incubators & Accelerators Co-working Spaces

ConnectTVT

50 Game Changers in the Thames Valley 2017

CLEANTECH

The 2017 Game Changers

CYBER & SECURITY

PowerMarket

Gooseberry Planet

PowerMarket was founded with a very simple mission—sustainable energy for all. A SunReign Ltd venture, and supported by Oxford University Innovation and European Space Agency, PowerMarket is revolutionising the solar energy industry by digitising the solar buying process using some of the most innovative technologies available. Both consumers and companies can now buy a bespoke solar solution in three simple steps, saving over 75% of time and costs. Through downstream satellite data and AI, PowerMarket helps its customers buy, finance and maintain bespoke solar solutions. It’s backed by a brilliant team that has over 70 years of combined experience in renewables, tech, entrepreneurship and innovation. Abhinav Jain, founder, comments, “Over the last couple of years, the PowerMarket team has received a lot of support and guidance from our network in the Thames Valley, which is filled with some of the most promising talents and ideas globally. We’d really like to see more ventures grow here, to become the UK innovation hub.” Looking ahead, PowerMarket plans to extend its offering to wind and energy storage, as well as focus on emerging countries, where energy is one of the biggest challenges. A multi-award winning venture, PowerMarket was recognised as one of the 50 most promising start-ups in Europe by Google, McKinsey and Rocket Internet, the Digital Agenda Impact Awards, and EnergySpin’s 30 most promising energy start-ups in Europe.

Gooseberry Planet is an award winning software platform designed to educate children, teachers and parents about the dangers online through gamification. As with many of our Game Changers, the business’ seed is grounded in personal experience. Founder Stella James recognised the enormous digital divide between her and her children. So she set herself the challenge of protecting her own boys from online harm whilst also raising awareness in schools. Rather than opting for the controlled advice commonly given to schools and parents, Stella wanted to find a way for children to understand the dangers and learn to make responsible decisions for themselves. Launched in 2015, Gooseberry Planet is the only company delivering online safety via gamification, joining parent, teacher and child together with technology. The software is intended to be used both in schools and at home, offering a uniquely child-centred and co-ordinated approach to safeguarding. An assessment and monitoring system is in place for both teachers and parents. Gooseberry Planet consists of three portals that work alongside each other: Gooseberry Student, Gooseberry Teacher and Gooseberry Parent. Looking ahead, Stella sees Gooseberry Planet as the market leader in online safeguarding, with the ultimate goal to be sold within the next five years. She says, “If Gooseberry Planet can save one child from being groomed or sexually exploited, then it has achieved my goal.”

50 Game Changers in the Thames Valley 2017

CYBER & SECURITY

DATA & INSIGHTS

RazorSecure

SafeToNet

Artesian

DataSift

RazorSecure provides cyber security for the aviation, rail and automotive sectors. Created with its DNA in the gaming industry, CEO Alex Cowan believed cyber security needed a different approach. He explains, “I saw gamers becoming hackers as they tried to gain an advantage over others in the games we sold, those same hackers then moved on to steal data and financial information and now they are looking at taking control of systems.” Today Basingstoke-based RazorSecure helps critical infrastructure providers maintain the security of their systems through security software designed to protect large groups of systems. This includes train communication systems, in-flight entertainment and self-driving vehicles. By applying machine learning to cyber security, the team can approach the market with a very different proposition. Running a business in the Thames Valley has its challenges. Alex explains, “The biggest frustration for me is pulling people back out of London. Basingstoke has a huge amount of technical talent, but they get on a train and leave every day. We need to find ways to keep our talent and offer them great opportunities nearer to home. I’m truly excited by the amount of opportunity. There are already some great companies in the area, but the next generation of companies will be even better.” In a year’s time, Alex and his team, intend to be working to secure most of the rail infrastructure in the UK, taking this across Europe and the US, covering rail, air and other vehicles. “Longer term I would like to work to build up the tech community across the Thames Valley, but particularly in Basingstoke.”

SafeToNet, is the app behind the next generation of parental controls, founded by serial tech entrepreneur Richard Pursey in 2014. Passionate about safeguarding children from the dangers of social media, SafeToNet blocks harmful content on social networks, saving and improving the lives of children from around the world. Artificial intelligence, big data analytics, natural language processing and machine learning contextualises content. It can, for example, tell the difference between banter and aggression and is the only company able to block harmful incoming and outgoing messages. Richard explains, “Existing parental control solutions are simply not good enough. All they do is block harmful websites. They don’t work at the social messaging layer. SafeToNet does.” Now a team of eight, last year saw SafeToNet turbo-charge its game changer profile, winning the KPMG Best British Mobile Start-up award, BT and EE Future Mobile Award, Cisco50 Award, Bloomberg Most Investable Business, Bloomberg Top 25 Tech Rock Star and a Pride of Reading award for social impact. It joined the Telefonica Wayra accelerator programme this year. “SafeToNet is redefining the safeguarding market,” Richard says. “Our vision is that one day everyone will be able to interact confidently and safely online”. We’re quickly establishing it as the category leading cyber safety solution. Our plan is that SafeToNet technologies will become the global de facto standard in cyber safety and online child care.” “For us, the Thames Valley remains a hub for growing companies and with organisations like ConnectTVT we’re excited that the eco-system will continue to grow and get stronger which in turn will attract more companies to the area.”

ConnectTVT

Artesian Solutions was conceived over dinner with co-founders Andrew Yates, Mike Blackadder and Steve Borthwick. Dreaming big, they believed they could create a software company that would have a meaningful impact on the B2B universe. Founded in 2006, the selffunded home business is now headquartered in Winnersh and Boston USA, and delivers 16 million actionable insights every month to an ever-growing multinational customer base. Artesian’s vision is two-fold—to create better B2B sales engagement that is customercentric at its heart, and to develop the world’s most powerful social intelligence application to support it. Artesian helps customers embrace and adopt a customer experience (CX) model, by providing both the technology and training needed, with an overarching culture of insightdriven customer curiosity, and a proactive approach to customer engagement. In 2016 Artesian made it into The Leap 100 Listing, and in early 2017 topped G2 Crowd’s Top 10 Sales Intelligence Products for Enterprise. For Artesian the next 12 months is about continuing to focus R&D on their core strengths and enhancing mobile and desktop applications. A disruptive force in the market, Artesian embraces Artificial Intelligence, Predictive Analytics, Machine Based Learning and Natural Language Processing to enable faster decision making, improved forecast accuracy, ‘hyper personalised’ sales and marketing propositions, optimised engagement opportunities, and the intuitive identification of new customer segments and markets. Andrew comments, “We’re delighted that ConnectTVT not only recognised our drive for innovation, but gave us a platform to inspire others to ‘act differently’—to challenge the status quo, to dream big, and to relentlessly pursue their goals. The Thames Valley is at the forefront of UK tech innovation, it’s a hotbed of entrepreneurship, and a hub that can rival that of Silicon Valley.”

An interest in social media intelligence and its ability to deliver real value to businesses gave Nick Halstead the idea for DataSift. He launched the business in 2010, building an engine to enable people to innovate socially, and harness the power of human data in real-time, without having to do any of the technical heavy lifting required. Today, DataSift partners with more than 20 human data sources, enabling organisations to gain actionable insights from multiple networks to inform their business decisions. Earlier this year, the company announced a strategic partnership with LinkedIn and unveiled its privacy-first PYLON for LinkedIn Engagement Insights offering. This provides marketers worldwide with advanced insights into the activities and interests of more than 500 million professionals on the network. DataSift has offices in Reading, London, San Francisco, New York and Canada. Tim Barker, DataSift’s CEO, comments, “DataSift has been in Reading since we started and our first round of funding came from Finance South East. The University had an Enterprise Centre with brilliant contractual terms that were perfect for a start-up. With the likes of Oracle and Symantec calling Reading home, there’s a very large skilled workforce and talent pool while the University means we’re connected to the next generation of stars.” Looking ahead, DataSift will continue to strengthen and shape the social analytics industry, moving towards active intelligence. Tim adds,“Machine intelligence is set to become a powerful tool in the marketer’s bag, enabling them to take human, unstructured data analysis to the next level and harness its full potential at scale.”

50 Game Changers in the Thames Valley 2017

DATA & INSIGHTS

Venntro

Antonia Taylor PR When Louize first came up with the idea for the 50 Game Changers, it was the marketing equivalent of putting your finger in the wind. Would businesses respond? Would we reach 50 businesses? Would anyone even care? Louize’s ideas have a way of making the wind blow in our favour. A year on, we’re back with the pioneers of the Thames Valley’s new economy, the businesses set to be tomorrow’s digital powerhouses. As ConnectTVT’s flagship programme, 50 Game Changers stands out among the initiatives Louize has dreamt up to reimagine the collective future of the region, from the seed of Thames Valley Tech Week to our all-important Digital Gum project. 2017 has been about elevating the brand. Partners like Oracle and EY have come on board to support the vision. As a sponsor of the Digital Impact Awards, ConnectTVT’s joined in the national conversation around tech and skills, and Louize’s BIMA award rightly recognises her contribution to the UK’s wider digital community.

“ Leveraging the power of the internet to transform their communities, their families, and themselves.”

Our 50 Game Changers represent a new breed of business in the Thames Valley; those seeking to create purpose-led, ethical and impactful businesses. As the pipeline of the tech and digital economy, you’ve reinvented new ways of working, creating value and driving change. An eco-system of businesses has evolved, capturing every stage of the business narrative; from brand new start-ups through to some who will, graduate, as Fairsail has. Listening to the stories of our 2017 50 Game Changers, a common theme emerged: being a Game Changer matters. It makes you part of a community. It shows you’re invested in creating a better future. It sets you apart as part of the new economy. It’s testament to Louize’s vision and desire to give back, that she’s created this family, one it’s truly a privilege to be part of.

Enswarm

Enswarm was founded by Joe Kay, to apply the swarming techniques of bees and other collectively intelligent species, to help people to work together more effectively and make better informed decisions. His mission is to transform the way teams and communities work and live together. Delivered as a SaaS model, SwarmTools remove human-bias and groupthink from teamwork and decisions. Joe explains, “Traditionally, elite teamwork has been the preserve of highly resourced entities such as the military. Enswarm democratises great teamwork, providing the framework and the means to work closely and effectively together, regardless of the geographic location of team members.” Joe and his team are currently working with a group of proof-of-concept partners, including leaders in consulting and financial services to demonstrate use-cases, before launching the tools to a wider audience. Over the next 12 months, Enswarm plans to offer a family of SwarmTools to support individuals, communities, businesses and government, to make better informed decisions in a team environment. Currently completing an SEIS seed round, next for Enswarm is an ‘A’ round of funding in early 2018, to scale the business. Joe adds, “The next three to five years are about establishing SwarmTools as the premiere teamwork eco-system, sitting alongside the likes of Slack, Trello and SmartSheet. As a start-up, platforms like ConnectTVT really help us to gain recognition, alongside established businesses, and this adds to our credibility. And we were really encouraged by Fairsail—a tech company a few years ahead of us, which has benefited from participation in the programme and was recently acquired by Sage.”

Venntro Chairman Ross Williams and CEO Steve Pammenter came up with the idea for White Label Dating to enable media publishers to tackle declining ad revenues: adding value for customers through a dating stream. Bootstrapping database development and customer acquisition costs, they launched the White Label Dating platform in 2003. Today, it’s an award-winning online dating provider powering dating sites for entrepreneurs and brands globally, including Global, Bauer Media and Plenty More Fish. The company provides the software, hosting, database, payment processing, customer service and security as part of a full managed service for its partners. Right now, the business has more than 55 million registered members, across +10,000 dating sites, operated by over 1,000 partners.

“Our hosted dating solution allows digital marketers, brands and entrepreneurs to use their skills to drive traffic to their own niched online dating sites, helping them to further boost their income. Whether our partners work with us as their full time job or simply a side project, we help them to make money in their spare time,” says Steve. He adds, “Since we started working in the Thames Valley, the blossoming tech sector and initiatives like ConnectTVT have made good digital talent much easier to find. Looking ahead, we’re investing in research, partner communications and developing fast feedback loops so we can understand and respond quickly to market demand. We’re also refocusing our efforts on new customer groups and markets and in particular, the USA, where niche online dating is still a relatively untapped market.”

50 Game Changers in the Thames Valley 2017

EDUCATION

FOOD

City Farm Systems

Mix Up Reality

Prolific

Bakedin

Mix Up Reality was founded to provide software development services in the fast growing augmented (AR) and virtual reality (VR) industries. Founder Jay Younes’ focus is on developing apps that improve education and staff training. Mix Up Reality has taken the technology to over 7,000 Thames Valley students who tried the virtual and augmented reality demos through career fairs, school visits and workshops. Jay and his team have also run training workshops for senior staff to learn about how the technology will impact their businesses. “We want to help make the Thames Valley an area that leads in industry adoption of virtual and augmented reality technology and enable students to get a head start in gaining the skills to develop their own content,” explains Jay. Key partners include East Berkshire College, working through their Genovation Lab to introduce VR and AR technology to support their curriculum. The team will be opening a VR experience space in Slough Trading Estate where people can hands-on and learn about the technology, running ‘Intro to VR’ workshops for complete beginners right through to advanced training for staff to create their own content. Clients include UCB pharma, Mars Chocolate, HOME Slough, Slough Museum and Resource Productions. Jay comments, “We’re proud to have recently been accepted as a member of Surrey University 5GIC centre, which will help us develop our future strategy of developing unique VR content for 5G networks. For us, being in the Thames Valley is great; we’ve got some seriously talented people in the area, good schools and world leading company regional headquarters on our doorstep.”

A platform connecting researchers and participants, Prolific’s mission is to make data more trustworthy. Spun out of Oxford University, Prolific works with researchers of all kinds to source and manage participants for data collection more effectively. It was founded by CEO Ekaterina Damer and CTO Phelim Bradley in 2014. The small, diverse international team is working to maximise its impact by making the most of the opportunities available in Oxford, one of the world’s leading research centres, with access to great skills and talent as well as being able to access markets and serve customers around the world. Ekaterina explains their vision, “We see enormous untapped potential in the academic crowdsourcing space, with a $1bn market in Europe and North America alone— not including the closely related market research and micro-working sectors. Prolific excites us because it has huge potential to become not only the largest online data collection platform, but also an ethical crowdsourcing community that is useful for clients and fun for participants. We envision a world where accessing a pool of hundreds of thousands of on demand participants is not only easy, but also responsible and transparent.” Prolific now has over 70,000 participants signed up and the team has collected 1 million unique responses in 7,500+ studies. There are over 6,000 researcher signups in 43 countries, from prestigious universities such as Oxford, Cambridge, Stanford and Yale Universities. The team has doubled in size this year to a team of six, all driven to scale Prolific fast in the next 12 months.

ConnectTVT

Bakedin is on the way to revolutionise home baking. Started as a hobby in founder Joe Munns’ kitchen, the business is set to turnover £1.2 million this year. The fast-growing team of twelve is based in Basingstoke. Bakedin produces fun, simple baking kits, trendy mug cake mixes, celebrations cakes and gifting. With a growing base of over 200 stockists, Bakedin’s products are sold in high street retailers such as Tesco, Lakeland and Hobbycraft as well as online on Amazon, Prezzy Box and Wicked Uncle. Baking Club, Bakedin’s unique online subscription service, is set to further disrupt home baking. Collaborating with Michel Roux, a new recipe is created every month, packaged with ingredients required, to subscribers for £7.99. The Independent named it in its top 15 food subscriptions alongside brands such as Graze and HelloFresh. Currently the team posts out 1,500 Baking Club boxes a month, with a goal to increase to 10,000 in the next three years. Joe explains, “Our purpose is to change the future of home baking, saving time and wastage. Until recently the only option for home baking was all-inone generic baking mixes or sourcing all ingredients by yourself which is often very costly. We bridge the gap by giving people the option to bake from scratch with no wastage. By varying skills levels, people learn new techniques and have different experiences each time.”

City Farm Systems produces commercially viable and sustainable facilities for the growing of the most perishable and hardest to transport fresh produce. Founder Jonathan Lodge’s light bulb moment was being stuck in traffic behind a supermarket lorry just outside the store to find bare empty shelves on arrival. With distribution of fresh produce accounting for 65% of total costs, Jonathan realised that growing at the point of need offers the ability to avoid several expensive and environmentally costly steps. “I wanted a means to make a positive difference and a better outcome for others. This means changing the game when it comes to feeding a smart city,” he explains.

City Farm Systems has set out to create a new business model that is fundamentally cheaper by having fewer expensive links. Space framing techniques help businesses and the environment by producing plants in automated rooftop greenhouses. This ground-breaking innovation allows businesses such as supermarkets and restaurants to quickly re-stock their shelves with vegetables harvested from their rooftop. City Farm Systems has trademarks registered internationally, a patent in the UK and patent about to be granted in several other countries providing global access. Jonathan adds, “There is no better connected area in the UK than the Thames Valley for global companies. Our five year plan is to secure a major UK retailer partnership to complement license agreements in several export markets.”

50 Game Changers in the Thames Valley 2017

FOOD

Fungry

As a start-up, platforms like ConnectTVT really help us to gain recognition, alongside established businesses, and this adds to our credibility.” We’re delighted that ConnectTVT not only recognised our drive for innovation, but gave us a platform to inspire others to ‘act differently’—to challenge the status quo, to dream big, and to relentlessly pursue their goals. The Thames Valley is at the forefront, it is a hotbed of entrepreneurship, and a tech hub that can rival that of Silicon Valley.”

I love the strong sense of community I get in Oxford. There is just something special in the soil here, which attracts amazing people from all around the globe.”

CEO and co-Founder, Kyle Turner, describes Fungry as “somewhere in the midst between Deliveroo and TripAdvisor.” As an international student new to Oxford, he didn’t know where to find good takeaway food. With a mission to improve the quality of takeaway food, Kyle created a business that gives discounts in exchange for feedback. This is then used to rank the best—and worst— takeaway food in town. For collection or delivery, Fungry customers can view other customer ratings and reviews before placing their order. A socially driven start-up, Fungry only partners with local independent restaurants. “No chains, no junk food. That’s our promise to customers and to our indie partners,” Kyle, who just submitted his D.Phil. in Public Health at the University of Oxford looking at ways to prevent childhood obesity, explains.

Kyle is currently partnering with a string of local chefs to launch the first ‘Fungry Kitchen’ to provide a safe and licensed venue for refugees to prepare and sell their traditional recipes on Fungry’s platform, as well as share their stories. All profits made from the Fungry Kitchens will be reinvested into further training and facilities.   Entrepreneurial in spirit, Fungry is just the start for Kyle. “If I had to guess, in five years’ time, I will probably be building more businesses in the UK, based out of Oxford. I love the strong sense of community I get here. There is just something special in the soil here, which attracts amazing people from all around the globe.”

Primal Pantry

The Primal Pantry’s mission is to provide tasty and nutritious foods that fully complement a clean eating lifestyle. Founder, nutritionist Suzie Walker, had an immense passion for wholesome good food and the benefits of a paleo lifestyle. With clients struggling to find healthy on-the-go snacks, Suzie embarked upon making her own paleo bars. The Primal Pantry was launched in February 2014. Having wowed the big retailers, Primal bars are stocked in Waitrose, Sainsbury’s, Tesco, and Ocado, alongside independent health stores. Today, Suzie is on a mission to challenge the packaged food industry by forging a real food revolution. “We should stop asking why real food is so expensive and instead question why processed food is so cheap,” she says. “Our key business purpose is to educate and encourage people to eat more real food, and to help them realise they have a choice when it comes to choosing better quality options.” Primal Pantry is now shaping a brand new ‘better for you’ snacking category as they continue to create great products in an emerging category. The market is growing in Europe and Asia as well as the UK. Alongside a lack of funding, Suzie cites talent as a key challenge for growing a business in the Thames Valley. “It is hard to get good people outside of London. Fortunately we have a great team but it has been hard and costly to find the right people.” “In five years’ time, I’d personally love to be investing in other start-up businesses and helping them grow,” adds Suzie.

50 Game Changers in the Thames Valley 2017

FOOD

HARDWARE & SOFTWARE

HEALTH

Snaffling Pig

Think Engineer

Tocabot

Intelligent Health

Founded as a side-project by entrepreneur Nick Coleman and his university friend, Andy Allen, Snaffling Pig is quite literally taking their luxury pork scratchings to “places it’s never been before.” In under three years, Snaffling Pig, which was started on the back of a friendly bet, is expanding its product line and looking at global expansion. A successful pitch on Dragon’s Den resulted in Nick Jenkins coming on board as an investor. With more than a handful of start-up and food awards under their belts, Snaffling Pig products are now stocked on Notonthehighstreet, Selfidges and Ocado to name but a few. Product development remains a focus for the unstoppable team, and the e-commerce food brand opened its first dedicated warehouse in Berkshire last year. Gifting jars and partnerships with global brands have proved super-successful for the business. “We’ve worked really hard to create a brand that has personality and engages directly with customers,” Nick says, “Ultimately this was started as a passion project, a fun side venture, something to talk about in the pub. We’re serious about quality but we want that ethos to run through everything we do.” A relationship with Action Against Hunger allows customers to donate to the charity against certain products and the team also sponsors endurance athletes. Next up, Snaffling Pig will build on the sucess of its advent calendar which was voted one of the best non chocolate advents in 2016. Nick is passionate about sharing the potential of entrepreneurship with young people, investing time in Young Enterprise, school and college talks.

Frustrated with the pace of large businesses that were slow to respond to market changes and resistant to new ideas, Graham Kitteridge, Steve Samuels and Rich Hughes wanted to create innovative new technologies that solve real problems. Within a week of deciding to start Think Engineer, the team had all quit their jobs and started looking for an office. Think Engineer focuses on the three key areas of Internet of Things, Virtual Reality, and Machine Learning. Graham explains, “We bring cool new ideas to life. Inventors, designers, and small business bring us their amazing ideas and we build prototypes and tech demonstrators for them as a proof-ofconcept, for investor pitches, or as de-risking and manufacturability studies. We can design, build, and collaborate with other parties to create functional electronics and other hardware, software, algorithms, and more.” The team rapidly creates prototype products through a combination of opensource, off-the-shelf and custom made components. This bridges the gap between the hobbyist maker and commercial engineering worlds, allowing Think Engineer to create a working prototype faster than competitors. Their expertise across a broad range of technologies, allows them to integrate different technologies and offer whole systems. “Being a tech company in the Thames Valley brings a lot of opportunities; with so many tech-focused businesses and a great networking culture, opportunities are around every corner. Business, professionals, and hobbyists have formed a great community throughout the Thames Valley. In addition, the easy links to London—and therefore the rest of the world—helps to create a global-facing culture.”

ConnectTVT

Tocabot® founder Mat Rule set out to create a technology solution to solve business inefficiencies through robotics and software. Mat has always had an entrepreneurial spirit. With co-founder Rahul Gupta, he saw the opportunity to turn this into a business with the potential to transform an industry. Today Tocabot® is working with a number of blue-chip organisations doing just this, transforming whole industries such as; banking, ecommerce, travel, energy and engineering. Tocabot® uses software to undertake a lot of the tasks that knowledge workers have to do on a daily basis by using Robotic Business Processing Automation (RPA), covering business processes, automated testing and real user monitoring. Tocabot® helps to repeat less, speed up and simplify a business. It frees people up to take part in the more creative, strategic and innovative work they enjoy. The team is currently working with the innovation arm of Middlesex University, RedLoop, to develop CARA, the first productionready desktop hardware. It will be used by Tocabot® clients who need to automate real touchable devices. Next for the team is to begin deploying Tocabot® on a global scale to transform people’s jobs, with the vision to become the recognised leader in robotic process automation software. Mat comments, “What’s happening in the Thames Valley is wonderful to see. However, in comparison to other tech valleys around the world, we need to do more to build momentum both in the tech community and the investment community to back and develop innovation.”

With a mission to create active, vibrant communities, where everyone matters, Intelligent Health’s game-changing Beat the Street programme has helped thousands of people across the UK get active and connected. Unlike many other physical activity initiatives, the Reading based organisation takes a community-based, rather than venuebased approach to getting people moving— getting people out of their homes and into their neighbourhood. Intelligent Health combines expert knowledge and insight in tackling inactivity. Its flagship, award-winning Beat the Street programme was delivered across the UK with over 300,000 participants. It essentially turns a participating town or community into a game, where people of all ages earn points and prizes by walking, cycling or running between “Beat Boxes”—sensors placed on lampposts. Instead of being a health challenge, it’s a fun, accessible and sustainable activity. Through gamification, Intelligent Health is able to reach the most inactive and isolated members within a community and get them outdoors and active. As well as Reading, Beat the Street is established in Milton Keynes, Sandwell, Wolverhampton and County Durham so far, and launches in North Lanarkshire, Nottingham, East Sussex and Rhondda Cynon Taf this summer. Beat the Street was founded by Dr William Bird MBE and now comprises a team of more than fifty people in Reading and across the UK.

50 Game Changers in the Thames Valley 2017

HEALTH

INTERNET OF THINGS

LOCATION & SPACE

Kymira

Kemuri

TrackerSense

Altitude Angel

University of Reading graduate Tim Brownstone’s launched KYMIRA in 2013 to create a sportswear brand as a vessel to commercialise non-invasive medical technologies. The business is grounded in an academic passion for photobiology and the applications of infrared light. The performance and recovery enhancing sportswear incorporates a unique, patented KYnergy infrared technology, using the textile Celliant to recycle the body’s waste energy back for the benefit of the wearer.   Last year KYMIRA secured Innovate UK funding for R&D investment into energy harvesting e-textiles and smart garments. Tim and his team are now taking the concept of human energy harvesting a step further, creating yarns and textiles that can take wasted energy from the body and convert it into electricity, making charging consumer electronics and powering biomedical sensors to create smart garments possible. Looking ahead, Tim expects their first smart garments to be on the market for KYMIRA Sport within five years, with infrared products gaining significant traction in the US and continental Europe. Earlier this year, KYMIRA was selected as one of 50 disruptive start-ups to pitch globally at SXSW. Of the Thames Valley start-up community Tim comments, “Since founding KYMIRA we’ve seen a boom in the start-up culture both in Reading and the rest of the Thames Valley. I have loved being part of the evolving ecosystem and am really excited to stay a part of it as it continues to grow.”

Falls and forgetfulness are a risk for older people living alone. Kemuri was founded in 2014 to help older people to live independently by monitoring activity in the kitchen. Families get peace of mind if an ageing relative is able to move around, drink, eat and keep warm. Everybody benefits from alerts that indicate big changes from normal patterns of daily activity. The team are now manufacturing locally and supplying housing associations and individuals. Kemuri makes multi-sensor power sockets for the kitchens of older people, who plug their kettles, microwaves or toasters as usual. The embedded sensors measure motion, power use, temperature and power supply. They transmit data to the Internet via the builtin SIM card. Machine learning software learns patterns of normal activity and alerts big changes, such as after missed meals, power cuts and low temperatures. Unattended falls, dehydration, malnutrition and hypothermia are all threats to wellbeing. Kemuri checks every hour. Future developments are planned for the energy market. Patents are pending for devices that include power switching and powerline communications. The products will enable electricity suppliers to offer lower tariffs that enable them to remotely switch any equipment. This has global potential for demand side response that maximises the use of renewable and low carbon energy in SME and domestic markets. There could be 20 billion smart power sockets within two decades.

ConnectTVT

TrackerSense is a low cost GPS package and asset tracking business. Founder Wayne Soutter became involved in tracking when he lost his son outside the Natural History Museum in London. He quickly realised there was more potential in tracking things—over 340 billion things are sent in the post each year alone—than people. Today TrackerSense is a fully integrated IoT company in logistics. They design, develop and manufacture their own devices, and work with logistics and postal companies to put the devices on site, working with a network of global partners—from Holland to South Africa. Wayne explains, “We’ve designed our devices to be super-smart, super-low cost with reportedly the best power management, accuracy and communications anywhere. And we’ve used algorithms from on-line gaming, education, as well as mapping to make our solutions even better.” It’s a busy year ahead for TrackerSense. Wayne plans to double the team, grow sales tenfold, be cash positive, fully funded and profitable, with the long-term vision to be part of a global ecosystem of interconnected devices. They’re on track too, as Wayne adds, “The Thames Valley is a great place to do business and get spotted. We were picked by Rocketspace, California, to join their accelerator programme along with companies from USA, and Europe. We’re in good company—they previously worked with Uber, Hootsuite and Spotify.”

Altitude Angel continues to be a game changer—and leader—as the world’s most accurate data and real-time platform for the emerging drone industry. Founded by Richard Parker, it gives customers and partners the most relevant, highly personalised data to support their drone operation. The Reading-based team share a single goal, to create the ‘Internet of Flying Things’™, a fully comprehensive traffic management system where all drones and operators are interconnected, sharing a common platform for data exchange between all parties and aerial stakeholders, while allowing the drone market to flourish. To do this, Altitude Angel has developed a technology that delivers global drone safety and navigation services. It’s been a huge year for Richard and the Altitude Angel team, winning a partnership with NATS, the National Air Traffic Service in the UK, to create the UK’s Drone Safety application. This saw 10,000 drone pilots register in just 10 weeks, and is helping to improve the safety in our skies. Altitude Angel also built the first open-source standard to share drone-related safety information between drone companies, as part of a global consortium. The team were recently selected by the European Commission to be part of a working group helping to shape and define the rollout of drone policy across Europe. Altitude Angel has also won a number of R&D grants, across Europe to enable the team to lead innovation to enable the drone industry to grow at scale.

50 Game Changers in the Thames Valley 2017

LOCATION & SPACE

Geocento

Open Cosmos

Geocento has its genesis in difficulties the three founders experienced in getting hold of imagery of the Earth from satellites. Coming from different fields, the founders each felt strongly that the full market potential of imagery will never be realised unless users are presented with much easier ways of finding and accessing the imagery from the rapidly growing number of suppliers. CEO Kim Partington explains, “We made it our mission to do whatever was needed to help users to access the imagery they need. More particularly, we use our expertise in the space sector, and in technology development, to save users time and hassle in accessing the data they need, so that they can spend more time on their core business.” In support of this, Geocento has developed EarthImages, a suite of web-based applications and APIs which provide users of imagery with the necessary tools to search for, select and access imagery from a multitude of civilian satellites. Kim adds, “We have established agreements with all the key suppliers of imagery from space so that we can broker access to their data using our web technologies. Through the use of APIs (application programmer interfaces) the imagery can be integrated into new markets while at the same time saving operational costs for existing users. Furthermore, because we’re independent of suppliers, our users know that through us they can access imagery that is best in class and/or the most cost effective for their needs.” Geocento are currently headquartered in Harwell, with a subsidiary based in Madrid.

Open Cosmos was founded in July 2015 and started manufacturing STEM educative devices to inspire the next generation of engineers and sciences into building space technologies. Just six months in, Open Cosmos delivered its first satellite now orbiting earth. Open Cosmos’ vision is to democratise space technology, enabling simple and affordable space missions, not only through affordable satellites but a comprehensive turn-key solution so nonspace companies, entrepreneurs, researchers, students and developing countries can take advantage of this game changing technology.  The company is rapidly scaling in its Harwell Campus HQ and involved in a number of projects including in-orbit demonstrations and constellations of remote sensing and telecomunication payloads. Through their approach, Open Cosmos will open the use of space technology as a tool in areas such as agriculture, telecommunications, mining, science, education, and smart cities. Looking ahead, the future for Open Cosmos is making the most of the space oriented activities at Harwell, with great companies to partner with and networking possibilities. Founder Rafel Jorda Siquier says, “Innovation is deeply rooted in everything we do at Open Cosmos. Our aim is to make space technology simple and affordable to enable its democratization and commercialization. We see Open Cosmos as one of the fastest growing space companies in the region. Soon we will be manufacturing 30 satellites a year and growing a team of top talented R&D engineers in the Thames Valley.”

ConnectTVT

It doesn’t get the prominence and attention it deserves—that’s a big opportunity for any Game Changers out there!”

It was a natural progression for us to expand our business out from HQ in London into the Thames Valley area as part of our global strategy to collaborate with clients and business partners. GROW@GreenPark provides a really dynamic environment for our Reading-based team to innovate and create!”

There are easy links to London and therefore the rest of the world, which helps to create a global-facing culture.”

MARKETING

Black Swan

Airbyte

Bink

Airbyte is a mobile-focused product studio, based at the heart of the start-up tech scene, working with many different stage start-ups across a range of industries. Founders Steve Smith and Ross Beale met in their first week of University in Reading, 2010, launching Reading’s first university app that same year. They’ve since helped a variety of companies deliver over twenty apps to millions of users. The studio works closely with product-oriented technology businesses to help generate and improve products right across the development cycle. The team are now partnering with its expansive client network to launch its own product ventures, as well as invest and collaborate with other ambitious start-ups who are looking to launch the next big thing. To date, Airbyte has directly contributed to products which have gone on to acquire over £4m in funding. The guys are also on a mission to bust the myths around the Thames Valley. As Steve comments, “The London tech community is quickly expanding out to its surrounding areas. We feel Thames Valley has the potential to help incubate the startup culture and produce even more exciting businesses. The Thames Valley area can certainly benefit from an outside perspective of the London start-up scene, by learning and iterating from it, rather than trying to emulate and compete.” Next up, Airbyte is launching two new product ventures, with the aim to invest more in building a proprietorial collection of successful products, ultimately growing to invest in other product-based companies.

Bink is a free mobile app allowing users to automatically collect loyalty points, offers and rewards via their payment cards. Already revolutionising the loyalty industry, customers include top retailers, brands and loyalty programmes across the UK—Morrisons, Arcadia Group, Avios and PizzaExpress. The catalyst for Bink was when co-founder & CEO Lee Clarke missed out on £300 worth of loyalty points having forgotten his Boots Advantage—a common situation. 30% of consumers say they forget their loyalty cards. Bink’s technology allows consumers to consolidate all their loyalty cards and point balances, within its app linking to payment cards. Lee explains “It’s about making loyalty a customer centric activity, one that is simple and easy to engage with. Alongside payment linked loyalty, we’re growing our capability as an overall loyalty aggregator to include further features such as simple joining of loyalty programs and hyper-personalisation to enable retailers to better engage with target consumer profiles.” Bink’s priority is to grow its UK market and secure 50 core retail partners by the end of 2017. A £25million in venture capital Series A round will follow, supporting US expansion. The team also plan to open their New York office later this year, before moving into EMEA territories. A launch in Asia/Australasia is planned for 2018. “Beyond this, our utopia moment is getting Bink into the English language with a definition of “Bink” (verb)—To auto-collect loyalty points and rewards from retailers and brands via a payment card!” Lee adds.

ConnectTVT

Black Swan Data is one of the UK’s fastest growing data science scale-ups. Founded by Steve King & Hugo Amos in 2011, Black Swan Data uses prediction, intelligent algorithms and data science to transform how brands engage with their consumers. Their unique platform creates better outcomes through technology, finding patterns and meanings of value within data, and has worked with some of the world’s leading consumer-focused brands including Pepsico, Disney, Panasonic and GSK. Steve explains, “We set out to help businesses find their ‘black swan’ moments— we thrive on predicting the seemingly unpredictable. With the right data, the best algorithms and plenty of human intuition, we can solve our clients’ hardest problems, predict unexpected moments and help them develop competitive advantage.”

“As a data and technology innovator, it was a natural progression for us to expand our business out from HQ in London into the Thames Valley area as part of our global strategy to collaborate with clients and business partners,” he adds. “GROW@GreenPark provides a really dynamic environment for our Reading-based Devops and product team to innovate and create!” Today, Black Swan employs 260 people worldwide across offices in the UK, Hungary, USA and South Africa. With accolades including the 2017 Financial Times FT1000 Fastest Growing Companies in Europe, and Sunday Times SME Export Track 100 2016, Black Swan is focusing growth in the USA as well as continuing to invest in its UK HQ. A not-for-profit arm, White Swan, uses Black Swan’s proprietary technology to make a positive difference in the world—particularly to improve the health and wellbeing of society.

Blue Array

Founder Simon Schnieders was working in-house as the head of SEO for companies like Mail Online and Zoopla. What started as a few requests for consultancy work blossomed into an opportunity to become a solopreneur, rapidly expanding into an agency of ten for this GROW@GreenPark almuni. Focused on purposeful growth, which is recognised for its commitment to Apprenticeships and working with the National Apprenticeship Scheme, 25% of Blue Array’s workforce are young adults developing professional careers through careful mentorship and training. Employees are also stakeholders in the social enterprise which won a JustGiving for being in the top 1% of financial contributors to charitable causes. Maintaining an undiluted and unparalleled service offering to clients as the company grows is paramount to the ethos of the company, which focuses completely on SEO as a core discipline. “Most other agencies would consider it a low margin area to pivot clients into content marketing or paid search territory,” comments Simon, “We see it as all we do and are committed to being the best at it. We’re constantly questioning what we do and how we do it with the net output being results for our clients.” A 2016 Game Changer, Blue Array won a new client from last year’s event—50 Game Changer eco-system in action.

50 Game Changers in the Thames Valley 2017

MARKETING

EchoMany

The Thames Valley is an exciting place to be! Amazing talent, innovation, and inspiring ideas being brought to reality.”

The biggest frustration for me is pulling people back out of London. We need to find ways to keep our talent and offer them great opportunities nearer to home.”

It is hard to get good people outside of London. Fortunately we have a great team but it has been hard and costly to find the right people.”

EchoMany delivers hyperpersonalised video campaigns for the world’s biggest brands, utilising social and other first-party data and intentbased interactions to provide one-to-one marketing and advertising creative that generates real-time audience engagement. Video has become a key part of the marketing ecosystem—IAB forecasts video will account for half of social media spend in the UK by 2018. With a typical EchoMany campaign delivering 65% cost per engagement reductions and achieving on average 5x amplification of impressions, more and more brands are looking at the personalisation of video to truly connect to their audiences.

Brands can now harness social media platforms to deliver native personalised video content instantly and at scale. EchoMany goes beyond segmentation and programmatic marketing by proving that the return on investment of true personalisation is more than just delighted and engaged customers, it’s tangible commercial outcomes. Since its launch in 2015, EchoMany has added global brands including 20th Century Fox, L’Orèal, UNICEF, Honda and Sky to its ever-growing client list. EchoMany won the Wirehive award for Digital Innovation in 2016, has been shortlisted for a MOMA in 2017 and has regularly featured on Twitter’s Top Campaigns and creative showcases.

Ecrebo

Ecrebo is a point of sale (POS) marketing specialist that enables retailers to deliver targeted offers to customers. It was founded in 2010 by Dr. Hassan Hajji and David Vernon to enable retailers to engage their customers in a targeted and more personal way. Through Ecrebo, retailers can engage in-store customers through targeted coupons, messages and digital receipts, specifically tailored to customers. Working with leading retailers including M&S, Waitrose and PANDORA, the Reading-based business ranked 17th in the Deloitte UK Technology Fast 50 2016 as one of the UK’s fastest-growing technology companies. In February 2017, Ecrebo announced a £12million investment from a partnership that includes Air Miles and Nectar Card founder Sir Keith Mills. The funding will be used to accelerate international expansion, with a specific focus on the US, and continue to develop its retail marketing platform. Looking ahead, Dr. Hajjii comments, “In five years’ time, we expect Ecrebo to be a much larger organisation, with an established international presence and client base that includes some of the world’s largest retailers. With a large and growing team of engineers who boast a multitude of PhDs and patents between them, I also envision that we’ve got the talent and desire to develop new technologies that are set to revolutionise retail. That said, I know that we’ll maintain the passion and commitment that has made the business the success it is today.” Ecrebo was recognised in the inaugural FT 1000 in April 2017, a ranking of Europe’s fastest-growing businesses by revenue, coming in a number 83.

50 Game Changers in the Thames Valley 2017

MARKETING

Fantoo

Passle

Fantoo is about re-imagining the “Future of Work” as the end-user communication and collaboration interface for business users. Fantoo leverages AI to enable functionality that makes the user smarter and more responsive. Fantoo was founded by Jordan Fantay. As Dell’s first global start-up in residence, Fantoo is based out of Dell’s headquarters in Bracknell, and with their support, is working to bring email into the 21st century. Fantoo is also working closely with Microsoft to ensure a closely coupled product, which leverages their strengths with Office365 and Azure to blend with Fantoo’s innovation and out of the box thinking. As serial entrepreneur Jordan explains, “In a world where there is a proliferation of many productivity applications, Fantoo seeks to bring the many into a single solution which brings together many feeds of data.” The second-time 50 Game Changer was recently awarded Gartner Cool Vendor status for the Digital Workplace 2017. It’s holistic approach to Office 365 was recognised as being ahead in the market, where other organisations are limiting deployments to Exchange Online. Jordan is also building his team of innovators and entrepreneurs, bringing industry software veteran Andre Boisvert to the Fantoo board and senior Microsoft executive Mark Buckley also joining the team.

MARKETING

Passle was created to address the frustration felt by founders, Tom and Adam Elgar. In their previous two businesses, the entrepreneur had found it impossible for true experts to demonstrate their knowledge in a timely fashion. Passle set out to enable busy professionals to create meaningful content through commentary, building their personal brand and enhancing their firm’s credibility through authentic, relevant insights. The platform shares content across the client’s website, social channels, newsletters and oneto-one outreach. “All parts of the business win with Passle,” Adam explains. “Our clients quickly become influencers, leading conversations with their clients, peers, even competitors. Business development and sales functions can then leverage the expert content created by their thought leaders to nurture prospects, save time and close more business.” “We’re the only content marketing platform that focusses on the needs of the busy professionals in an organisation, rather than those of a centralised “broadcast” marketing department.” Clients include Grant Thornton, Howard Kennedy, Freshfields, Hitachi, SAP and Pegasystems. This year has seen the Passle team develop the product to meet the needs of large, global organisations, with plans to build a world-leading enterprise SaaS. Adam adds, “Being a Game Changer helped cement our brand as an innovative start-up but also helped us position ourselves as the incumbent player in our field. We’re seeing the ecosystem of large international software and service companies, many of them based in and around Reading, increasingly drive supplier innovation. Over time this will drive huge growth and jobs in the area.”

ConnectTVT

MARKETING

Real Towns

Redbox Mobile

Real Towns brings digital solutions and fresh thinking to the challenges facing UK towns and cities today. Working with Business Improvement Districts (BIDs), local authorities, business groups, Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs), town teams and place-makers, the team’s aim is to build communities which thrive on smart technology and collaboration. Founded by Shaun Fagan in 2016, the holistic approach boosts business, attracts visitors, celebrates unique town heritage and offers residents new ways of engaging with the wider community. The end goal: create vibrant communities that are a magnet for investment, employment, networking and recreation. Shaun explains, “Our goal is to unite every aspect of a town through a comprehensive digital platform. We target business, tourism, heritage and community sectors.” The team recently won funding to establish a Community Digital Hub in Chipping Norton, targeting disadvantaged and disengaged young people from the town and surrounding area. Elsewhere the team is linking up with business sponsors and skills providers to deliver a range of business skills to young applicants. “We use the best digital offerings to show people new ways to shop, connect, engage, communicate, promote and learn. It’s outcomes all the way. From boosted business and showcased heritage through to schools and local groups integrated in a holistic, organic way. We don’t believe anyone else is doing this, in quite the same way, in the UK today.” With a vision to take Real Towns national, Shaun’s aim is to transform hundreds of towns across the UK into thriving and successful digital hubs.

Redbox Mobile was founded by Rory Mudie in 2013. As a senior executive at Vodafone, he spotted a trend in app promotion and noticed how App Store search was failing. He set out to create the most used app promotion tool in the world.  “Google and Apple are continually updating the methods they use to identify and rank apps in their market. With an ever-changing industry developing at a rapid pace, we strive to bring new and innovative techniques to stay ahead of the game, keeping our customers ahead of their competitors,” he explains. Now with offices in New York and London as well as Hungerford HQ, Redbox is working with global brands such as Kodak, The Sunday Times and Virgin to increase apps’ discoverability and ensures apps reach the top 10 ranking in the App Store. The Redbox team are big fans of firsts. Rory explains, “We were first to market with paid search in the US, and the UK, Australia and New Zealand have just gone live. We hope to be the first with a platform that does what we do automatically this quarter.” “Our innovation comes from removing unnecessary steps and making things happen faster. It takes us two seconds to get an ad live globally in every iOS app store in the world. It’s powerful. If you want to be first in the App Store for any word, we can do it. I’m so inspired by my company, our prospects and our client performance, and most of all, being first with happy clients.”

50 Game Changers in the Thames Valley 2017

MARKETING

MEDICAL

Ignite Data

Volume

Volume is one of the only companies globally to have developed three ‘With Watson’ verified applications, moving consumers from a ‘search’ generation to an ‘ask’ generation. The business now uses experiential robots to move online interactions into physical ones. Volume has gained a leadership in this sector by converting clients’ existing non-cognitive applications into cognitive ones using IBM Watson™. Founded by Chris Sykes in 1997, Volume’s purpose is to improve the customer experience through humanlike interactions online and via experiential robots and to reduce the cost to serve. Constantly innovating, Volume brings commercially viable Conversational AI Platforms to market, including their own platforms such as LUSY; right now, there’s no comparable in-market application. Volume also connects Natural Language Processing services with a humanoid robot. Its own unique technology—CASY (Corpus Assessment System)—allows organisations to understand the performance of AI corpura. “We’re innovating through adaptive development and by being technology agnostic, using myriad AI and cognitive services from multiple vendors,” comments Chris. “We’re excited about being at the forefront of emerging technology, being recognised as an innovator and having credibility in the global marketplace.” “Being a Game Changer helped us establish new connections and a wider commercial network. We’re relentlessly focused on our people and fostering the best talent in the market, so this helps us build an even more positive employer brand and work towards being the employer of choice as well as contribute to the ConnectTVT cause.”

Ignite Data designs and delivers smarter research solutions by identifying inefficient pharmaceutical business processes and streamlining and automating them through better use of technology, while safeguarding just the best elements of certain traditional operational processes. Co-founders Dan Hydes and Richard Yeatman formed Ignite Data off the back of combined experience of clinical study recruitment and Electronic Health Records and has a mission to improve patient lives by working with healthcare organisations to expedite the development and assessment of new treatments.

There are not enough innovation centres, funding opportunities and local tech entrepreneurial events.”

The team of twenty counts a wide range of leading pharmaceutical, clinical research and NHS organisations as clients. Dan explains, “It’s our core belief that studies of all types can be enhanced through better application of technology and eSourced data. This concept is relatively new and we believe our approach is very powerful and different to others in this space. You have to keep innovating to stay ahead so we’re constantly looking at how we can tweak and improve the process.” Dan adds, “We’ve been fortunate to be based in the Thames Valley. Starting out in GROW@GreenPark was great and we found finance from the FSE Group. We’ve been able to recruit good people and a lot of our pharmaceutical clients are based here too. It’s perfect for us.” A steep growth curve continues to be on the agenda for Ignite Data. “The space we’re in is ripe for innovation so we’re investing heavily in ensuring we have the right capability to meet the challenges of the market.”

ConnectTVT

The London tech community is quickly expanding out to its surrounding areas. We feel Thames Valley has the potential to help incubate the start-up culture and produce even more exciting businesses. The Thames Valley area can certainly benefit from an outside perspective of the London start-up scene, by learning and iterating from it, rather than trying to emulate and compete.”

MEDICAL

Isansys

Oxford Nanopore

Project Tide

Solutions4Health

In 2010, co-founders Keith Errey and Rebecca Weir set out with a vision to liberate patients from the burden of cables and wires and overcome the barriers of technology integration and data accessibility in healthcare. Today Isansys is the leader in new generation wireless patient monitoring systems. Through its Patient Status Engine, an automated, wireless, remote monitoring platform, smart wearable sensors collect and analyse vital signs to deliver real-time and predictive data to hospital, community settings or field medical units. “This technology is reshaping the future of healthcare for both patients and healthcare professionals alike. It enables providers to monitor individuals in real-time and continuously, and the built-in artificial intelligence enables care to move away from the old reactive model, into a new paradigm of predictive, pro-active care,” Keith explains. “Unlike many companies trying to push technology into healthcare, we’ve developed our platform by working closely with clinical teams from the outset, responding to their needs and solving their real-world problems.” This year, Isansys has started its global commercial rollout programme with the establishment of Isansys (Europe) GmbH in Berlin and Isansys (India) Pvt Ltd in Bangalore and has additionally delivered Patient Status Engine systems to Norway, Denmark, Singapore, and the US. Within the Thames Valley, Isansys is starting a project for elderly care at home, reducing hospital admissions, and care of mentally ill and infirmed patients in the community. These projects will, for the first time, provide evidence that acute clinical care in the home, at scale, is safe, secure, and saves money.

Oxford Nanopore provides scalable biological analysis, with its devices performing DNA/RNA sequencing directly and in realtime. The company is working to enable the analysis of any living thing, by any person, in any environment. Spun out of the University of Oxford in 2005, today, it employs a team of over 300 people, HQ’d in Oxford, and offices in Cambridge, New York and Boston. Oxford Nanopore was founded by Dr Gordon Sanghera, Dr Spike Willcocks and Professor Hagan Bayley with seed funding from IP Group plc and has since raised £351M in private funding from the UK, US, Europe and Asia. “We are disrupting the way biological analyses are performed,” says Dr. Sanghera. “Traditional technologies are large, expensive, complicated boxes that sit in centralised labs. The MinION is being used inn labs in more than 50 countries. But it is also used in Antarctica, up mountains, on the space station. It’s the only DNA sequencer that can be portable and work in real-time, and so the only sequencing technology positioned to unlock applied uses like point-of-care analysis or industrial usage. “As a business, we’re excited by the wealth of talent already available in and around Oxford, as we need multidisciplinary, very intelligent and motivated employees.  And, it’s an attractive place to live—people are excited to move here from any country to be part of our team.”

ConnectTVT

A digital health hackathon in Oxford kick-started Project Tide, enabling Cyan Collier and his co-founders to test the idea and create a proof of concept. With funding from a tech-for-good accelerator, the smartphone app that improves the accuracy and impact of healthcare rapid diagnostic tests was launched. Today the inspirational team has collaborated with doctors and academics to field-test the device in Malawi and South Africa. “Our mission is to use our technology to make a positive difference to people’s lives,” Cyan explains. “We’re starting with TB, because, affecting nearly 10 million people, we can make a huge impact, but we’re planning on using our technology for other diseases too.” “We’re focusing on impact first and technology second. That means we’ve identified a genuine problem and have used technology to solve it, rather than starting with a solution and trying to find a problem for it to solve.” Despite challenges around maintaining younger talent, Cyan is positive about the region’s potential. “The great thing about the Thames Valley is the range of talent that exists within it. There are world class universities, research institutes, science parks, small and large businesses, all within close proximity. The opportunities are huge.” The next five years will see Project Tide use their technology across at least three continents and for multiple diagnostic tests, collecting valuable data on the prevalence of disease.

Solutions4Health focuses on delivering healthcare, information systems and technology enabled care services across the UK. It has developed an integrated health service that encompasses several aspects of public health, now commissioned in Slough, Dudley and Peterborough. The field of public health is ever changing and prevention of health issues is the key to reducing the economic burden on the NHS. Working closely with local authorities, Solutions4Health delivers in the heart of the communities, targeting those hard-to-reach populations. For instance, through its latest service MySelfCare, it helps these communities and families manage their long-term conditions effectively via an easy to use digital platform. It was launched last year at the House of Commons. As well as being commissioned in several new areas across the UK, this year Solutions4Health was a finalist at the Royal Society for Public Health and Wellbeing Awards 2016 for Technology & Health Innovation as well as the Eldercare Innovation Awards 2016 for Best Product to Support Ageing-in-place. Kishore Sankla, CEO of Solutions4Health, comments, “Solutions4Health aims to make a difference to those most in need providing a one stop solution for the delivery and management of outcome focused integrated public health services. We try to help people using innovative ideas, it’s more than healthcare, it’s human care!”

50 Game Changers in the Thames Valley 2017

SHARING ECONOMY

Cycle.land

Grab a Gardener

Sponsure

Takestock

With a mission to be the “AirBnB for bikes”, the Oxford based start-up is truly setting the bar. Last year, co-founder Agne Milukaite launched a crowdfunding campaign for expansion with a goal of £100K. Ultimately raising over £400K, the cycle-sharing platform has expanded into Edinburgh and Cambridge with plans to expand worldwide. Co-founder Agne Milukaite says “Cycle.land believes the bicycle is the next great disruptor in urban mobility. Amsterdam and Copenhagen today offer a glimpse at the future of urban mobility everywhere, with a majority of short trips in urban areas being made on bikes. This is great for the environment, health and happiness!” Cycle.land aims to disrupt the way people use bikes, making them more accessible and efficient. Impact will be measured in several areas: the environment, urban mobility, sharing economy. Agne adds, “We aim to create a community of bike sharers both online and offline. Technology makes it easier to unlock the assets of unused bikes and to help people find the right bike for them. Cycle.land taps into something that already happens—neighbours and friends have always lent bikes to each other. The Cycle.land platform makes that experience a lot easier. You can find the bikes you want by browsing online, get in touch with the owner and coordinate by messaging and also take care of the payment online.” Next for Cycle.land is expanding to London, Bristol and Brighton, ahead of ultimately becoming a global platform.

Ant Milner and Nav Takhar discovered a gap in the market when they couldn’t find a gardener. Not actually owning a lawn mower and low on time as full-time commuters, they wanted a hassle-free solution—quick, easy to book and simple payment processing. In March 2016, Grab a Gardener was born. An online marketplace, it connects local people to local gardeners. Customers can book by choosing a time and date that suits them and pay a flat hourly rate for a vetted gardener, all securely online. It’s a service for gardeners too, who find it difficult to market themselves and maintain a regular stream of work. Launched in Reading, it’s been so successful, Grab a Gardener is now live in Berkshire, Somerset, Surrey, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire and Hampshire. With seed investment in place, national expansion is next for Grab a Gardener, first heading to the North of England then Greater London. Ant comments, “We’re opening up our offer by partnering with highly qualified landscaping companies to provide a full range of services from start to finish, anything from bespoke garden design to maintenance for a brilliant new garden. We’re also focusing our efforts on ensuring the company maintains that personable nature of the industry, by successfully pairing each customer with their preferred gardener. Ultimately we’re bringing a wholly offline industry online!” Excellent service is a priority, with Ant and Nav personally following up with each customer. The co-founders are now looking to raise the next round of investment to take the business national.

ConnectTVT

Sponsure is the first fully transactional sports sponsorship marketplace. Founded by entrepreneur Bill Ingram and Jonny Summers, it aims to revolutionise the sport sponsorship process, connecting the two worlds of business and sport to provide mutually beneficial outcomes through sponsorship. Sponsure will allow the 190,000 sports clubs, sport playing schools and universities in the UK to raise much needed sponsorship from local, regional and national brands. Greater sponsorship will enable long-term viability of sports, which in turn has a positive impact on our communities’ health, social and economic well-being. At the same time, businesses can maximise their sponsorship spend, ensuring they access a highly targeted and emotionally connected audience. Bill explains, “Amateur sport is an integral and brilliant part of our society. But most clubs are run by volunteers. Sponsorship investment is critical to them but is almost always left to the chairman and committee digging out their little black books, making the call to the same people over and over again. We know businesses want to connect more authentically with potential customer audiences—sport sponsorship allows them to do this. We’ve created an effortless and streamlined experience for both clubs and their sponsors.” A global platform, Sponsure is committed to the local Thames Valley community as a starting point. Clubs already signed up include Reading University Hockey, Rugby and Lacrosse, Reading Abbey RFC, AFC Henley, Woodley Wanderers and Shiplake College.

Just over two years ago, cofounders Campbell Murray, Mike Bagshaw and Brian Clarke noticed large amounts of food being scrapped in factories. Feedback from manufacturers said that the effort to sell the food gave too low a return, they lacked time and determining market value was difficult. The team felt a digital market could provide the scale to simplify the process and maximise the chance of all surplus food being re-purposed. Takestock was launched in January 2015 and has to date had 33,000 users on the site with over 1,300 active companies using the platform, the only online market of its kind in the UK. In December 2016, the team launched full service iOS & Android apps to address the slow response cycle times on the web platform. With many highly mobile customers, full function apps help speed up transactions, helping customers to find a buyer and, through their offer system, determine market value. Customers can now do everything on the Takestock app from joining to payments so never need to use the web if that suits the customer’s lifestyle. Ambitious growth plans are in place. This year Campbell and the team will focus on a second funding round, US expansion and partnerships in other verticals, looking to exit the business within five years and move on to their next challenge. One exciting new area of focus is in the farming sector and having recently agreed a national partnership with LEAF, Takestock are aiming to bring producers in to Takestock to sell farm surplus and even non surplus direct to the Takestock customer base.

50 Game Changers in the Thames Valley 2017

SHARING ECONOMY

The UK Government is not doing enough to recognise the start-up communities outside London.”

What’s happening in the Thames Valley is wonderful to see. However, in comparison to other tech Valley’s around the world, we need to do more to build momentum both in the tech and investment communities to back and develop innovation.”

WORKPLACE & SKILLS

TalkAbout Guides

Agribusiness Academy

TalkAbout Guides aims to change the way people interact with art and heritage sites. After realising that many visitors to museums and other heritage sites can feel bored, intimidated or isolated, founder Joshua Chavin saw an opportunity to create a new type of interactive museum-going experience. They wanted to design a self-guided, userpaced, conversation-based tour to encourage visitors to interpret art and history for themselves. Launched in 2013, TalkAbout Guides are a new kind of handheld guide for museums and heritage sites that engages and educates visitors by sparking rich, fun conversations about works of art. Funding from Oxford University Innovation (OUI) enabled the team to create an app. TalkAbout Guides’ questionbased tours are unique in the museum and heritage sector: where other guides tell, they give context and then ask. By engaging viewers in this dynamic and engaging way, TalkAbout tours can help museums attract more visitors, particularly younger, tech-savvy ones, and help to make their exhibitions more approachable and accessible for audiences that often feel excluded. Joshua plans to further develop the app to take advantage of new technologies currently being designed for museums and heritage sites. “Our goal is to make TalkAbout Guides a recognisable brand in the arts and heritage sector by offering an experience that visitors to one museum or country house would then seek out at other heritage sites.”

Agribusiness Academy’s origins lie in academia. Research into food value chains showed a distinct lack of content addressing industry challenges from a business perspective. Dr. Vijayender Nalla moved to the Thames Valley from the Netherlands founding the business in 2016. Their mission is to make learning accessible, available and affordable to everyone in the sector. From a multinational or a family farm, it provides knowledge and skills to improve community careers or businesses via a learning platform. Content is uniquely enhanced by tutors—world-leading experts helping Agribusiness remain at the forefront of learning in the sector. Dr. Nalla explains, “We’re bringing equity to learning in the sector, through our platform and our pricing. In doing so, we have the potential to help provide solutions to global problems, like food security and poverty. Over 1 billion people work in agriculture across the globe—only an approach like ours can attempt to reach all of them.” Looking ahead, the Academy team’s focus is building more bespoke solutions, supporting the innovation needs of organisations and entrepreneurs in the food sector and creating an online learning organisation fit for the information age. He adds, “It’s an honour to be selected and a real validation of our move to the Thames Valley. This is just the start of our journey but recognition and awareness are keys to our growth. We’re looking to use this as a platform for our future.”

50 Game Changers in the Thames Valley 2017

WORKPLACE & SKILLS

ThanksBox

A League of Her Own

MeVitae

A League of Her Own is an online community designed to inspire more women to start their own business. Entrepreneurs Charly Lester and Caroline Oliver founded the club when they recognised how fear and loneliness had affected their own start-up experiences. A League of Her Own is a place for female founders and women with business ideas to go, meet like-minded peers, be inspired and supported. League of Her Own offers members new modules every month, devoted to different business areas, from accounts through to marketing. Charly and Caroline have interviewed a range of female entrepreneurs and top businesswomen to create the empowering content. Reading-raised Charly explains, “There are other clubs for female entrepreneurs, but we believe we’re the first to create something that offers practical teaching at this level. We’ve showcased female entrepreneurs from across the world, at the very top of their industry, everything from baking, to tech, to PR.” “We want to cut through the ‘fluffy’ business advice you find aimed at women, and bring the most the most relevant, useful resources available in one place, creating a true home for female entrepreneurs.” Next for League of Her Own is hosting a Guardian series of Entrepreneurial Masterclasses as well as investing back in the community via school workshops. As a governor, Charly is an active entrepreneurial ambassador at Kendrick School, as well as former speaker at Glug Reading.

Luke, Steve and Merlin, the founders of ThanksBox, were fascinated by how the way we experience life had changed—in our lives as a consumer, brands obsess about customer experience, Marketing directors have a greater understanding of their customers than ever before and we now can share our story across a myriad of social platforms. The team is now helping organisations build a great culture and an engaging environment for their people.

MeVitae’s co-founder and CTO, Vivek Doraiswamy really wanted to work at Microsoft being a huge fan. With tough competition for graduate roles he needed to stand out from the crowd, so built the first digital resume app. Following the app’s success—live in two days and over several thousand downloads in a few weeks— MeVitae was formed. MeVitae’s goal is to unleash human capital via cognition. It uses a combination of autonomous AI technologies to gather data and make intelligent and personalised decisions, without human limitations “MeVitae is the first-ever cognitive recruiting platform to combine space technology and neuroscience,” explains Vivek. “MeVitae is also eight times faster, a third of the current cost of manual review and offers natural language processing, pattern recognition and machine learning.” A technology ambassador, championing more start-ups in the Thames Valley, Vivek says, “There’s a chance to shine in Thames Valley as the barriers have reduced considerably. Years ago, start-ups were not a career choice but now it’s a way to turn your ideas and passions into reality.” MeVitae plans to expand beyond HR into other industries such as space, and advertising.

ConnectTVT

WorkInConfidence

Over their lifetime people spend, on average, a fifth of their lives at work. In addition to this the working life of the modern employee is changing rapidly. Remote working, flexible hours and flatter hierarchies all mean that traditional ways for employees to communicate and engage with each other is changing. Combine this with the methods organisations use to capture feedback and understand how their people, the market is ripe for disruption. ThanksBox is changing the way organisations connect with, incentivise and engage their employees with smart digital tools that overcome many of the challenges posed by the modern workplace. The intelligent data insights and employee feedback captured via the apps allow companies to monitor and accelerate cultural change, raising awareness and positively reinforce desired behaviours and create an engaging environment for people to work. The analytics capability of ThanksBox has been recognised by the CIPD, the association for HR and People professionals.

WorkInConfidence is an early stage SaaS company delivering to the HR, human capital management (HCM) and governance and risk management sectors. Co-founder Tim Martin was on a mission to resolve the endemic deficit in engagement and governance in many organisations, having seen first-hand people put under pressure to bend or break the rules—and the devastating consequences for both individuals and organisation. The cost of poor engagement and motivation in the UK workplace was another trigger. WorkInConfidence aims to deliver better performing organisations—both from an economic and a societal perspective—by helping deliver a step change in governance and engagement. It brings new thinking into employee engagement with a more joined up set of tools across surveys, appraisals, continuous feedback and employee communications. It is now used by over 125,000 people. The business aims to become an internationally recognised leader in its field delivering innovation, talent development coupled with quality delivery—both internally and for its client base. Tim values the growing network of innovative, early-stage businesses in the Thames Valley, commenting, “The area is full of other like-minded entrepreneurs and it is easy to find others who can help your business, support which is invaluable in the early stages and as you look to scale. Getting recognition as a Game Changer is immensely gratifying and gives everyone in the organisation a real boost. The whole team will be really proud.”

50 Game Changers in the Thames Valley 2017

Funding Landscape

European Space Agency Business Incubation Centres

(ESA BICs) work across Europe to inspire entrepreneurs to turn spaceconnected business ideas into commercial companies. A package of support includes funding to accelerate product development, technical expertise and business development workshops. The UK ESA BIC is managed by the Science and Technology Facilities Council, a Research Council which supports university research in astronomy, particle physics and space science, manages National Laboratories and builds National Science and Innovation Campuses around its scientific facilities to nurture innovation. The BIC is located on the Harwell Campus, home to more than 5,000 researchers, engineers and innovators from around 200 high-tech organisations, and a focal point and cluster for the UK’s rapidly growing space community. ESA BICs help to create viable businesses and new jobs by providing support to more than 130 companies every year in Europe, and more than 400 startups companies have received support to date. The ESA BIC Harwell currently houses 14 companies and to date 47 have graduated successfully.

Funding Landscape

The FSE Group

The FSE Group provides tailored funding solutions to ambitious small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), to help them achieve their maximum potential. In the Thames Valley Berkshire area, we currently operate the Thames Valley Berkshire Funding Escalator. This fund is an £8.3m initiative funded by Thames Valley Berkshire LEP to support job creation and economic prosperity in Berkshire. The escalator, which includes four different loan schemes and a growth equity fund, provides eligible companies—from startup to established—with loans and equity funding between £25,000 and £250,000 for activities that will potentially deliver high-growth and employment opportunities. To date, we have supported 38 Berkshire businesses, which has safe guarded/ created 327 jobs.

For more information please visit: www.berkshirebusinessfunding.co.uk

SETsquared

The University of Surrey achieved a world first with the opening of its first 5G Testbed in Basingstoke. It provides early access to the next generation 5G technology that will help establish UK leadership. The University is currently identifying companies that can use the facility to gain a commercial head start. In support of this and in partnership with SETsquared, the University is providing a European Union, ERDF funded Entrepreneurship Program targeting support of 360 companies with more than 60 having already benefited. SETsquared is also building Basingstoke’s Tech community and has 17 companies under incubation with the first of these achieving investment and now employing staff.

Henley Business Angels

Henley Business Angels is a network of experienced business leaders, successful entrepreneurs and investors. The network’s aim is to facilitate opportunities for members to invest in and mentor (S)EIS registered early stage businesses, launched by entrepreneurs who graduated from or are connected with the Henley Business School and University of Reading. Members make their own decisions regarding investment and invest, alone or in a group, in early stage businesses which seek to raise funds of between £50,000 and £250,000.

Thames Valley Investment Network (TVIN)

Thames Valley Investment Network (TVIN) is part of OION Ltd and was established in 2003. It is run by Richard Cooper and targets companies with a focus on first mover advantage and technology including FMCG, web, digital media and green-technology. Companies are typically seeking investment between £150k to ~£750k. TVIN has a network of over 200 high net worth individuals and is part of the OION Fund which invests alongside the Angel Investors. Recently funded companies in the Thames Valley include SafetoNet and Recycling Technologies.

The FAB Accelerator

Pineapple

The FAB Accelerator—Oxford’s first privately run start-up accelerator programme, FAB runs three 12-week programmes a year. Currently on its third cohort, FAB has already provided expert mentoring and investment advice to over 30 start-ups from Oxford and the wider Thames Valley region. Open to individuals and teams from all backgrounds and sectors, FAB combines weekly evening classes covering key startup business topics, each delivered by expert speakers and special guests, with regular oneto-one sessions with expert business mentors. The programme culminates in a ‘demo day’ and pitching session where all participants get to pitch to a panel of angel investors and assembled audience of business advisors, funding bodies and support organisations.

Pineapple is an exciting new social enterprise set up by Andy Dewis, Mat Rule and Liberty Bollen in 2017 to support sustainable business for a better future. It will do this by providing the people to work with, places to work in, finance to operate and technology to innovate—at all stages of the business life-cycle. As a business evolves, its resources, workspace and financial needs will inevitably change. Pineapple aims to be part of the DNA of a business, working as a flexible resource offering as little as guidance and expertise at a monthly board meeting to as much as taking a product to market. This year, Pineapple aims to work with 20 seed businesses, 6 established businesses and 3 charities to help make a positive social and environmental impact.

The Oxford Startup Incubator

The Oxford Startup Incubator, run by Oxford University Innovation (OUI), has been in operation since early 2011. It supports early stage start-ups from Oxford University’s ecosystem (which are not University spinouts) from idea stage through to minimumviable-product and initial commercial traction. It has taken in over 60 ventures to date, supported 25 company incorporations, and its portfolio ventures have raised over $40M. It provides 24/7 facilities, serviced meeting rooms, dedicated staff for advice and support, access to OUI’s business and investment networks, financial support, workshops, training and networking events.

ConnectTVT

Funding Landscape

that the UK cannot rely on a handful of hubs when it comes identifying the next start-up superstar. While hubs such as London, Newcastle and Bristol are long established start-up hotbeds, innovation can come from elsewhere—such as the Thames Valley.

The Next Wave of Innovation — by John Abel,

Having been the birthplace for visionaries such as Alexander Graham Bell and James Watt, as well as the home for organisations such as Autonomy and ARM, the UK has built up a rich heritage of innovation. This legacy continues today. From London’s Silicon Roundabout right up to Newcastle’s Silicon Shore, the UK has fostered a new and vibrant community to support start-ups. And it is these start-ups that are driving the next wave of innovation.

The future of the UK The UK’s start-ups are creating new technologies, services and products that are changing the way we live and work. They

It’s absolutely crucial that organisations look beyond the obvious start-up hubs. They need to ensure that start-ups country-wide are being taken into account and all hotbeds of innovation are being supported and the next billion-dollar startup is not missed simply because of its location.

Head to Technology and Cloud, UK, Ireland and Israel, Oracle.

represent an exciting future for the UK, where invention and the reimagination of the norm sits at the very heart of everything that we do. They will allow the UK to continue leading innovation on a global scale. Start-ups have also become integral to the survival of the UK economy. With TechNation revealing that the digital technology industry is worth £170 billion to the UK economy, it’s vital that enterprises, government and governing bodies rethink and reimagine their relationships with start-ups.

A new breed of accelerator Understanding that one-size does not fit all when working with start-ups, Oracle recently launched its next-generation Start-up Cloud Accelerator. It aims to reimagine enterprise innovation through true partnerships with start-ups that foster co-development and co-innovation.

Oracle will be working with ConnectTVT to ensure that it is extending the support it provides to start-ups beyond the locale of its accelerator in Bristol. Oracle UK HQ is based in Reading and being involved with ConnectTVT provides us both a platform to create a strong relationship for companies and employees. We will be working together to drive business ingenuity, and ensure that the entire ecosystem—from the start-ups right through to end-users—benefit from our collaboration. Investing in the local ecosystem is essential for Oracle UK. We want to support the creation of a nationwide community that builds connections and bridges between every organisation that is helping to drive innovation in the UK, and our partnership with ConnectTVT is one of the cornerstones that will help us show this commitment to UK growth.

Amy Sorrells Senior Communications Manager amy.sorrells@oracle.com

Looking over the horizon

Matt Price Cloud Innovation Director matthew.price@oracle.com

The undisputed importance of start-ups to the UK’s future means

ConnectTVT

50 Game Changers in the Thames Valley 2017

James Drake PR Manager james.w.drake@oracle.com 47

Community Champions

Ben Mumby-Croft

Duncan Purves

Having spent periods of time working with start-ups and entrepreneurs in Cambridge and London, Ben wanted to bring some of the start-up culture and vibe from these locations to Oxford. Whilst Oxford is a widely recognised global brand for academic excellence it’s much less prominent as an entrepreneurial hotspot or tech cluster. This, and the huge amount of untapped potential within the city, is what’s motivated him to get proactive and champion the local start-up community. Ben has three key community projects as a co-founder of The FAB Accelerator Oxford’s first privately run startup accelerator programme. The second is MarketingCamp which is a bi-monthly meetup group which has over 500 members for marketing professionals. He is also Coorganiser, #StartedinOxford Demo Night— Oxford’s first event bringing together the best and brightest start-ups from across the Oxford scene. 2017 is a big year for Ben with the publication of his first book, Visual Marketing Plans. It takes the business model canvas approach and adapts this for marketers and start-up founders looking for a more flexible and agile approach to their next marketing plan. In terms of the book “I haven’t seen anyone else successfully adapt a business model canvas approach for marketers”. Of the Thames Valley Ben feels “It doesn’t get the prominence and attention it deserves—that’s a big opportunity for any game changers out there!”

Community Champions

Duncan Purves is the founder of the Internet of Things Thames Valley Meetup Group, bringing together people and organisations to collaborate, explore and innovate with IoT products, services and applications within the region. When I set up my consultancy business in 2013, my first project was around IoT. I wanted to get closer to the community, so joined a London meet-up group. Given the Thames Valley’s tech heritage I felt strongly there should be something more local. There was clearly a gap... from a personal perspective the intention was to build up a network with colleagues and associates involved in IoT. The goal for the group is fundamentally about business, to create a community of people who are going to network, share their knowledge and experiences to create new relationships and opportunities. We also want to see the Thames Valley recognised nationally for innovation, specifically around IoT. The group has over 1100 members ranging from large corporates to one man start-ups. Everyone from across the IoT community be it vendors, hardware and software developers, designers, PMs, technologists, students, consultants, geeks and makers as well as angel investors attend.

Glug Champions

Leah Thompson

Nature Nurture

Resource Productions

Glug champions creative communities around the world. Based around a series of talks and informal networking, Glug has become one of the most exciting, credible and well-attended creative events around. Co-founded by Nick Clements and Reading Ian Hambleton in 2007, it started as a handful of mates talking shop in an East London pub. Nine years later and it’s an international movement with events in 30 cities around the world. Looking to re-energise the creative community locally, ConnectTVT and Antonia Taylor PR launched the Reading chapter of Glug in 2016. We believed its editorial, creative idea-share and ‘This is Notworking™’ format would help build the local creative community—and bring a buzz as we joined other Glug cities like New York, Sydney and Los Angeles. Since launching, Glug Reading has attracted speakers like What3Words, Uber and Reading FC, all sharing their lessons of starting creative fires through their businesses and passion projects. Sharing in our vision to connect the local creative community are our Glug Reading advocates Austin Fraser, Heath Wallace, OpsView and NoMagnolia TV who make our quarterly events possible. These stand-out Reading-based brands are game changers in their own right, committed to shaping the creative future of our region, investing time and resource into the community and contributing their own creative thinking. Our Glug Reading team goes from strength to strength because of these inspiring businesses. Thank you all.

Leah is responsible for Enterprising Oxford, a University of Oxford initiative to help encourage, support and promote entrepreneurship to students, staff and alumni by communicating, collaborating, and connecting with startups and entrepreneurs with links to Oxford and Oxfordshire. This is being developed by the University of Oxford but draws on resources from across the community. Her work includes connecting people and mapping the ecosystem both online and in person. She works across all sectors and stages, and is an accessible point of contact for the university and community, promoting events and training. She is also an invaluable resource to help signpost the excellent support places and spaces Oxford has to offer. Leah is also a Co-organiser for #StartedinOxford Demo Night. Organised in partnership with: Oxford Start-ups, Oxford Entrepreneurs, The FAB Accelerator, Oxford University Innovation Startup Incubator, The Entrepreneurship Centre and digital health incubator TheHill, the goal of #StartedinOxford Demo Night to showcase the Oxford cluster across the Thames Valley region and beyond. The inaugural event saw 15 start-ups successfully showcasing for “investment” (#StartedinOxford dollars) from attendees based across Oxfordshire and the UK, with plans to expand and develop it into a regular event. Leah says “The Thames Valley, and particularly Oxford, is an amazing place for start-ups—full of entrepreneurial opportunities wherever you look! And with a wealth of knowledge and experience at your fingertips, you’d be hard pressed to find a better place to be.”

ConnectTVT

Natalie Ganpatsingh set up Nature Nurture CIC in 2011. She realised that children were spending very little time in nature and wanted to do something about it, for the sake of both people and the planet. Her mission is to connect urban communities with the nature on their doorstep. In 2016 she began collaborating with technologists and the maker community to explore how we can harness the power of emerging technologies to engage people with nature. Following a pitch with international conservation charity Earthwatch, she gained a contract with The Woodland Trust to enable trees to talk! Talking Trees debut as part of London Tree Week 2017, then we plan to evolve ideas further and spread across UK woodlands and urban trees. We might assume that connecting with nature is about leaving the technology behind, but we realised that to engage a contemporary audience, technology can be a conduit. We’re really excited by the maker revolution and how it offers an accessible lowcost way into digital fabrication, previously the domain of institutions. From the outset, Talking Trees has involved an array of diverse unlikely partners, including ecologists, technologists and creatives. In 2016 they also received a Pride of Reading Award for their innovative ways of connecting people with nature. Natalie says “Thames Valley is great place to start a business. We love the culture of collaboration in the Thames Valley and great opportunities for cross-pollination.”

Community Champions

Founder Dominique Unsworth founded Resource Productions in 1999. Her intention was to enable young people and adults from disadvantaged diverse backgrounds to develop the creative and technical skills they needed to enter the creative industries, whilst producing high quality videos for business, council and charity clients. She explains, “We balance the interests of our clients with the requirements of our students by reinvesting the profit from work with one—into meeting the needs of the other. We’ve developed an altruistic selfsustaining, socially engaged business model.” “We’re embedded within the creative and digital industries, but technology is simply an enabler. We can and do use the latest camera techniques, editing software and social media platforms, but ultimately we want to tell the stories that haven’t be told, empower those who don’t know how to tell them and reach the audiences that are not being reached.” With secured commissions for Channel 4 Random Acts and international film festival awards in place, Dominique and her team are continuing to develop their diverse talent. More TV credits, awards recognition and Resource Productions’ first feature film are next on the list, together with embedding their reputation further regionally. “The Thames Valley is an intensive marketplace, with a wide range of competitors operating in a geographically small locality. It’s challenging to catch the eye of the bigger clients when you are competing with globally renowned multi-million pound competitors. It’s hard to be seen when you are a small, but beautiful minnow, operating in a pool of sharks!”

Richie Harrington

Redwood Technologies

Team GDG

Thingitude

Richie founded Digital Health Oxford (DHOx) a non-profit digital health community, bringing together clinicians, researchers, engineers, designers, patients, entrepreneurs, and others interested in the field of digital health and health technology. “We believe the best things in digital health happen through collaboration and cross-fertilization of ideas and expertise, which is why we’re resolutely committed to engaging people across disciplines and sectors. “DHOx arose from a gap I saw after moving from my PhD in Cambridge, where I studied molecular evolution and bioinformatics, to Oxford. Digital health at the time was a burgeoning field, with enormous opportunities to find big solutions to big problems but there were few connections between different people. The progression to help fix that (and the origins of DHOx) was fairly simple: to start meeting people and encourage collaborations. DHOx has subsequently grown to a community of over 1500 people over the past few years and we now have an established presence in the Oxford ecosystem, running seminars, workshops and hackathons. “We’ve also been working with Oxford University Hospitals and the Oxford AHSN to establish a health innovation and ideas lab at the John Radcliffe hospital in Headington called TheHill. Richie says “The core scope of TheHill is to support and build the community for health innovation in Oxford and the region, facilitate and encourage innovation, entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship, and attract people to Oxford as a world class centre in these areas.”

Redwood Technologies helps businesses provide better engagement with their customers through cloud services such as multi-channel contact centres and customer engagement hubs. Redwood Technologies has grown from a two-person company to one with nearly 200 colleagues and operations across Europe, the USA and Singapore servicing around a thousand large enterprises in over 30 countries. The company was recently recognised as the UK IT Cloud Provider of the Year and received a Queen’s Award for Enterprise: Innovation. With growth at over 30% per year, we like to think we’re a good example of what’s going on in our region. Co-founder and MD, Sean Taylor, comments, “Having worked in Silicon Valley, I honestly see our ‘Tech Valley’ as Europe’s equivalent but we’re faced with big challenges. IT is reliant on a constant supply of new techsavvy millennials, and increasingly, Generation Z. We often lose them to other vibrant areas such as London. We need to look at how we make this a more enticing place to live as well as work. “Being a complete business for me is about much more than growth and awards. We want to very positively impact our community; we’re involved in tens of charities and voluntary causes across the region. I’m a trustee at Berkshire Community Foundation (organising its Business Philanthropy Club), which last year donated nearly £1m to local good causes. We’re also organisers of the Pride of Bracknell Awards. “Congratulations to this year’s 50 Game Changers. If I had to share any advice it would be to allow twice as much time and money as you think you’ll need. Hire people who are critical, hard-working, flexible and positive—it’s a difficult combination but it will make all the difference. Take care of your business and your business will take care of you. Good luck to everyone.”

ConnectTVT

The Thames Valley chapter of the Google Developer Group (GDG) was started in 2015, and is now at over 1000 members and constantly growing. The group is run by the community for the community. It’s current team of amazing volunteers include Atif Khan, Chris Guest, Florian Rathgeber, Kubra Harmankaya, Nana Fifield and Perusha Moodley. Its purpose is to connect those interested in Google technologies so that they can learn from one another and connect. Topics range from Android, the web and the Google Cloud platform to Machine Learning. A GDG Meetup can take many forms—from just a few people getting together to watch a video, to large gatherings with demos and tech talks. There are also the very “hands on” events like code sprints and hackathons. Their flagship event is the annual Google Devfest which attracts over 100 attendees and has been a feature of Thames Valley Tech Week for the last two years. Their events are co-hosted at GROW@GreenPark and UTC Reading to encourage the next generation of talent to get involved with the developer community. ConnectTVT has been fueling the group with pizza for the last two years and loves the diversity of people the event brings together. For the local start-up community it’s essential to have a thriving open source developer community. Rupert Whitehead Google’s UK & Ireland Developer Relations Manager says “I’m very proud to see the rapid growth of the Thames Valley Google Developer Group as the community comes together. Sharing ideas and meeting other kindred spirits brings opportunities for learning, growth and serendipity. It’s also great fun.”

Community Champions

Mark Stanley and Mike Beardmore started Thingitude as a community group to develop and support community-led innovation in the Internet of Things. Excited about the potential of the Internet of Things for Reading, they saw it as an opportunity for the town to regain its reputation as the place to be for technology companies, something they believed it had lost. As part of a global movement called The Things Network, Mark and Mike have created the UK’s largest community IoT network. Thingitude’s purpose is to ensure the businesses and residents of Reading can influence how Smart City and IoT technology is used in the town. It runs hands-on workshops for businesses, schools, community groups to introduce people to the potential of the Internet of Things. 2016 was a big year for the team who were involved in several Year of Culture projects with Reading Council. Looking ahead, they will be collaborating further with the council, the university and schools through several smart city projects in Reading. They plan to expand the network to Wokingham and other areas in the Thames Valley. Mark says, “Co-working and collaboration hubs like GROW@GreenPark, community organisations like Reading Hackspace and regular meetups like Reading Geek Night and Thames Valley IoT meetup all go to show there is a really good culture and community of technologists. They should be excited about the Internet of Things and what it can offer their businesses and the new jobs it will create for the kids in our region.”

“Joining the digital & tech dots across the Thames Valley.” www.connecttvt.co.uk @ConnectTVT

“ Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” —Lewis Carroll