Meet Cryptelo: The Unbreakable Dropbox

Cryptelo joins StartupYard as few companies do, with a fully launched product and existing customers. Founded in 2014, Cryptelo is an end-to-end secure file storage and messaging platform, offering a measure of protection unparalleled by the major file storage, transfer, and communication platforms.

Cryptelo, originally targeted at security conscious consumers, has shifted its focus toward organizations with highly sensitive data, and a need to make controlled access to that data readily available, and totally safe. Already becoming a favorite among the Czech legal community, Cryptelo is poised to challenge big storage providers by offering first-in-class protection against all manner of cyber-attacks, including physical penetration. To do this, they’ve recruited one of the world’s leading cryptologists, Vlastimil Klima, who was among the first to crack the SSL protocol, the security relied upon by the world’s banks. I caught up with Founder and CEO Martin Baros, to talk about his technology, and his vision for Cryptelo.

Hi Martin, Cryptelo is a very ambitious project; solving cloud storage security is something the biggest players haven’t really tackled. What made you want to do it?

Martin Baros, Cryptelo, StartupYard

Martin Baros, Founder and CEO of Cryptelo

My personal experience has taught me how important security really is. Years ago, I was hacked, and my intellectual property was stolen. That cost my company over 2 million CZK (about 100,000 Euros).

It was not fair. It felt like a violation- and that’s a common feeling for victims of theft. I blamed myself, but in time, I came to see that people are really being set up to fail when it comes to digital security. Someone, somewhere, decided that security doesn’t sell, and that’s not right. I set out to change it.

So I decided to create my own solution. This was the start of Cryptelo. I believe that no matter how big your company is, you should have an accessible tool for great security to keep your documents yours.

There was a time in which company security was easy: someone just could not read your documents and communications from the other side of the world, much less the other side of the room. But no more. Most information today is created digital. I’m convinced that we must have a full right to decide who can read our documents. This sense that we now have, that nothing we say will stay private, is chilling. It tells us that we cannot be candid and we cannot take intellectual risks and speak our minds. That’s not right at all.

That’s why I like cryptography – it can bring freedom and real security in the current digital era.

Let’s talk a bit about your team. You have some of the best cryptography talent in the world. What makes your team better than any other?

Vlastimil_Klima_Cryptologist

Vlastimil Klima, world leading cryptologist, and the mind behind Cryptelo security.

I have a strong technology background based on studying at MFF UK and 10 years of professional experience as a software developer, team leader and key account manager in projects with Accenture, Wüstenrot and AirBank.

When we developed the technical proof of concept of Cryptelo, I decided to approach Dr. Vlastimil Klíma – one of the best cryptographers in the world. After just an hour’s discussion where I described our vision, he decided to join us and has became part of our team. He created the cryptographical basis of Cryptelo

Then we needed superior implementation. Just imagine a product, which could encrypt all of your data, but wouldn’t be able to decrypt it. It would be secure, for sure, but not that useful.

That’s why I set out to build our team from the most talented programmers I have met during my career. Together we have over 40 years of experience in enterprise development. With this knowledge we started building the best software of our careers.

During development we have applied modern methodologies for software development and created amazing infrastructure, which enabled us to deliver new features almost immediately after they passed through testing. From the beginning we focused on automated testing – the underlying cryptographic elements are tested cross platform, to find incompatibilities which exist between different implementations on different platforms. Each change is built, packaged and is required to pass through wide range of UI tests, where an automated process simulates a user clicking in our application, trying to verify, that everything works as expected. We manage our fleet of servers remotely using SaltStack and monitor a wide range of properties of each host. We have also been running all of our services on docker from the beginning, which allowed us to offer on-premise solution early on.

You’ve experimented with B2C and B2B business models. What are you focusing on now, and why?

We started the service Screesh.com, which is similar to uschovna.cz (a file storage solution), but with strong encryption in the background. We also allowed users to encrypt files with a password directly in the browser without any extension. We believed that this would be much easier than usual way – using winrar with a password and sending documents as attachments.

We observed that even though screesh.com is so easy to use, the number of users was growing slowly. We found out that people individually don’t really understand how to  price their own security. It makes it very difficult to sell a totally secure solution.

We began to realize that a better way is to go for institutions that you trust, and put great security there. We all rely on banks, telco operators and even small businesses on a daily basis. Why should you take sole care of your personal security if big companies aren’t doing it themselves?

Currently, selling digital security to individuals is like selling crash helmets to pedestrians. It doesn’t do much good if the corporations are driving rally cars on the sidewalks.

 

Individual digital security is like crash helmets for pedestrians while companies drive rally cars on sidewalks. @CrypteloDrive Click To Tweet

 

Why do you think it is that in 2017, security discipline is still generally so poor in many companies?

Imagine that you built a city with parks, family houses and skyscrapers. And when everything is ready you find out that you built it in an earthquake zone. But your houses are not ready for circumstances like this. What would you do? Would you demolish the whole city and build it from the scratch?

Cyber attacks are quite similar. Most companies didn’t know they should implement security and they built their businesses without it. And now there are 130 000 cyber attacks every single minute. That’s like 130,000 tiny little Earthquakes, and you’re just praying it doesn’t happen to you.

There is a significant trend to move data to the cloud. Cloud is connected with a lot of risks – you lose physical control of your data. End-to-end encryption is one answer for that. With E2E encryption your data are locked in the black box and travel like this securely over internet and are stored on the server. Only authorized people have the right key to open it on their computers.

All well and good, but the problem is that the most effective way how to implement this level of security is start from scratch. Especially big companies cannot demolish houses in their cities, because there are people already. But the truth is that the infrastructure of many big data companies just wasn’t designed properly. They are built for speed, for flexibility, and for accessibility. You can’t do that and expect unbreakable security at the same time, unless you build something secure from the ground up.

What are, to you, the 2 or 3 biggest mistakes most people make when it comes to their digital security? How can they fix these mistakes?

Cyber security risks are invisible to most people. That’s why they aren’t mindful.

We wouldn’t walk in a bad neighborhood in the night with money in your hand. But we pay online with our credit cards through unknown web pages using unsecured wifi. That’s pretty much the same thing. You won’t automatically get robbed, but if you knew how dangerous it was, you might not do it.

 

You don't walk around with your money out in public. But you do the same online every day. @CrypteloDrive Click To Tweet

 

We wouldn’t use a postcard even for love letter, but we send our personal information and details of million dollar contracts by email. That’s a serious dissonance in our sense of what is secure and what is not.

Worst is that the big players don’t want you to care about security, they want you to use their service and share there as much as possible about your likes, plans, dreams and your friends. This data is gold in the e-commerce business and many businesses are based on it these days. That’s why Facebook will never bring real security to their products. It would kill its business. They will always be playing catch-up with cyber-security because anything more proactive would only slow them down.

It’s also much cheaper if you don’t care about security too much. Have you ever tried to upload a well known movie on a file-storage platform? It’s uploaded in a few seconds. How is that possible? The reason is that users data are shared between accounts. That means, in effect, that the platform is scanning and analyzing everything you upload, and that data is all going somewhere out of your control.

Tell me a bit about your technology: how does Cryptelo work, and why is it unique? What can customers do with the platform?

CrypteloID_Preview_ENG

Cryptelo is a virtual encrypted drive. It has the basic functionalities of a Dropbox or a Google Drive – you can use your web browser to access files from any computer.

Even though Cryptelo is as easy to use as Dropbox, it brings end-to-end encryption and a zero-knowledge server concept. We have a totally different approach to security than Dropbox or Google drive. The standard approach is to create a service, put it on the physical server, and build barriers – spread data into more datacenters, put this servers behind a firewall, keep servers in the datacenter located in an anti-nuclear shield, restrict people who can access it.

But even with top-notch data center security, a “mission impossible” type attack could breach these barriers and gain physical access to the server. That’s about as secure as a bank vault- and bank vaults get robbed all the time.

Our approach is that we also have all these barriers, but when Tom Cruise steals the server, there is nothing useful on it. All data are encrypted and the keys for opening it are not there. The data is useless.

But Cryptelo is not just virtual encrypted drive. Drive is just one of the uses, and a first step toward what we are building with our secure platform. The technology we’ve built is able to secure chat, email, and provide strong authentication based on cryptography.

Just out of interest, why do you think it is that Czech engineers have gained such a strong reputation for security and cryptology prowess? Does something in the culture or history of Czechia make them particularly suited to the task?

It’s probably a combination of talent and environment. Slavic people are known for their strategic, probing thinking, and it’s a bit of justified stereotype that we produce chess masters and rocket scientists faster than we produce world renowned writers and artists. We have these  too, but to Czech people, there is art in working with your hands, and solving puzzles.

If someone describes the rules of a game – law, technical environment – we start to think: Is it bullet proof? Could I bypass it? It’s natural. We just like puzzles and smart solutions. And that’s exactly what maths and cryptography is.

We call it the “Zlate Ceske rucicky,” or “Golden Czech Hands.” Czech people just like to fix things, and to squeeze the tiniest efficiencies out of their materials. Sometimes we say this in a joking way, as a Czech would rather fix something old than buy something new. But it is deep in our culture that we build things that will last a lifetime. Just look at our cities: we have trams that have been running continuously for over 60 years, bridges and towers that have stood for centuries. We build for endurance.

And I think Czech technology proves out that trend as well.  We have had 40 years of communism behind us. Times when we had to find ways to create and fix things with limited resources. Look at our arms industry, or automotive- we produce robust products at low prices.

Combine these things and superior programmers and security experts are born.

And you can really see this trend in Czech: Avast (now together with AVG), TCP Cloud (acquired by Mirantis), TeskaLabs, Apiary (acquired by Oracle).

Before Google built sales offices in Europe, they built a development center in the Czech Republic. No coincidence.

What is the biggest difficulty you have in selling Cryptelo as a solution for your core customers, like law firms or consultancies?

Cryptelo, StartupYard

A look at Cryptelo Drives UI

We are currently targeting trusted institutions that need to set a high bar for their security with client communications, as well as internal communication. That means law firms, tax and finance companies, even banks. And one of the challenges here is that, again, people do not want to think about security. We find, for example, that potential customers often want to buy our solution because of its features, like storage and sharing, and not because it is secure. To them, security is seen as an add-on, and not the core value.

That takes some adjusting, and we need to meet our customers somewhere in the middle. They need to see the value in security, and paying more to have it. But that the same time, they need to feel that they are doing something that will not create an undue burden on them. People don’t want to “buy security.” They want to buy secure solutions- and that means selling both security and the solutions together, and they need to be educated to measure their value appropriately.

That has been a learning process for us, and one we have been applying successfully in our talks with law firms in the Czech Republic. Finding out what is most important to these law firms is key to helping them see the benefits of using Cryptelo- so we have learned more and more to focus on what the customer sees in the solution, not just what we see as its core value.

How has your experience been at StartupYard? What surprised you? Which of the mentors had the biggest impact, and why?

In StartupYard I fully realized that there are two different tracks in building a real company: the hard part of creating a product, and then the even harder part of selling it. It’s crucial to get advice from someone who’s been in your shoes. Thanks to SY we got the opportunity to talk with scores of experienced mentors and entrepreneurs who have all been there, and understand our struggles, and how to get past them. You can’t read this kind of thing in books.

Would you recommend that other startups apply to an accelerator?

100% SY is like a First Aid Kit for most of your business troubles. Imagine that you decide to build a company to fulfill your vision. How will you incorporate, get first money to build MVP? How would you know it wasn’t just a terrible idea, or completely the wrong direction to take?  Where will you meet tens of your potential customer to verify your market fit? How will you create and learn how to perform the perfect pitch, that you need for getting customers and bigger investors?

 

Feedpresso, StartupYard

Meet Feedpresso: A New Way to Get the News

The problem isn’t a new one. And yet it may be even more important today than it has ever been. Since the web started changing the way newspapers, magazines, and even academic journals spread their content, and make money, a constant and seemingly intractable problem has remained firmly resistant to any solution.

How do you deliver, consistently, a broad range of content to a single reader that challenges them, engages them, informs them, and helps them keep an open mind? While institutional media returns to subscription payment models as a bulwark against the dominance of ad-based media and social media sharing (as well as ad-blockers), and paywalls return to the internet in larger numbers, consumers suffer from a lack of quality, trustworthy, and diverse content.

Feedpresso, which is in StartupYard’s current accelerator round,   is the startup tackling that problem. Unlike a typical newsreader or aggregator, they aren’t interested in what your friends like, or what advertisers would prefer you see. Instead, they approach news curation on an individual basis, using machine learning to understand each individual’s information needs, and help them to discover and build a strong stream of high quality content.

They do it all through a cross-platform application that analyzes a person’s reading history, and works constantly to bring that person content that is highly relevant and useful to them personally. I caught up with the founders of FeedPresso this week to talk about their project, and how they’re doing at StartupYard so far.

Cool! Check out the Interview with @Feedpresso, changing the way you find and read the news. #startup #innovate Click To Tweet

Hi Ernest and Tadas, tell us a bit about how you started working together, and why you founded Feedpresso.

Photoshoot SY 2016-2017-35

Feedpresso CoFounder and CEO Tadas Subonis

Tadas: We met 4 years ago when we started our studies at the University of Edinburgh and we had some shared courses.

For the final MSc project I needed to come up with an idea, and at the time I was annoyed that my Feedly inbox was always getting overloaded and I couldn’t find interesting stuff. So I decided to fix that. After my studies I continued working on Feedpresso, and Ernest joined me a few months later.

 

Feedpresso Cofounder Ernest Walzel

Feedpresso Cofounder Ernest Walzel

Ernest: After the university course was over, we parted ways for awhile. Tadas left for Vilnius, Lithuania to start the company and I was starting a new job at the university. Just before he left, I’d given Tadas a €5 note as my investment into the company, I think he still carries it around in his wallet.

Six months later I decided to quit my job and look for something new. Tadas invited me to Lithuania for 1-2 months in the summer. I thought it might be fun to see what Lithuania’s like and to help out on the project for a little. A year and a half later I’m still there.

 

The problem you’re attacking with Feedpresso isn’t new. There have been dozens of attempts to create the “perfect feed” for avid readers. What makes Feedpresso unique?

Tadas:  Since it is started as “Feedly on steroids,” it remains a very customizable tool. You can add any content source in our system and it will work just fine. We’ve also made sure it works in languages besides just English. This is super useful for readers in Europe, and not a common feature.

Finally, our personalization algorithm doesn’t rely on “popularity” or traction of a story to determine what’s interesting – it’s all done on a per-user basis. All other solutions do some kind of “that’s trending, so it must be interesting” approach. The problem inherent in that approach is that it creates feedback loops. Things that are “popular” become more popular, while things that aren’t popular don’t get any traction because something else is taking up all the attention. It’s like a fire sucking the oxygen out of the room.

I don’t know who just decided that we should pay so much attention to what other people are reading, but that has been increasingly the dynamic with most newsreaders and on social media. The question i have is this: is that actually helping people to read things that matter to them? I’m not sure it is.

Ernest: One problem with most global products is that they aren’t local-friendly. They start with English and they pretty much stick with English. Only roughly half of Europeans speak English. Most of our generation consumes lots of content in English, but we all want to consume local content too. This market is hugely underserved at the moment. Not all news is in English -particularly local and specialized content- and yet virtually all the tools to find content focus on English.

Feedpresso’s offer is to combine all of those big, trusted sources with your local sources like magazines, newspapers, and little blogs. For example, my Feedpresso is a mixture of big UK publishers, Slovak news sites and blogs about cooking and typography. Not a combination you can accomplish with most readers- certainly not in an intuitive way.

What kind of a user experience can people expect from Feedpresso in the near future? What are some of the use cases you’ve been considering?

Tadas:  At Feedpresso, our primary goal is to help people to find and stay current on stuff that really matters to them personally. Whatever that happens to be.  One thing that we have been seriously lacking in that regard is story and sources discovery. At the moment, we let people pick the sources themselves, and leave the selection of stories for us.

We think this approach is superior for a number of reasons, but still it isn’t the final answer – we want to take an active role in recommending what kind of sources users should follow as well.

Also, we don’t have the iOS version quite yet, and the Web version is coming along as well. Those are things people have been asking us for, so we are working hard to release them pretty soon.

IMG_7757

A look at Feedpresso’s design.

Ernest:  We want to become the first go-to place for reading in general. There’s great content out there that’s available for free and lots of good writing behind paywalls. One goal of ours is to merge these two worlds, to help you simply focus on quality reading.

I think it’s a bit silly that in 2017, we haven’t found a way for people to get access to a range of premium content at a single price point. Micropayments haven’t worked well, and ad-supported content has a lot of problems, both economically, and trust-wise. Technology like ours may be the key to finally solving that riddle- helping the professional media make a fair wage while helping people get access to what they need most.

Of course it’s not humanly possible to find all the interesting and relevant quality reading on the web. And that’s where our prediction technology comes in. Right now we as consumers rely on very inefficient means of locating trustable and relevant information. Think of Google or Facebook: they don’t go out looking for what you really need, they can only respond to what you do, what you like, and what terms you might search. That simply isn’t enough.

It’s a topic for a later discussion, but we believe this is ultimately because the business model of social media and search are good for some kinds of content, but fundamentally bad for quality journalism in particular. I want Feedpresso to be an answer to that problem.

 

In the discussion about Feedpresso, the debate has been ongoing about what your strategy will be: Local vs. Global, Freemium Vs. Content Bundling, etc. What have you learned you don’t want to do in the coming year?

IMG_5571

The Feedpresso team

Tadas:  We know for sure that we don’t want to be a general reader for everybody. We want to create something that people that care about content that they read would find extremely useful. Again, our aim isn’t to show you what others are talking about, or what’s hot: it’s to show you what matters most to you.

Ernest: Our focus is two-fold. In terms of strategy, we want to serve the European market with non-english news, and in terms of long-term goals, we want to promote “value over clicks.”

Every time you open an article in Feedpresso, we want to make sure that you learn something new. That means that we will not be serving sponsored content, or PR disguised as news. We’ve learned that most people who say they ‘hate news’ actually just care more about the quality of what they read.

The current distrust in media is caused by the current ad-driven approach employed by many media companies. We want to go in a different direction.

“Fake News,” and disinformation are hot topics now. Do you see Feedpresso as a part of the solution to this problem?

Tadas:  Definitely! One problem is that people have lost control of their news. We know that Facebook is already where the majority of news content is found by readers. Over 50% of news clicks go through Facebook. But Facebook is only as good as your friend list, or as an algorithm you don’t see, and which may or may not be  designed to actually help you become more informed.

“Filter bubbles,” don’t happen because people don’t want to know the truth- they happen because people who are part of a group tend to form standards of thinking and behavior, and to follow those standards unconsciously. Facebook is the perfect place to form a group or a community, but it’s also the perfect place to filter out anything that might not agree with the inherent biases in the group.

Feedpresso is approaching the news not according to what is acceptable or vetted by a group of peers, but instead is private, fully customizable, and impervious to the usual human biases. Machines have their own problems with bias, but they are not emotional, or personally invested in an idea. People in groups can make bad decisions because they want to believe things are a certain way. That’s where machines can help us, just like a compass tells you where North is, no matter what you believe.

Ernest: These problems are symptoms of people reading increasingly more on social media platforms. Fake news sites live on Facebook. They make money when people share them, and so they have to be “shareable.” For some of them, Facebook makes up 80% of their traffic. Fake news articles are designed to be shared and spread within the groups whose opinions they support. And data shows that people share them without even reading them- often based only on a headline.

When you think about it, Facebook is a really bad platform for news consumption. It’s designed around you having a good feeling about yourself, because then you stay on the platform longer and click on more ads. These ‘filter bubbles’ we’re talking about, they’re not a secondary effect of using Facebook, they are its product. Facebook’s advertising engine provides access to the filter bubbles we create for ourselves.

In theory, Facebook and Google should be good for traditional publishers. Why do you think media publishers haven’t been successful in making significant revenue gains online, despite their broader reach? How can an industry outsider change that?

Tadas:  The problem is that except for a few really well established brands (like the New York Times), many publishers are earning the majority of their revenues from big advertisers, like retailers and Big Food, or they’re earning it from smaller advertisers who target a particular niche.

Either way, advertising tends not to favor quality. For example, in June 2016, MotherJones reported that one of its investigative stories ended up bringing the company a profit. What is remarkable there is that this was an exceptional case. MotherJones points out that in an advertising-based media market, the incentives are against putting in the time necessary to produce great work. Faster is more profitable.

Following on that, publishers then want to increase their pageviews so they could compensate for that and they do that by posting lots of low quality articles with click-baity headlines. In the end, the value of content decreases, reader quality decreases, reader trust in the media decreases, and the pageviews are worth even less. And the whole cycle starts anew.

At Feedpresso we let users pay for their content so they are the boss in the end. We are not interested in serving them clickbaity articles because that’s not in their interest. Furthermore, we hope that we will encourage people to pay for publisher content with monthly subscriptions that will ensure right incentives for publishers to produce good content.

Where do you hope Feedpresso will be in a year or two?

Tadas:  In two years we want to have a solid user base and community that would help us sustain our business. Feedpresso is going to be available on all platforms (Web, Android, iOS, Windows) and it is going to be a one-stop solution for news consumption.

How about 5 years from now? What kind of a company do you want Feedpresso to be?

Tadas:  We hope to become a major platform where authors could post their content and would get paid for that. We would become something like Spotify for News. Our long-term wish is to change the economics of news for the better. So far, the ad-age hasn’t been kind to news, and we think it’s time that changed.

We believe that ensuring stable income for authors will allow us to serve a high quality content for our users in the long run. We need self-reinforcing cycles of quality, not a constant downward pressure on the quality of journalism.

What kinds of people are you hoping to meet more in the coming year? What kinds of other companies do you hope to partner with?

Tadas:  I would love to meet with the guys from Medium. They are doing lots of relevant work in this field by ensuring that high-quality content reaches high quality readers. Furthermore, I would love to hear what Executives from Reuters, CNN and BBC think about current developments in the publishing field. How are they thinking to fight this ever increasing reliance on Google and Facebook.

It will also be important to establish relationships with charitable organizations that support quality journalism. Many governments also fund independent media, and we need to seek out ways in which we  can help those efforts to be more successful.

Ernest: I’m hoping we manage to form partnerships with media houses and content creators. The media industry is going through some challenging times and it is key to success to Feedpresso that publishers are able to ‘afford’ to produce quality in-depth journalism. I’d like to meet Tomáš Bella who started Piano, formerly a nation-wide paywall system in Slovakia. Piano did some real pioneering work in Slovakia: they ‘taught’ Slovak readers to pay for quality content and helped publishers stay more independent. Tomáš Bella knows the ins and outs of paywalled content and keeps experimenting and developing new solutions for subscriber-based publishers.

Can you talk about your experience at StartupYard so far? Which of the mentors have had the most impact on you as individuals, or as a company, and how so?

Tadas:  It’s been a great experience. And very tiring! There’s lots of things to do. Now not only do we have to do lots of coding, but we need to study our users much more (that’s something we should have done a long time ago), work on our wording — how we sell ourselves to our potential readers.

We got lots of great feedback from mentors but it’s hard to pick the best. We loved how Constantine Kinsky [the Czech-French Banker and Investor] explained word of mouth marketing, it’s been really useful to sit down with (StartupYard Management team member) Gustavo Vizcardo, and think really deeply about the problem we are solving.

We got lots of great ideas for marketing from [Merrybubbles Founder] Liva Judic and Darko Silajdzic.

Ernest: I like to say that StartupYard is the best thing that could have happened to Feedpresso. I don’t think any other form of investment would’ve given us more value than the input and feedback we’ve been getting here.

bBeing here made us think very hard about the core problem that we’re solving and the values that are important in solving it.

For me personally, interviews with Vojta Roček and Michal Čarný were quite eye-opening and helped me think differently about our target audience: do we provide more value to people who want to read as much as possible or to those that try to read as little as possible?

 

Ouibring, Startupyard

Exclusive Interview: Ouibring: Bringing a Bit of Happiness from Anywhere to Anywhere

Ouibring isn’t a typical StartupYard startup, and Joel Gordon isn’t a typical StartupYard founder. In a year dominated by deep tech companies, Joel, with Cofounder and fellow Australian Andrew Crosio, are trying to change the way we think about online shopping- one trip at a time.

Ouibring is an e-commerce and sharing economy platform, for shoppers who want access to international products and prices, and travelers who want to make extra money. How does that work? Ouibring gives shoppers the chance to make requests that travelers can fulfil during their trips, helping them make a bit of extra money, and bring a little joy into a stranger’s life.

Ouibring has already garnered nearly 40,000 Likes on Facebook since late last year, making it one of the most instantly popular startup ideas that StartupYard has ever accelerated.

I sat down with Co-Founder and CEO Joel Gordon to talk about his vision for OuiBring, and why he thinks the world is ready for a new way of shopping:

Startupyard, Joel Gordon, Ouibring

Hi Joel, tell us a little more about Ouibring. Where did you get the idea?

 The idea for Ouibring came from experiences gained living and working abroad for the last 15 years. The fun and excitement when a special package delivered by a friend arrives is the inspiration for Ouibring’s tagline – “Bring a little happiness”.

As any expatriate knows, living abroad can give you a special appreciation for things that those at home just take for granted. You look forward to that time when a friend will bring a special something you’ve requested from your home. That’s a magical feeling, as if you’re the only person in the world that has what you have. We wanted to capture that feeling, and make it something anyone could enjoy. A special moment of joy only for them; an experience no one else is having.

At the same time, we can give others the chance to make a bit of money, and reduce waste by sharing their spare luggage capacity.

One story I really like is how even a small, generic item that is plentiful in one location can provide a whole lot of pleasure and luxury when it appears in an unexpected context. When a Ouibringer arrived with three massive bags of Monster Munch Pickled Onion and delivered them to a travel blogger living in Bangkok. They really made her day.

Cool! Check out @Ouibring, the startup that helps you get anything you want, from anywhere in the world – Exclusive Interview Click To Tweet

The fun of getting a previously impossible to obtain snack from home delivered to the other side of the world is a great demonstration of our values in action.

What about the team you’ve put together makes you confident you can grow Ouibring as a global business?

We have a great team of people who are passionate and excited about making Ouibring a success. For us it’s the ability to focus on what matters most, avoid bullshit and listen to our customers every day that is key.

Startupyard, Ouibring, Andrew Crosio, Joel Gordon

Joel with Cofounder Andrew Crosio

We share a belief that the sharing economy needs to focus on making things easy for customers and making sure that the participants reap the majority of the rewards. We’re making sure Ouibring is easy, fun and safe to use while at the same time only charging fees for real value add services. We’re customers ourselves, and our experience buying and bringing, as well as hearing what our other customers have to say, helps keep us grounded.

Let’s talk a bit about the economics of Ouibring. How do you think you’ll make money? What will be the main attractors for buyers and “bringers?” Why would people choose it over more traditional channels?

One of the key challenges in making this kind of system work is establishing trust. We want to offer that by creating a safe system that ensures delivery, as well as payment, for each transaction.

We’re going to keep it simple and charge a small fee to cover the cost of managing payment transactions. Because our bringers are doing the leg work we’ll always make sure that they get the lion’s share of the rewards.

When we survey our customers that live abroad they all answer that they have asked friends and family to bring products for them. Ouibring is as an extension of this network, and connects shoppers with travellers all over the world who are willing and able to help source speciality items. The cool thing is that whether somebody is an adventurous traveller who likes the idea of meeting interesting new people, a frequent business traveller with luggage capacity to spare, or a long term expat who just wants a reliable supply of favorite comfort items from home, Ouibring can help connect and make these people happier!

Ouibring, StartupYardThe real attraction for our shoppers when they decide to use Ouibring is that they are able get the exact product they’re looking for, rather than settling for a substitute (not to mention a possible fake) from Amazon, or waiting until next year when their friends are next coming to visit. Our shoppers choose Ouibring because we offer the best, most reliable and effective way of getting exactly what they want, no matter where they are in the world.

Think about any great trip you’ve had somewhere far away. I bet there was something you enjoyed there that you just haven’t ever been able to find again. That’s a Ouibring kind of thing.

Our bringers are up for making extra money in a fun new way, enjoy learning about new products and places to explore, and we often get feedback from both people about how they enjoyed meeting each to exchange goods too!

When talking about a sharing economy platform, security is always a big concern. How has your thinking evolved since you joined StartupYard on how to build trust with your users?

The challenges of ensuring that the platform is used safely and for its intended purposes are daunting if you consider every possible bad thing that can happen. We are doing everything we can to make sure we are up to those challenges: having the appropriate contingency plans in place, verifying users and identifying bad actors, is something every sharing platform must face.

But it’s all about people. It’s all about building trust with our customers. We work hard to show people that we take each bring seriously and are there to help out if needed. This starts with taking care of people’s onboarding when they start using the site, guiding them through the process of signing up and creating their first request, through to connecting them with a reliable and trust-worthy traveller who will bring them what they’ve requested.

Since joining StartupYard we’ve learned a lot about how to use word of mouth marketing channels more effectively, and we’re also focusing on clear and simple testimonials to help show potential customers that other people just like them are already using Ouibring to import a little bit of happiness from anywhere in the world.

Where do you hope Ouibring will be in a year, and how are you going to get there?

Our focus right now is to get to 10K customers in BKK and by this time next year we will be expanding into other cities in Asia and Europe.

Long term, what’s your hope for Ouibring 5 years from now?

Longer term we are super excited about the future and where Ouibring will be. The combination of increasing bespoke and localised manufacturing with more and more sophisticated consumers that travel more often will create the perfect setting for a dynamic, scalable and agile global supply chain.

The inefficiency of all the wasted capacity when people travel with empty bags, suitcases and car boots is crying out for a better approach and we see Ouibring as being part of the solution by connecting this underutilised resource with demand.

People all over the world right now ask for, buy and bring things for friends and family when they travel, and with Ouibring at the end of the day we’re working hard to make this kind of personal, reliable and trusted shopping and delivery service something that everybody can use to get exactly what they want and bring a little happiness.

You joined StartupYard in November. What prompted you to seek out an accelerator, and has the experience fit with your expectations?

We want to make Ouibring a success and the decision to join an accelerator was motivated by being humble and willing to throw ourselves into an unfamiliar environment to maximise our chances of growing our business. We had very high expectations coming into the program and have really been impressed with the variety and calibre of the mentors, alumni and people we’ve met through the program.

Which mentors, advisors, or investors have most surprised you during acceleration? What were you not prepared for?

Petr Ocasek, Daniel Hastik, Ondrej Bartos and Jan Urban. I really liked the advice about taking responsibility for the conversation and making sure that you get as much out of it as possible. Ask questions and listen more.

How would you say your team’s outlook has changed since you joined StartupYard?

Startups have to make do with limited resources and we’re very mindful of where our energy is being spent. We try even harder now to make sure we get a good return on it! We also have a clearer idea of the runway we’ll need to make this business a success and are even more excited about the future than before.

Mike Butcher, StartupYard

StartupYard DemoDay 2017 Set For Feb 22, Keynote from TechCrunch’s Mike Butcher

StartupYard has now announced Batch 7, including 7 Startups from 5 countries. Learn more about the startups right here. 


The StartupYard team, and our seven 2017 startups are pleased to announce our next Demo Day, which will take place February 22nd, 2017, at Kino Svetozor, in Prague. There, at 6:30pm local time, 7 startups will pitch to the public for the first time.

Joining us will be the legendary Mike Butcher, Editor-at-Large for TechCrunch, the tech industry’s leading news source, and organizer of the popular TechCrunch: Disrupt conference.

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And if you have a second, please Tweet about it!

Looking forward to hearing @mikebutcher @startupyard for DemoDay2017! Tickets on Sale: http://bit.ly/2ih9vNr Click To Tweet

Keynote Remarks from TechCrunch Editor Mike Butcher

Mike Butcher MBE is Editor-at-large of TechCrunch. He has been named one of the most influential people in tech by The Daily Telegraph, The Evening Standard and The Independent newspapers. Mike has written for UK national newspapers and magazines. He has been named one of top 100 most influential people in European technology by Wired UK for 5 years running . He has spoken at the Monaco Media Forum, Le Web, Web Summit, DLD and the World Economic Forum, where he is a ‘Media Leader’. Mike is a regular broadcaster, appearing on BBC News, Sky News, CNBC, Channel 4 and Bloomberg. He has also advised the UK Prime Minister and the Mayor of London on tech startup policy. He is the co-founder of TechHub.com (which creates spaces globally for tech entrepreneurs); Coadec.com (which lobbies for UK startups); TheEuropas.com, the annual European Tech Startup Conference & Awards; and the non-profit, Techfugees.com, a community of refugee-focused NGOs and tech innovators. Mike’s personal blog is mbites.com, while he Twitters at @mikebutcher.

DemoDay Program:

6:00 pm: registration & networking
6:30 pm: event starts
8:30 pm: refreshments & networking

Note: Guests will have ample opportunities for networking with StartupYard’s community of investors, startups, mentors and sponsors before and after the event. 

About the Venue:

Kino Svetozor is a premiere art cinema opened in 2004, in one of Prague’s liveliest passages. It’s an art-house cinema, the first of its kind in Prague.

The cinema has a long history. The first screening took place at the beginning of 1918. A few years later, Svetozor changed into a cabaret. It returned to its original purpose in 1957, when it was rebuilt into a panoramic cinema. In 1968, the famous Kino automat, first introduced at the Montreal World’s Fair, Expo ‘67, was moved here for a year and a half.

Now, nearly 100 years after its first screening, Svetozor is a name brand in the heart of Prague, hosting film premiers, arthouse pictures, foreign films, conferences, and tech events.

 

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This event is made possible through the kind support of the following sponsors:

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