They’re unsophisticated, untargeted and seriously old school: so why do London’s tech startups still love tube advertising? Strange as it may seem in the age of Facebook and Google ads, a growing number of London startups are turning to tube advertising to attract new customers and help their brands stand out from the masses. ‘The tube cuts through the noise,’ …
‘We’ve developed a culture of speed’: Q&A with Jason Goldberg
Jason Goldberg is founder and CEO of Pepo, a social platform that connects people with similar interests, with a focus on travel. It officially launched in November last year and, like Goldberg’s previous businesses, it’s been released at rapid speed. In the past decade, he’s also founded Social Median (a social news aggregator), Fab.com (third party e-commerce) and Hem (own-brand …
Building a budget bank
The hardest part of creating a bank for people on low incomes appears to be running call centres. Most startup ideas tend to take aim at the affluent. In fact, it’s a growing concern that the fruits of innovation are commonly made by and for those people with lots of disposable cash. One business that’s not following that script is …
Bumble’s Whitney Wolfe: the dating world’s Queen Bee
Stung by her previous company but not stopped, Whitney Wolfe is deploying her trademark marketing tactics to sign up students to her dating app, Bumble. In 2014, when the buzz around Tinder was at its peak, one of the dating app’s earliest team members left and promptly sued the company $1m for sexual harassment. For some, the case confirmed their …
Making sense of chatbots
‘Chatbots’ have popped up all over the internet this year. Applications have varied from customer service to a chatbot lawyer that offers to resolve parking disputes. Victor Trokoudes, co-founder of Plum, spoke to Courier about his savings platform that deploys its particular mascot, the Plumbot. How did Plum get started? Alex [Plum’s co-founder] was downloading his bank statements and …
Why do all the big tech brands look so similar?
A weirdly familiar look seems to characterise the logos of digital companies. It’s almost impossible not to notice that internet companies appear to be following a fixed manual on their visual style: the play school primary colours and inoffensive sans serif type style have become ubiquitous. That’s before the chirpy tone of voice which is similarly universally employed. Google, Airbnb, …
Echo: a prescriptions app that links patients, doctors and pharmacists
Emblematic of the coming smartphone revolution in healthcare, Echo is a London-based startup that wants to do away with the laborious business of repeat prescriptions. Getting prescription meds in the post just isn’t as exciting as a new pair of shoes, a sales bargain or even a humble cookbook. Perhaps more importantly, it often places extraordinary demands on patients with …
Alan Yau: The tastemaker does tech
Wagamama founder Alan Yau is one of London’s best known restaurant operators. He’s about to launch an app that he says will be the opposite of Tripadvisor and Yelp. Not long after Naamyaa opened just by the corner of Angel tube station, a scathing review came out from restaurant critic Jay Rayner, panning the ‘infantile palate’ of its excessively ‘sweet and …
Brexit: All eyes on fintech
The most immediate startup victim of Brexit is the financial technology sector. So-called ‘passporting’ allows financial firms to carry out services licensed in one EU country across European borders. That’s all been thrown into jeopardy. The ‘fintech’ sector has in recent years been earmarked as London’s trump startup sector; a number of companies doing innovative stuff around financial services have …
Brexit: Startups worry for London’s talent
The food and tech sectors have been especially buoyed by access to workers in recent years. ‘Talent flight’ has been identified as the biggest threat to London’s startup scene post-Brexit. Some industries are heavily reliant on European workers: around a third of the UK’s tech employees are EU migrants, while one in eight in London’s food scene are from the …
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