Favourite London Startups of 2020
Ah London. Continuously settled for over 2000 years, a cultural melting pot, global centre for high finance and the world’s capital of passive aggressiveness. Even though most Londoners are regularly one TfL delay from packing up and moving to Surrey, there is a lot to love (and hate) about the UK’s capital city. For someone like myself in a long term love affair with the technology industry, London’s startup scene predominantly centred around Old Street is particularly appealing.
London is also the undisputed destination for startups in Europe. There are hundreds of thousands of new companies registered every year in the city, £10 billion was invested in startups last year alone and London is also the home of wildly successful companies like Deliveroo, Revolut, Improbable, Skyscanner and Farfetch. I think it’s safe to say London will also continue to be a premier destination for startup activitity in a post covid-19 world. With that being said, let’s take a look at 4 startups that get me extremely excited at the moment. They’re all early stage and if I was VC, I would be paying very close attention to each.
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Perlego
As a recent graduate myself that studied Business and Management, discovering Perlego annoyed me to my core on two fronts: why I didn’t know about it years ago when I needed it the most,..and why I didn’t try and launch something similar at university when I clearly saw a gap in the market for a service like that. The latter is a little overambitious I know, but bear with me.
Perlego is sort of a “Spotify for texbooks” and any student will immediately see its benefits. Rather than buy expensive textbooks your university professors aggressively try to sell you; textbooks you will use for a year (if that) and likely resell for 20% or less than the purchase value, customers pay a small subscription fee (£12 a month in the UK) to access over 300,000 eBooks from most of the major publishers. The service is available as an Android or IOS app, on mobile and web, and has global coverage with multiple language offerings.
Perlego has solid product offering for the end customer and their subscriber growth numbers are increasing 116% percent month-on-month according to Techcrunch. They also raised $9 million in Series A funding in 2019 and I can see exciting growth ahead of this company with the rise of remote learning due to the impact of Coronavirus.
Doordeck
This is one of the most lowkey startups I’ve come across in the long time, and most people will never notice them (likely because of their B2B operating model). In fact, it was completely by chance I discovered Doordeck at an event 3 years ago but nonetheless, this startup has an incredibly intuitive product offering that so far is the only one of its kind in the world!
Doordeck sells, on a monthly subscription model, access control to buildings. In a nutshell, this startup gives you the ability to unlock doors with your phone via their app or NFC. App based access control isn’t a new thing, but what gets me excited about Doordeck’s offering is that unlike other providers such as Ring, no additional hardware needs to be installed or removed whatsoever, and Doordeck’s software is manufacturer agnostic too. This means that Doordeck only has to install its software to a building’s existing access control system and be operational in minutes. The speed of onboarding is truly innovative within the access control industry and Doordeck’s scale positioning is incredible with a clear product market fit.
As “no contact” interactions may become a new norm in a post coronavirus world, VC’s should really be kicking down the doors (no pun intended) of Doordeck’s HQ like SWAT to invest in a company that can be at the forefront of this change and beyond.
TRIMIT
TRIMIT is the UK’s first app powered mobile barbershop. When I initially discovered Trimit I was simultaneously baffled and excited. This is because even though I’m very much a victim of the problem they’re trying to solve, I (and I’m sure many other black men alike) haven’t truly entertained any other options. For most of us, it’s either you wait patiently for 2+ hours for your fresh fade, or you try and cut your own hair which might lead to disastrous results, I’d rather the do the former. After doing some Twitter research on Trimit’s story, I was and remain extremely impressed by the founders, their journey and what they represent in terms of Black Entrepreneurship. I must also give a huge shoutout to the Black British tech and VC ecosystem that has supported them on their journey.
I believe Trimit embodies the next wave of digital disruption to the personal care industry. The most recent wave was led by app enabled booking services for appointments and scheduling which opened up a ecosystem for products and services such as Fresha and Shedul to thrive. Trimit takes that to the next level by actually bringing the barbershop to you in the back of a customised van.
It’ll be interesting to see how fast Trimit can scale especially considering the significant capital expenditure needed to own and maintain a fleet of custom mobile barbershops. At the bare minimum, I am confident this innovative startup will redefine an ageing established industry by transforming what a barbershop is.
Aura Vision AI
This under the radar startup is similar to Doordeck in the sense that it enhances already established infrastructure in order to generate more value. Aura Vision AI leverages cutting edge Computer Vision and Artificial Intelligence technology to allow retail shops generate customer insights using their existing security cameras.
Aura Vision AI technology enables brands, operators of retail stores and shopping malls to anonymously track and analyse deep customer analytics. Aura Vision AI’s retail customers can easily view various customer demographic information in each store, specific areas where customers spend the most time, footfall, queue times, conversion rates and so much more, while protecting the identities of the customers shopping in those stores. This innovative startup was also able to pivot quickly and roll out Covid-19 specific tools for retailers to protect staff and customers during the pandemic.
Aura Vision AI’s ability to effectively make any in store security camera a powerful analytics tool that can help retailers drive sales, as well as being able scale it’s technology across existing security camera technology, makes this startup exciting especially in the age of Big Data and AI.
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