Learn more about the startups coworking in our London office in our Startup Spotlight. Each month we are giving you insight into the Startups based in the Rainmaking Loft. This month we are thrilled to introduce you to Visii.
This month we sat down with David, founder of Visii. Visii built an innovative technology designed to help customers simply and intuitively get to images they really want. They can easily discover products or pictures (jewellery, art, cats, people…) via clicks on images instead of entering keywords. It’s an especially useful tool when customers don’t have a specific idea of what they want but will recognise it when they see it.
Visii is a simple 1-click “this is what I like” process. With each successive click, customers discover an array of increasingly more relevant products, matching what they have in mind to what they will then buy.
Great teams make great companies, walk fearlessly towards your goals, and create your own luck by believing in yourself.
How did the idea of Visii came about?
Visii was born from a frustration of not finding information that was wanted fast enough or at all. Iterating with different keyword combinations, opening several screens to (re)view information which was on different pages, or using scroll down menus with obscure terms, were all contributors to this frustration.
What attracted you to become an entrepreneur?
Wanting very badly to get this problem solved. Nothing existed in the world that provided the functionality we wanted to use ourselves: something simple, intuitive and fun, that lets you find what you want visually and can be used by anyone anywhere in the world. You know you need jump onto the entrepreneurial pit when a problem keeps on bugging you and you see nothing being done about it.
Visii was in stealth mode for close to 5 years, why do you think this state of secretiveness was necessary? Do you think it helped the platform’s development?
It’s always difficult to predict the future. For our investors, having a sound IP protection strategy was paramount. For us, learning from real users was paramount. We had to balance between these two forces and ultimately chose to prioritise IP protection which required us to complete the building and protection of our IP before we could go out and test at scale. Time will tell if we are able to extract the full value of this decision. Thus far, this has been helpful when receiving capital, but delayed product development and signing clients on.
What were the biggest struggles in your startup/entrepreneur journey?
Not letting fear sink in. The entrepreneurial journey is fraught with daunting challenges which are, actually, all opportunities: opportunities to learn and grow, to see things differently, such as understanding how others see what you see. The difference between a challenge and an opportunity simply depends on the outlook of the entrepreneur - approaching issues without fear make it possible to harvest the possibilities they bring. With fear, of failure or of rejection for example, the entrepreneur risks making bad decisions, which no startup can afford. Nothing good comes out of fear. Just the contrary. If decisions are taken without fear, risks can be mitigated and the startup increases its chance of thriving.
Do you have any advice for the other entrepreneurs to be?
Great teams make great companies, walk fearlessly towards your goals, and create your own luck by believing in yourself - it will get you halfway there.
You were one of the first startup to choose Rainmaking Loft as their home, what’s the best thing that has happened so far?
While friday beers, several parties (will forever remember those arrays of incredible christmas jumpers…), conferences and talks (Hoxton Ventures, Tough Mudder…) come to mind, it’s probably the startup ecosystem that RML has created that has been the best thing for us so far. It’s been great to be able to meet and exchange ideas with other startups; whether discussing biz dev or communication strategies over lunch or asking about logos. We’ve thoroughly enjoyed the esprit-de-corp which exists within our walls and couldn’t recommend highly enough the Rainmaking Loft to budding businesses.