Viewsy is building the world’s new standard in retail location analytics. Viewsy’s solution empowers retailers to improve the performance of stores by analysing customer behaviour.
Odera Ume-Ezeoke is the founder of Viewsy and here is his entrepreneur story.
Viewsy is a technology to help retailers modernise their businesses. We live in an age where every industry is going through a digital revolution and retail is no different. Our job is to create tools which help retailers understand customer behaviour in stores more effectively and to empower them to make smarter decisions.
What attracted you to become an entrepreneur?
I had always wanted to be an entrepreneur, ever since I was a young kid. When I was a teenager I used to buy small computer parts from a magazine, put them together and sell them through the local newspaper. I found a way to advertise for free, so that helped the margins quite a bit! Beating the system was exciting and addictive, and building was something I’d always had a passion for. I actually knew I wanted to become an entrepreneur even before I started my first job in the City in London.
For me, it was just about being able to spend my life creating new realities that would help other people. It is a very fulfilling job and I wouldn’t change it for the world.
How did the idea of Viewsy come about?
The idea of Viewsy came about when I was working for the now renowned retail e-commerce company Groupon. As I worked there I saw that it was hard for the retailers we worked with to prove the value we were adding to their companies. Our business model was focused on helping them acquire new customers, but the retailers could not prove they were really winning new customers from us rather than having old customers returning. Noticing this problem, I wondered: ”What if it were possible to actually measure store customer behaviour in the physical world?” I wanted to help them and see if I could solve the problem. I eventually left Groupon and started Viewsy, focusing on creating an initial prototype of our sensing technology. I was excited about the idea of capturing data from a physical environment. In fact I am generally excited about the idea of capturing data from places where it didn’t exist before but especially from a physical environment. It turns out it was possible to do this and that’s where it got exciting. It was our first breakthrough that we’ve continued to build upon.
Viewsy started during the summer of 2012 at the Startupbootcamp accelerator program in Amsterdam. It was a really great learning experience for the company. After graduating from Startupbootcamp, we moved to the UK and we’ve been growing here since then. Startupbootcamp Amsterdam was the first stepping stone in Viewsy’s journey of turning idea into company.
What were the biggest struggles in your startup/entrepreneur journey?
One of the biggest struggle I stumbled upon was finding great people. Every entrepreneur dreams of working with a team of amazing people. However the reality is; the more entrepreneurs coming to the market and building teams, the harder it is to find scarce great talent out there, and now is a particularly buoyant time for technology hiring. It is a complicated process as once you finally get in touch and connect with them and get to a point where you are happy with each other you still need to be able to afford them at a rate which makes it worth their while and sustainable for a newly born young startup.
In the early days, one of the other challenge we faced was - not just the funding which is the obvious one everybody talks about - but to have a real plan for execution as opposed to just have an idea. At the beginning, as an early stage startup, we were operating blindly, searching for the right business model, but soon learnt to focus on learning. That was one of the key changes in our philosophy, when as a company as we moved from a company executing, to a company learning.
The business model has been evolving since. It started off as a product and then evolved into a solution that fixes particular problems. We evolved, learned, and got much better at what we do as a result.
Do you have any advice for the other entrepreneurs to be?
I would advise entrepreneurs to slow down the speed up, don’t just rush into things. A lot of people are busy moving so fast that they don’t take the time to zoom out, get some perspective and work on getting a better idea of how to improve. I really believe that slowing down to speedup is one of the reasons that we’ve seen great improvement in the business. It’s partly because we took time to ponder and reflect - that we had some significant breakthroughs. I believe entrepreneurs should take small steps back from the action, often, to get some perspectives and to think.
What are the next steps and the vision for Viewsy?
Viewsy is going through an exciting time where we are busy working on our growth model. It is an exciting learning phase where we are empowered to learn.
How did coworking in the Rainmaking Loft help your business?
When we finished Startupbootcamp program, we worked in a couple of different offices around London before coming to the Rainmaking Loft. One of the offices actually had no windows; we were working underground with a skylight underneath a wheely bin! We called it “startup chic”, though obviously it was not the best place to bring clients.
The Rainmaking Loft has definitely helped us put our best foot forward to clients because it is a very presentable place. What we also really like is the sense of community. When you walk into the Loft you are not in an office, you are in a place where your friends work, you are surrounded by smart people who are working hard and doing great things. It’s a place where people can help one another and you instantly get plugged into a network of positive, helpful, smart people.
The mix of the crowd comes from the founders of the Loft, who placed a particular emphasis on selecting the right mix of people to create that vibe and the results do show. I would recommend the Loft to anyone who wants to go to work within a positive, energising vibe.
Discover Viewsy: www.viewsy.com
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