Who are you and what do you do?
ConnectID are a London based start up tackling the age-old problem of maintaining up to date contact details for the people you know. You’re really busy right? Yet you’re still responsible for maintaining everyone else's details. Contacts are scattered everywhere and people change jobs, numbers and addresses all the time. Everyone’s address book, therefore, quickly gets out of date.
The 15th Century business card to exchange contact details still has its place but ultimately it doesn’t stay up to date. Everyone stores contact details in their smartphone, yet still in todays digital age it quickly gets outdated, we think that’s not very smart.
We have developed an app with patented technology for both people and businesses to access, share and automatically update contact details for people who store their address book in their smartphone. The app is supported by a dashboard for organisations, which enables them to send messages direct to their members mobile devices.
Who are your co-founders & give us one line about each of you.
Tassos Papantoniou is a successful Yacht Broker by trade and believes the business card has its place but contacts need to be redesigned for our fast paced and dynamic lives.
Allison Wightman is a modern marketer of all things digital who has worked in the corporate world all her life before successfully jumping ship to a start up.
Where in the world are you from and what drew you to London?
Tassos the company founder studied in America, UK and Greece, however, London has been his home since he studied at Cass Business School.
Allison was born in Birmingham and then moved to Yorkshire, Cheshire, Nottingham, Manchester, London and then Brighton.
What excites you most about London (one startup point and one non-startup point!)?
London is working hard to earn the number 2 spot on the map for tech businesses behind Silicon Valley, not least through the work of Tech London Advocates.
London is a forward thinking, multi cultural place, just like our company. However, as I write this on the dawn of the BREXIT result it seems like an island compared to the rest of the UK and tech skills and services may be all we have left to export!
Explain why your company is a MadTech company, and how you plan to disrupt the larger ecosystem.
Every marketer relies on an up to date database to be able to market to – we believe our product at critical mass has the potential to extend to brands with users express permission to share their contact details with the brands they love. ConnectiD has a vision to organise the worlds contact information by giving people control of their own information and then syndicating it to people and brands they are happy to have access to it.
What is one challenge you have had to overcome since beginning your journey?
We have done 3 versions of this product web based, hybrid and now native – its taken a long time and a lot of money but we have learned a lot along the way, however, we should have failed faster!
Tell us about where you think Collider can add the most value to you over the next four months.
Help us get the positioning of our product and brand right and to help us develop our business model further alongside brands to understand what pain points they have and how ConnectiD could potentially address them.
What advice would you give to founders who are applying to accelerator programmes?
Find an accelerator that has aligned values to your company – shop around as all accelerator programmes are not made equal