Introducing: Storesense

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**We will be profiling each company joining Collider's Class of 2015. Take the time to learn a bit more about them and keep an eye on what's to come over the next few months!**

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Who are you and what do you do?

Storesense tracks the movement of shoppers via their smartphones and use that data to deliver actionable insights to retailers. For example - how many shoppers leave the store without a purchase and what departments do they visit?

Who are your co-founders; give us one line about each of you! Jan Isakovič – Experienced product manager and motorcyclist Nejc Župec – Full stack web and cloud developer who loves chess and climbing Jaka Demšar – Data scientist who keeps bees

Where in the world are your headquarters?

Storesense’s HQ is in the picturesque capital of Slovenia, Ljubljana.

What excites you most about London (one startup point and one non-startup point!)?

We’re excited to start building our business in the UK. On a personal note, moving from a city of 300,000 inhabitants to London is definitely a big step and very exciting!

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What insight (competitive advantage, new perspective etc.) are you bringing to the Madtech industry?

We are also shoppers who are often annoyed with ham-fisted sales approaches. Our product enables passive optimization of shopping experiences – that means that  the customers’ (and our!) shopping experience will improve from visit to visit without them having to do anything!

What is one challenge you have had to overcome since beginning your journey?

The world of retail is a very closed one – at least in Eastern Europe. Getting with touch with actual retailers at the decision maker level to develop and optimize our product was quite a challenge and one of the key reasons for our application to Collider.

Tell us about how Collider can (and hopefully will) help you over the next four months.

We are counting on Collider to help us improve our product by connecting us to brands and retailers – and of course to help us sell it! :)

Here's a funny fact you didn't know about us!

Our data scientist has a fun hobby: programming  algorithms that predict Championship cup footbal games. Hopefully we’ll have a new way of financing our startup soon :D

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"The Storesense team is excited to have joined Collider because we believe it can help guide our next steps both when it comes to building our product and company and in helping us establish crucial partnerships with brands. As a startup from small Slovenia, we’re especially excited to start building our business in London and the UK in 2015."

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Here comes the Collider Class of 2015

[spb_single_image image="13861" image_size="full" frame="noframe" intro_animation="none" full_width="no" lightbox="no" link_target="_self" width="1/1" el_position="first last"] [spb_text_block pb_margin_bottom="no" pb_border_bottom="no" width="1/2" el_position="first"] With the new year, we're bringing in the 'creme de la creme' of what Madtech has to offer for 2015. And that means nine new startups have joined the Collider family. Please welcome; the Collider Class of 2015! This year, the startups have travelled from all over Europe to join our growing family and it's bigger and better than ever before. Our founders have come from Australia, Hungary, Israel, Italy, Portugal, Slovenia, the US, and across London - and they're all here to make a dent in the ever growing and maturing Madtech industry in the UK.

This year, the startups reflect some of the growing trends in the marketing and advertising industries, including 'dark social', customer segmentation, enhanced social analytics and short-form video to name a few.

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And to support our startups on their journeys we have over 12 amazing brand and agency partners - some of the biggest names in the UK, including Unilever, Diageo, Ogilvy Group UK and Havas Media UK. But no one can pinpoint the value of Collider better than our ring-leader, Rose:

“We are really excited about this year's cohort of startups - they reflect the current trends in Madtech and should offer our brand partners fantastic opportunities to understand, engage with and sell to their customers in new and innovative ways. Our startups will get the opportunity to pitch to some of the most influential marketing and advertising people in the UK and we look forward to seeing the benefits this will bring to the founders.”

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THE STARTUPS

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Brandvee is an audience development platform for media brands that finds, tracks and targets the most influential customers who drive conversion.

Hello, we're Burst!  We make big data from little videos and have built the world's first social video analytics platform which helps organisations understand how to spend more effectively on short-form video.

FindTheRipple is the influencers analytics platform that provides understanding, predictions and recommendations that drive highly focussed campaign decision making in real time.

Ignidata offers affordable, actionable, real time, global insigths in to millenials and other hard to get people by rewarding them with the content they love

Pixoneye  uses people's photos and videos that they have stored on their mobile devices in order to extract very clever data about them, completely anonymously. By understanding the user through their photos we are able to serve the right ad to the right user no matter what app they are using!

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Powr of You  is a data marketplace where consumers and brands can learn and earn from each other. Our platform provides brands with a deeper understanding of consumers across devices, browsers, and social networks.

Real Life Analytics enables targeted advertising on any digital screen. Using patented visual recognition technology we can enable every screen to recognise who is in front of it and serve them exactly the right targeted content in milliseconds.

Storesense interprets customer journeys in traditional brick-and-mortar stores using passive Wi-Fi. Our advanced proprietary algorithms drive actionable retail advice - from low traffic zone warnings and optimal in-store advertising position suggestions to the best locations for resting areas..

SyncSpot  harnesses the power of entertainment to move people by offering exclusive content that can only be accessed once a customer is at a specific location.

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Stay tuned for more in-depth info on each of the startups to come over the next couple of weeks!

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Giving Brands the Tools for Innovation

**This article was first published on The Drum**

Last January Collider welcomed nine new Marketing and Ad tech (or Madtech) startups into our family. These nascent businesses had global ambitions to help brands solve big problems around engaging with their customers. They joined the Collider Accelerator because we could give them access to some of the biggest brands in the UK including: BBC, Camelot, Unilever, Unruly and William Hill.

Over the past 12 months, their ideas have been work-shopped, torture-tested and grilled by some of the most senior marketing people in the UK. These people know their market and they know what they need to help solve some big problems. And it worked. 23 contracts were signed after seven months between our 2014 startups with the likes of Unilever and BBC Worldwide.

This access and approach means that the founders build products brands actually want to buy as they are solving real world problems, rather than just the sigh inducing gimmicks or features that I am sure you see every day.

This process is obviously rewarding for the startups, but crucial is the value these interactions bring to our partner brands and agencies.

Big data, mobile and social advocacy are providing new, sometimes unexplored, ways for brands to communicate with consumers Brands must adopt innovative practices to stay up to date. Innovation at the quickest pace is happening in the startups’ worlds – and brands know this. Instead of waiting for new technology and innovation to come to them through the traditional agency routeour brand partners are  creating direct relationships; speeding up their buying process and disrupting the marketing services value chain.

At Collider, marketers have the opportunity to work with around ten startups. And I mean really work with them. Senior executives get heavily involved by helping the founders shape their products; suggesting new or better product sets that would help sell the product, and of course, providing marketing and branding tips to ensure commercial deals get done.

Brands also know they need to be better at choosing the right company to work with; be excellent at integrating these new technologies more quickly into their businesses; and even work out which ones are not worth the time. By working closely with a number with startups, these senior professionals gain the necessary skills to spot the right kind of innovation for their businesses at the right time. The marketing leaders of the future will be the ones able to do this more quickly and efficiently than anyone else. In short: we believe we are arming them and their organisations to lead in the future as they learn to behave like our startups.

And for the first time some of the biggest agencies in the advertising world. , such as Ogilvy Group UK, The Engine group and Havas, are joining the Collider family in 2015. They see the value in working with startups – to help drive innovation in their business services and strategies, as well as for clients.

To stay ahead of the game, our partner brands know that they need to embrace innovation. That means working with startups.- not just once or twice,- but all of the time. So will 2015 be the year we see brands firmly look to startups to help with their innovation and keep up with their consumers? At Collider we certainly hope so.

The 12 Brand Partners for the Collider Class of 2015

[fullwidth_text alt_background="none" width="1/2" el_position="first"] As the holidays come crashing in and 2014 comes to a close, we are preparing for what 2015 will bring. And what better way than announcing our Brand Partners for the coming year?

2015 is going to be an exciting year for the Madtech world. We're preapring to bring in a new group of Madtech startups ready to take their businesses and products to the next level. But they're potential relies partially on the brands we partner with.

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Rose Lewis, our co-founder and ring leader shares how it is

"These brands play a pivotal role in our accelerator programme each year. Without their dedication and enthusiasm, our startups would not have access to such constructive and critical customer feedback as early on. This leads to a faster market launch of a product responding to brands’ actual needs."

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In the first 17 weeks, brands will literally be colliding with startups - workshops, speed dating, mentor meetings, demo days and more! Te brands will give real-time feedback to these founders, helping them to become revenue-earning businesses. But learning is a two-way streak. It's all about knowledge sharing. So brand mentors take back what the startups have taught them about embracing innovation to their larger organizations and become change makers! As simple as that!

Enough from us, here's what our partners have to say.

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“Working with Collider in 2014 has provided us with a new perspective on technology and innovation and how we can work alongside start-ups to deliver new platforms, ideas and opportunities. We’ve already struck up some interesting partnerships with start-ups as a direct result of the Collider programme, so we’re really looking forward to Collider’s Class of 2015 and helping to unearth those gems that we can work with to develop new ways for brands to engage and inspire audiences across our business” Dan Cresta, Partnerships Director, Exterion Media

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“Ogilvy London Labs has been at the forefront of innovation since its inception. By partnering with Collider in 2015, we are pushing the limits of innovation, interacting with more startups and maintaining our competitive advantage in the advertising industry.” Nicole Yershon, Director of Innovation, Ogilvy & Mather Group UK

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“The wide variety of start-ups served as a great source of inspiration for our innovation.” Edwin Bos, VP Innovation, Reevoo

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“By working with the Collider Class of 2015, we will gain invaluable exposure to the latest technology and talent affecting the marketing industry today.” Tom Crossley, Engine Group

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"Being a modern agile agency requires constant access to the latest technologies and thinking, which Collider start-ups always have in spades. Smart marketers don't just take new products off the shelf, they work in partnership with tech providers to evolve their solutions. We're looking forward to collaborating with the cohort of 2015 to deliver long-term innovative solutions for each of our clients." - Paul Frampton, CEO of Havas

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“To stay in this competitive market, brands must take a proactive stance on adapting new technologies. Collider facilitates this. 2015 will be a big year for social content – especially social video. We’re excited to work more closely with the innovative talent Collider connects us to each year.” - Sarah Wood, COO of Unruly Media

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“We are very proud to be one of Collider’s founding partners. It has enabled us to gain deep exposure to new technologies and pilot those technologies with our brands. Collider continues to accelerate very high quality startups with a strong relevance to our brands. Five Collider companies are currently piloting their technology with Unilever and we are looking forward to seeing what 2015 brings.” - Marc Mathieu, SVP of Unilever

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A Collider Family Reunion for 2015

It’s that time of year – from one Christmas party to a lunch followed by a festive dinner. And we had to partake in this tradition with our 2015 Launch Party on Wednesday evening. In the beautiful Unilever Skyline Restaurant, the champagne was flowing, canapés passing and conversations attention-grabbing.

This was a chance for our Alumni, investors, brand partners and the Class of 2015 to come together and mingle. Brands chatted with investors, startups chatted with Alumni and everyone learned something new about the Collider Family. Larger groups broke off into one-on-one chats. Introductions were seamless and plentiful, friendships established and business chats initiated. Our investors learned more about the Class of 2015 and had the opportunity to catch up with our alumni. Our Brand partners also learned more about what was to come next year and had the opportunity to learn from our recurring brands. Jeremy Bassett of Unilever and the Unilever Foundry highlighted the journey they have taken as one of the founding brand partners of Collider. He looks forward to 2015 as a year for brands to fully embrace innovation and encouraged the brand partners to let the startups challenge them as much as they may challenge the startups. Next up, Carl Wong of LivingLens spoke to the Class of 2015, letting them know what to expect from Collider during the programme – as he called it SPANC. Speed, Proof of concept, Accelerate, Network and Change. We couldn’t have said it better Carl! And that’s a wrap for 2014! We cannot wait to get started with 2015. Even if you couldn't make it on Wednesday, we have so many more events to come. It's going to be an exciting year for the Madtech world!