The Class of 2016 MadTech Applications

As Collider has become a stead-fast part of the London innovation industry, we've seen incredible growth in the numbers and quality of applications year on year. And this year topped them all to date. With 262 from 43 different countries for the next best of MadTech, it's fantastically rewarding to be at the epicentre of the MadTech revolution.

From these 262, 25 were shortlisted to prepare and present to the Collider Class of 2016 Investors - the people who would be making the decisions on who would be joining the programme. From there, we have chosen the lucky few to come to London for a four-month intensive programme, access to senior brand and agency executives and everything the London ecosystem has to offer.

We've highlighted some of the key takeaways from the applications in an interactive infographic below (roll your mouse over any of the graphs for numbers and additional info). Here you'll find our own MadTech categories, location of the companies who applied, and a few trends pulled from the data;

- We are seeing a turn away from content generation startups, as they slide into the third most popular category, to startups focussing on personalisation, advocacy and making content social (clickable, shareable etc).

- Marketplaces and the sharing economy still dominate in Europe with the largest number of application coming from there

- Israel & Western Europe had the most iBeacon applicants

Class of 2016 Insights Create your own infographics

What Investors look for in a Seed Stage Startup

With only two weeks to go to the Final Selection Day of the Class of 2016, the Collider coaches and mentors began helping the top 20 prepare for an intense room filled with the investors and partners for the Class of 2016 programme. This can be an intimidating experience for any early-stage founder - walking into a room filled with strangers who will be making a huge decision on their futures. So Collider invited the founders to attend a workshop designed to prepare them for the presentations and questions, and provide some initial feedback. It was three hours of introductions, pitching, coaching, and learning to think like investors. The startups were hands-on with the 'Investment game' - a setup where each person invested £100K of pretend cash into each other's businesses. Practical and interactive, the founders walked away with food for thought to prepare for coming weeks.

Every selection day is slightly different, and depending on the investment thesis of the accelerator, the management teams will be looking for different things in startups. We've summarised the core content every seed stage startup needs to cover in their presentation to our investors;

Size of the market:

How big is the market you’re going to be tackling? Investors here are looking for big , but also reasonable numbers. For example, if you’re going to state that the mobile market in North America is $XBn, that’s probably not the size of your market. Investors here are looking for you total addressable market (TAM). Take a look at the differences between TAM, SAM and SOM to understand what you should be using.

Scale:

This is all about how big the problem is. Tied to the size of the market, it’s all about how quickly you can tackle what chunk of your target market. ‘Scale-ups’ as a term for companies getting out of startup phase has been floating around for a year now, identifying any startup entering a high growth phase. Going from a startup to a ‘scale-up’ means a restructuring of the company to keep up with the demand. Here’s a great article from First Round Capital with some advice and case studies on just this.

Traction:

Founders, don’t forget, we don’t want 'yes' to always be the answer. We need the answer to be truthful. If you’re in beta, tell us how about your acquisition strategy for clients and customers. How are you measuring your traction? This can be more telling than the numbers you provide, as your understanding of the market will be identified by what you measure.

Team:

This is the MOST important, and is the thesis to your entire presentation. The question is, and at early stage funding will almost always be, Why are you the team to nail this?

Everything else should be supporting information to answer this burning question.

We also want to know about your background. Where did you come from? What is your relationship to the industry you are trying to disrupt? What standing relationships do you have in the industry? How love have you worked together as a team?

Tech (IP):

We want to know if you’ve built it in-house, who is responsible for it on your team, and what stage of development it is at. The role of CTO changes drastically over time, going from being the coder at the front lines to manager of people and product. We want to know you're thinking about these things already.

Who will you be hiring to build out your tech team and why? How will you be managing the tech team in relation to the rest of your company?

Locomizer provides the right data for DOOH

As digital out of home (DOOH) advertising revenue jumps %30 in the UK, Jameson, working with Havas Media, Posterscope and Collider alumnus Locomizer, launched a 7 month campaign targeting the British 'Lads'; a target market where Jameson currently has little clout. Posterscope developed a unique OOH campaign to engage with the target customers. Locomizer's technology enabled them to know more about where the Lads were travelling to before and after going to the pub. They were then able to provide completely anonymous, hyper local data highlighting where the target consumers are spending their time during the week.

This data will make the DOOH advertising more effective, as it targets the audience during their 'down-time' while waiting for public transport after work, or on their lunch breaks - outside of traditional locations and times. This is the first campaign of this type in the UK, with Locomizer's technology providing hyper-local analytics, and was launched in conjunction with the World Rugby League in the UK.

Ryan Hedditch, Business Director at Posterscope said: “This is a fantastic evolution of targeted advertising and we, in partnership with Havas Media, are excited to be putting it into action for Jameson. We have analysed modelled and historic data on all of those customers we want to be able to reach. Understanding location behaviour of consumers allows us to identify geographical hotspots where our audiences are likely to congregate at, when they are not at the interest affinity locations.”

This is a completely new approach to DOOH advertising, where data analytics previously only applied to online advertising, are now available in offline settings. But Locomizer is taking it one step further - they're able to aggregate and disseminate data in a meaningful and actionable manner. Digiday duly noted that this is a turning point in DOOH as advertisers begin to use the data available in social and mobile to effectively target people based on what they think, feel, and do. And we're excited to see the results.

3 MadTech Trends for 2016

** This article originally appeared in The Drum**

We're in the midst of a MadTech surplus. As applications for the next cohort come to a close, with over 250 applications from over 37 countries, we're sitting on a hot-bed of information relating to the future of the marketing and advertising industry.

This is the technology brands & agencies could be using today, so it doesn't take their business away tomorrow. They need to understand it, become comfortable using it, and see how working with it will increase revenues.Here are 3 MadTech trends and a few business models we think will be making it big in 2016.

Social marketplaces and curated content

We’ve seen a rise in the number of social marketplaces in this year’s applications. These startups are focusing on fashion and home goods, bringing together content from a number of existing websites and platforms (where eBay and Amazon began, startups have shaped this model). Here, the consumer has a more personalised shopping experience, as the platforms provide targeted recommendations based on their preferences. One of the most interesting factors though is that the consumer is redirected to the original retailer’s site to make the payments. On mobile, this can be as seamless as staying inside the original marketplace for the consumer, but means the startups don’t have to allocate extra resources to managing an e-commerce site.

OOH advertising meets online buying

Next gen retail tech can mean a whole host of things. One area we’re seeing a lot of activity in is optimising old tech with new features. And that means making billboards and display advertising ‘smart’ – optimising the media buying experience and providing more targeted advertising to consumers. Startups are adding software features onto old communications forms to target the content as consumers pass by, creating online bidding platforms mimicking that of Google and Facebook Ads, and much more. Real Life Analytics does just this. This takes hardware out of the equation, making the products pliable and easy to add and take features away from on an ad-hoc basis.

AI as a service

Artificial Intelligence reminds us of robots. Cultural references, TV shows such as Humans, show us house helpers and driverless cars, taking the work out of everyday activities we do. But it’s so much more than just that. Everything from the recommendation engines on our websites, to programmatic advertising (AppNexus is a big player here) which helps us buy better space for our content, to tracking the multi-channel consumer journey (taking it one step further from optimising content for mobile devices). Subscription models for AI are becoming commonplace in MadTech. It’s all about keeping the attention of the consumer from the beginning of their journey to the end.

How to Survive the Selection Phase of an Accelerator

Founders, it's crunch time. Applications across London for accelerator programmes are closing, and the selection phase is getting under way. Generally, this involves a written component going over the business, product, and plans for the future, followed by a selection of interviews with mentors, core accelerator team members and/or investors. If you've made it through the written application - congratulations! This usually means you're competing against hundreds or thousands of entries - you should be proud! But, you're just getting into the fun stuff. For any first time-entrepreneur the interview phase can be a terrifying, and thrilling opportunity. The prospects are high, the questions are tough, and the adrenaline is pumping. Going into our fourth round of applications at Collider, we've seen a lot of different ways founders can catch our attention. You'd be surprised how basic some of these tricks are. Here are a few of our favourites.

Content is still King

Being prepared is of the utmost necessity. Come knowing your product backwards and forwards. Doing Biz Dev? Be comfortable explaining your technology. Techie? Have a working knowledge of the sales cycle. Be ready to expand on the answers from your written application. Know your numbers, your competitors, your timeline inside out. Yes you’re a startup, but you’re still a professional.

We reckon you can cover everything off in 7 slides. Don’t make them text heavy, they should be presentation enhancers. Your confidence in your idea lies in the  Live demos are a no-no. Your tech will fall over. The internet will break. Do sneak in a screenshot or two.

Tough Questions await

Yes, we're going to challenge you. We're going to ask you questions meant to make you nervous - be prepared for that. We will ask you how your product will help big brands and agencies better find, understand, engage and sell to consumers. We will ask you how you think we can best add value to your business. We will ask you where your one year plan takes you. And there may even be some special guests - tech specialists, product masterminds, adtech mavericks. We're here to help you get from A to B quicker, and that starts with being able to ask the right questions. This is the first step.

Style: Bring your Flair

When you’re presenting, keep it clear and concise. Only one person from your team should present, but make sure everyone present is briefed for the Q&A. If you’re presenting, make sure you’ve rehearsed. A lot. Keeping it natural does not mean winging it the day of. Record yourself, practice in front of a mirror, or transcribe it.

Let your personality shine through. The beauty of interviews is the uninhibited communication – be confident and be yourself. Remember non-verbal communication plays a large role in your presentations, and we want to work with exciting and passionate people, not robots. Keep it real!

It's all about the Team

Yes, at the early stage it's all about the people. We know that products and business models can change over the course of the programme, but the team is the glue that will hold it together. So we're investing in you - the people behind the genius. Bring your personality, the spark that makes you you. We want to understand how you take feedback, where your strengths lie and how you like to share work. We're looking forward to meeting you.