AMW Tech is a web application built for media agencies, ad buyers and small to medium brands to help with online video advertising.
Essentially we are using AI and ML to help our clients understand who their audience is and then hyper-personalized online video advertising campaigns specifically geared towards those audiences.
The quality that I have seen from the UK investors on this platform, I can only imagine would be matched by the US investors too.
AMW Tech is a web application built for media agencies, ad buyers and small to medium brands to help with online video advertising.
Essentially we are using AI and ML to help our clients understand who their audience is and then hyper-personalized online video advertising campaigns specifically geared towards those audiences. The campaign is monitored 24/7, making sure that it's performing to its right metrics and hitting all its KPIs, effectively giving a good ROI for our clients.
Unlike UGC platforms and other competitors, we don't use third party data, protecting the consumer as well, and respecting their privacy.Ultimately we protect brands’ reputations and give a more positive experience to the user.
We work with anything between freelance marketers to small marketing departments within larger companies. They tend to contact us basically when the manpower required for the campaigns can’t be provided by the resources that they have on their side.
They bring someone in like us who can take over and effectively run everything for them in the background. Generally speaking, they white label the technology off us, so they look like the power units and we just sit in the background doing what we do best.
I work with my co-founder. He's a two-time founder with one exit. I'm a first time founder and whilst I have absolute confidence in my business partner Vivek to handle everything technical, I'm effectively running every other side of the business.
To do that successfully, I need to be talking to various different people in different sectors with more expertise than I have.Connected really allowed me to reach out to various different people in an advisory capacity, as well as also connecting with investors that I wouldn't normally be able to have access to here in the US. So I’ve connected not only with people in the UK, but I’ve also been able to get further introductions to people here in the US.
The advisors have been very beneficial; to lean on somebody who, for example, has particular expertise in just advertising, then somebody else who has expertise in the financial side allows me to become a more holistic and complete CEO of my company.
What impressed me the most is that I was just able to post for an advisory role within the company. And usually on these platforms, you then have to go digging around and sort of nudging people. But I was very impressed with the fact that they came to me, they saw what I was looking for and came with a very positive attitude of ‘this is how I can help you, and let's sync up on a call and see how well we can benefit each other’.
t's a win-win situation, where they're trying to increase their own experience in an advisory role whilst at the same time being able to help someone ‘young’ in a founder capacity. The fact that they're so proactive on the site, coming to you to offer their expertise is a huge bonus and a huge plus.
I would say it would be a mix of both, but I think what has been the most beneficial is to help myself also think outside of a box. Yes, there are things that, as a CEO you must have in your arsenal, but it's vitally important to be able to see a bigger picture and sometimes see a picture that's not even there. And the people on this platform have exactly that expertise.
I put most of my effort into the advisory side because the product was in such a new stage - and it's such a complicated product that we're building, and then releasing bit by bit - so it’s difficult then to talk to certain investors, and it really narrows down what you're looking for.
Being US based, and in particular West Coast based, it does create something of a barrier to setting up those conversations; I'm starting work when people in the UK are finishing. But there have been valuable connections in the sense of, if you want to start making relationships, which is so vitally important when it comes to investment, you don't just call someone up and go, ‘I need a million dollars, can you give that to me now?’. It's definitely a seven or eight touchpoint process that you've got to set up with these people. So to be able to start creating those types of relationships is invaluable.
I am definitely looking now, as Connectd comes to the US, to bring that forward and go in quite bullishly with the conversations. The quality that I have seen from the UK investors on this platform I can only imagine would be matched by the US investors too.
Our company really approaches the lean startup mentality, in terms of growing as and when we need to, not like SaaS companies in the past. The mentality was, ‘Hey, here's the idea. Can we take 20 million? And then we're just going to go into every metro in the US, go global and then tank because we've taken on too much and left too little.’ So our major goal, I would say, in the next few quarters is just to expand across the US. It's a large enough country anyway, so to be greedy and say, ‘We're going to go here, here and here’ would be pretty naive of us.
What we do find, especially with myself being British and knowing a fair few people in the UK, is that there are people in the UK interested as well. So the plan over the next year is to expand in the US and start trickling in those UK clients and have just the one solid product being the main crux, listening to our clients and seeing what is it that we could possibly add?
We use AI within our technology, but AI is going in such an open direction that we have to keep our eyes on that as well, and see how we can integrate more of this.Do we start looking at AI chatbots? So,for example, if someone has literally no clue where to start, they can actually come on and have that ‘consultation’ before coming and speaking to one of us. That way we're able to open the door to more people without having to require a vast amount of manpower.
So there are various different ideas at the moment, but the main one is just to expand what we have and slowly but surely start bringing in new aspects of the business.
Asking me to come up with only three words is very difficult because I come from a creative background and I like to try and use as many as possible!
But I would say what comes to mind is, efficient and clinical, adventurous. You don't know what is ahead of you on these platforms when you're networking with people and there is a sense of adventure to it to meet new people and in particular sort of advisors and people that can help your business grow.
