Have you ever seen someone wearing a nice jacket or pair of shoes and wondered where they bought it? Or have you seen something in the store window, but just didn’t want to go inside to ask for the price?
Calgary startup Slyce is solving that problem – all you do is take a picture of any product you like using your mobile phone and you’ll instantly see pricing, reviews and exclusive discounts enabling you to purchase the product within the app with just one click. Slyce is powered by a combination of interesting technologies including visual recognition and semantic web tagging.
Armed with some major brands on the platform, a successful alpha launch at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and $3.75 million in investment, co-founders Cameron Chell and Erika Racicot are ready to revolutionize ecommerce. We just caught up with them to learn more.
How did you come up with the idea for your startup? Was there an “ah-ha” moment?
During the holiday shopping season of 2011 we saw an increase in purchases made over mobile devices, but shortly after, brands and retailers backed away from their mobile applications because there was no campaign to attach them to. We saw the need for the support of a comprehensive ecosystem that integrates into the already existing marketplace without having to dismantle the way business is done in the consumer market. Slyce bridges the gap between mobile commerce and social sharing platforms.
What has been the biggest challenge so far?
Getting through the barriers of the current brand and retail marketplace. A lot of their business is based on long established relationships that make opening doors with tier one brands very time consuming.
What’s new with your startup that we can share?
We had the opportunity to represent Alberta in the Canadian pavilion at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The trade commissioners were and still are very helpful in organizing relationships and strategic partnership meetings with companies all over the world. Our investment round was oversubscribed at $3.75 million and we’re now ready to roll out our beta release.
Personally, do you think it is more difficult to raise capital or find the right talent?
Our belief is that there will always be money available for great, innovative and game-changing ideas as long as they are backed by talented team who can deliver.
People are always the key to successful ventures as they are the passion behind, and creators of, ideas – unless you have them in place, you will struggle. The current sexiness around startups and entrepreneurialism is a great thing and talented people are becoming more inclined to invest their time in ventures with possibilities rather than heading straight for the highest paid job on the table.
We hope this trend will continue as more and more stories hit the headlines of local Canadian startups finding international profile and success.
What has contributed to your success to this point? What advice would you like to share to early stage or new entrepreneurs?
Timing and having a great team has certainly been a large part of Slyce getting where it is now. The project is seeing rapid progress – with a steady roll out of new features and a global surge in mobile-commerce, we feel that the timing for our product couldn’t be better.
For new entrepreneurs, focus first on your revenue streams. Who are your customers and where is your startup going to make money? If these elements are clear from the start, you could very well have a winner on your hands!
What made you choose to go down the path of entrepreneurship?
Entrepreneurs are, in our opinion, born not made. If someone has a compulsion to build or change norms and create something, they are entrepreneurial and likely wouldn’t have it in them to devote their lives to a traditional 9-to-5 job. Entrepreneurs welcome the feelings of stress and uncertainty that come with brining their project to life.
What are your thoughts on Calgary’s startup community?
It is an innovative community full of talented individuals, but is also a community that is experiencing some growing pains as it finds its own identity. Calgary has been defined by making sure people know we aren’t something else; we aren’t Vancouver, we aren’t Toronto, and the startup community in Calgary is fragmented as we try to find out who we are and where we fit on a national (and international) scale. That being said Calgary was built on entrepreneurialism in the energy sector. Calgary has “startup” in its DNA and could be a powerhouse startup city.
What’s your ask right now?
We’re in the process of building up a large team of beta testers, covering a multitude of demographics. If you’re a brand and would like to know more about what Slyce is doing or you would like an invite to our beta group, please feel free to visitwww.Slyce.It.
Lloyed Lobo covers Calgary’s tech startup community. He is a Partner at Boast Capital and the VP of Community Evangelism at Startup Calgary.
If you are working on something that could potentially change the world, we’d like to hear about it. Send us a tweet at @boastcapital or email us at llobo@boastcapital.com.
{ 0 comments }