Liverpool based YuuGuu is hoping to simplify life for home-workers - and puts its money where its mouth is by using its own services to connect its seven employees.
YuuGuu is downloadable desktop tool that allows users to share desktops, message each other and talk. Founded in October 2005, the company has received £800,000 in venture funding and is expecting exponential growth this year. Co-founder and chief executive Anish Kapoor tells us more.
Anish Kapoor, co-founder and chief-executive of YuuGuu
• Explain your business to my Mum. And in no more than 140 characters.
"Yuuguu lets you chat, share screens and speak with any number of people, anywhere for free."
• What's your background?
"I co-founded a company called TeleCity way back in 1997. We were a key part of making the internet work in Europe. In just two years we'd gone from four people to 500 people in 17 countries with $70m in annual revenues, had been listed on the London Stock Exchange and were a FTSE 250 company. I then lived through the big downturn of 2000 and the big impact that had on our business. From 2003 onwards I was an advisor working with startup software companies on behalf of venture capital investors. That's where I met Philip (my co-founder) and where we encountered the problems that led us to start Yuuguu."
• How do you make money?
"We get a revenue share of the voice calls generated by Yuuguu right now, and in addition we are releasing a set of enhanced features which will be paid for services."
• How many users do you have now, and what's your target within 12 months?
"We have tens of thousands of users right now and are seeing an exponential growth in that user base. We expect to have many hundreds of thousands of users by the end of the year."
• Who is your competition?
"We really focus on individuals and small to medium sized business - an area where the big players find it difficult to play due to their enterprise focus (so IBM, Microsoft, Cisco).
"There are some other startups in our space - and I fully expect there to be more competition in the future. However we have lots of new features and deals that will be happening in 2008 to cement our position as a leader."
• What's your biggest challenge?
"Finding great people as rapidly as we need them."
• What's the weirdest business experience you've had so far?
"The post show party at the inaugral Demo Germany event last year. We were in the top VIP only nightclub in Munich, dancing away, eating free pizza and drinking free beer - rubbing shoulders with some of the most influential and well connected people in German IT and media. Only a few weeks earlier we had been sweating about our launch out at Demo Fall in San Diego - and wondering whether anyone would take any interest in us. I guess it just highlights the roller coaster that is a web-based start-up these days."
• Where do you want the company to be in five years?
"We'd like to have many millions of users all over the world, who really love our service and who get great benefit out of it."
• Are you the next big thing?
"Well I think working from home, or from outside of an office, is the next big thing in the business world.
"Our focus is to make sure that Yuuguu is the best way for people to work when they are not physically together - if we do that then we'll do OK!"
What do you think? Does it have legs? Is it hot, or not?
