Business name: Swipestation
Based: Kings Langley
Website: www.swipestation.co.uk
Person nominated: Sam Fresco, co-founder
In the last 18 months, SwipeStation has gone from an idea to a business with a valuation of £2.5m. Led by 24-year-old entrepreneur Sam Fresco, SwipeStation (a venue-based marketing platform that allows customers to print off vouchers), has secured over £250,000 in funding from two private investors.
We begged and borrowed to make it happen. Our first prototype was comprised of components borrowed from a German company. The protoypes were boxed in with polyboards (waterproof sheet material) and coated in sticky tape.
We re-skinned the pitch assets and unveiled it as our product to the head of the Stonegate Pub Company, alongside a 3D image of what our unit could look like. This helped us to learn the potential pitfalls of our design.
Then we showed the product to Pepsi and they went for it – that’s when things took off for us.
We’ve now moved forward with our business and we’ve taken on our first members of staff. This includes the ex-head of marketing from Yahoo!, who we’ve allowed to work remotely from Dubai – we keep in touch via Skype.
We’ve also rented an office within a digital agency and sourced all our desks, chairs and computer accessories from eBay, which has helped us to save money.
We’ve excelled as a business, collaborating everywhere we can. We recently took on pro bono work with the health council in the West Midlands to raise our profile. We’ve also partnered with big ad agencies, such as Ogilvy, Iris and Havas.
