The UK is home to many proud tech regions – and each has a unique ecosystem of events and meetups.
Tapping into these networks could be crucial if you are to make a success of your startup, says Sparkbox co-founder Lindsay Fisher.
Fisher, who worked as a business analyst for American retail giant Target in Canada, arrived in the UK in 2015. Initially working as a business consultant in London, she co-founded retail management consultancy Nifty in Southampton before setting up Sparkbox in 2019 with fellow Forbes 30 Under 30 inductee Matthew Wong and Kevin Blackmore, formerly vice president of customer insights at Best Buy and a retail analytics partner at Accenture.
Now based in Manchester, the Praetura Ventures-backed startup uses artificial intelligence and data to help retail merchandising teams make better stock buying and pricing decisions.
“Before I started the company, I would tell anyone and everyone about everything I was doing – because you just never know what someone in your network can do for you,” Fisher tells TechBlast.
“[Startup founders should] put a lot of effort into meeting as many people as early as possible. And help people out: they may come back to help you later.
“People don’t always expect something back… there are a lot of people who are just willing to help you. You then become part of their world as well.”
Fisher was speaking at a ‘Scaling up Manchester’s tech ecosystem’ event held by Enterprise City and Tech Nation, where she featured on a panel alongside fellow entrepreneurs based in the North West city.
Her company’s solution is trusted by River Island and Matchesfashion.com, while Fisher says it is “currently onboarding a number of exciting high street brands”.
In addition to protecting retailers from profit losses, Sparkbox’s approach to data also has the potential to aid brand sustainability goals by preventing retailers from over ordering stock.
Sparkbox, which featured on our sister publication BusinessCloud’s RetailTech 50 ranking, raised £1.5 million from Praetura at the start of 2022, an investment that saw Colin Greene – formerly Apple’s director of US consumer retail – join its board.
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“We met with Praetura off-cycle and spent time building the deal with them,” she says of the process. “Before we did the deal, we could see the kind of value they could add: they introduced us to operational partners [including Greene] who have worked for companies like Apple, Doc Martin, Social Chain.
“A lot of VCs will say they can add value – but with Praetura, in my second meeting they brought in Steve [Caunce, the former CEO of AO.com] and Colin: we had a conversation about my product there and then. It was very clear that they could follow through with their promises.”
Sparkbox was included on Enterprise City’s second startup exchange programme at Department Bonded Warehouse and is a graduate of the Google for Startups UK immersion programme. It was also a member of Tech Nation’s Applied AI 3.0 cohort and has been recognised as a Tech Nation Rising Star.
“As a team of former retailers, we’ve seen first-hand how the retail industry is advancing in many areas but falling behind when it comes to making data-driven decisions,” says Fisher.
The entrepreneur says hiring effective people early on allowed the Sparkbox co-founders to focus their attention where it was most needed.
“If you spend time upfront hiring the right people, it makes [juggling responsibilities] a little bit easier,” says Fisher. “When we raised in January, we focused on bringing in some key senior hires and spent a lot of time on them. Those people are already helping us to onboard new people and grow the team further – we’ve doubled in size since the fundraise. It’s paying dividends.”
She adds of her entrepreneurial journey: “I don’t have any regrets. We’ve done a lot of things badly, like everyone else. But we wouldn’t have gotten as far as we have without making some mistakes and learning from them.”