{"id":1191,"date":"2019-07-17T10:43:19","date_gmt":"2019-07-17T09:43:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/research-business-innovation\/?p=1191"},"modified":"2019-07-17T10:43:27","modified_gmt":"2019-07-17T09:43:27","slug":"the-startup-using-tech-to-deliver-a-personal-message","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/research-external-engagement\/the-startup-using-tech-to-deliver-a-personal-message\/","title":{"rendered":"The startup using tech to deliver a personal message"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Taken and adapted from <\/em>The Pitch<\/em><\/a>. Author: Hannah Jolliffe<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

UWE Bristol Enterprise Zone residents, <\/em>The Handwriting Company<\/em><\/a>, are currently taking part in The Pitch, a competition to identify top start-ups<\/em>: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Robert Van Den Burgh is co-founder of The Handwriting Company, a startup that helps organisations better engage with their customers through the power of the handwritten letter. But, while the name suggests a gang of people scribbling away, the reality couldn\u2019t be further from the truth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve created technology that can mimic handwriting. It can then be printed at scale on a good quality office printer or on robotics based in our facility. So instead of an organisation hiring 100 people to handwrite notes and pay a huge amount of money, we can fully automate the process.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do your research first<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

As with most innovators, the idea was born out of a realisation that a solution was needed to fix a broken system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Van Den Burgh was on a marketing internship two and a half years ago when his manager got him involved in a handwritten marketing campaign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was the fool who took three weeks writing out all the letters,\u201d he laughs. \u201cBut it was one of the most successful marketing campaigns they\u2019d ever run.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This prompted Van Den Burgh to research the market. He found about 30 companies offering a similar service, but they all had people writing letters by hand. \u201cI could see that the economics behind it didn\u2019t make sense and it just wasn\u2019t efficient enough to make it an effective tool.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I could see that the economics behind it didn\u2019t make sense<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Van Den Burgh joined forces with Alex Robinson, an AI engineer with a background in computer science. The two founded Scribeless, which has since been renamed The Handwriting Company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Together they began a huge research piece to see if they could use technology to optimise and automate the process of handwriting using AI, algorithms and robotics. It took time, but they developed a programme that could learn someone\u2019s handwriting at a level that was indiscernible from human writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They then equipped robots with classic fountain pens and ink that can even mimic the physics of pen pressure and variation and deliver thousands of letters in hours.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Taking a punt at entering The Pitch<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The pair reached the stage where they had a rough idea of the market needs, technology and where they wanted to take the business, when a friend recommended that they enter The Pitch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The pair reached the stage where they had a rough idea of the market needs, technology and where they wanted to take the business, when a friend recommended that they enter The Pitch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was about this time last year. I thought we didn\u2019t really stand a chance because we were still a very new company, but we gave it a go. We were lucky enough to get to the semi-final and then the final!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I thought we didn\u2019t really stand a chance because we were still a very new company<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Van Den Burgh, the day at the boot camp helped them to better understand how to articulate what they offer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe format of pitching is very short and sharp and about getting your main points across. We spent a day discussing our concept with the boot camp coaches. They gave us feedback to really help us understand how to better articulate our story, the problem and how we could help solve that problem.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Staying ahead of their own game<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s been a busy year for the company since then. The model has moved on from robotics to Advanced Printing Technology, which can print a handwritten note indiscernible from human handwriting. It\u2019s helped them create handwriting campaigns at scale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company\u2019s client base includes banks, churches, charities and corporate gifting companies across the UK, US and Germany. They\u2019ve also established their place within the greetings card space. Things are looking healthy, but one of the biggest hurdles they still need to overcome is funding.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s really hard to do everything on a shoestring budget<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cUntil now we\u2019ve been fully self-funded. It\u2019s been really hard to do everything on a shoestring budget. It\u2019s part of being a startup, but it has been a strain on resources \u2013 only having 10% of the funds you need is difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This has led The Handwriting Company to raise investment, with the aim of building the team and scaling into the US. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\u2019re just about to close our investment round, with a mixture of angels and investment capitalists, so we\u2019d like that to fund five or six new people across sales, tech and marketing to allow us to keep innovating and build a more scalable model.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s important for Van Den Burgh to get more competitive and to \u201cout-innovate\u201d their own technology. His key objectives are to make sure they can deliver quickly and at an affordable rate. At the moment, it takes a couple of days for the software to mimic handwriting, but the aim for the near future is to get this working in real-time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Original post can be viewed here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Taken and adapted from The Pitch. Author: Hannah Jolliffe UWE Bristol Enterprise Zone residents, The Handwriting Company, are currently taking part in The Pitch, a competition to identify top start-ups: Robert Van Den Burgh is co-founder of The Handwriting Company, a startup that helps organisations better engage with their customers through the power of the … Continue reading “The startup using tech to deliver a personal message”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":1192,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[150,96,243,242,126,74],"class_list":["post-1191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorised","tag-bristol-robotics-laboratory","tag-brl","tag-robert-van-de-burgh","tag-the-pitch","tag-uez","tag-uwe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/research-external-engagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/research-external-engagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/research-external-engagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/research-external-engagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/research-external-engagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1191"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/research-external-engagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1191\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1193,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/research-external-engagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1191\/revisions\/1193"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/research-external-engagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/research-external-engagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/research-external-engagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uwe.ac.uk\/research-external-engagement\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}