Anthony worked at a number of startups, including ‘Seedrs‘ and ‘Student Money Saver‘, as well as at Venture Capital Firm ‘DFJ Esprit‘. It was whilst working as an IT Support Analyst that he came up with the idea for Swogo. His colleagues would consistently ask him to help them choose the right electronics product, and even though he kept up-to-date with the industry, he‘d have to research for hours across several sources to find the right product. He felt that there had to be a simpler way, and that‘s when he came up with the idea for Swogo.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Christo: Welcome back to the Basic Bananas small business marketing show. Today we do have another very special guest joining us in the studio. Well, he‘s coming to us live from across the planet and he goes by the name of Anthony Monica. Anthony is the co-founder and CEO of Swogo. He‘s worked at a number of startups including Seedrs and Student Money Saver as well as at Venture Capital Firm DFJ Esprit. It was while working as an IT Support Analyst that he came up with the idea for Swogo. His colleagues would consistently ask him to help them choose the right electronics product, and even though he kept up-to-date with the industry, he‘d have to research for hours across several sources to find the right product. He felt that there had to be a simpler way, and that‘s when he came up with the idea for Swogo. So welcome to the call, Anthony.
Anthony: Hello there. Thank you.
Christo: Thank you for joining us. All the way from… You‘re in England, aren‘t you?
Anthony: I am. I‘m in London.
Franziska: Is it snowing there? I‘ve heard that Europe has been getting a lot of snow lately.
Anthony: No, it‘s not snowing. But it‘s really cold outside. I need to stay inside working anyway so I haven‘t really been out to see that.
Franziska: Well, we‘re sitting in Australian summer so it‘s nice to know that some people are…
Christo: We‘re sitting here and we‘ve got big opening glass doors looking out over the ocean. So we‘re looking at waves breaking right now out the front and it‘s…
Franziska: That might be enough. So thank you so much Anthony for being on the call today and sharing your wisdom with our listeners. Just so we can get started, tell us a little bit more about you and also your business journey and how you came up with Swogo.
Anthony: Okay. So basically what would happen is I worked as an IT Support Analyst and my colleagues would ask me to help them to find the right product for them. This was generally with regards to electronics. And although I kept up-to-date with the industry, I‘d have to research for hours across several sources to find the right product. This would be reading sources, say buying guides or several reviews across loads of different sources and I felt that there had to be a simpler way. So, I came up with the idea of Swogo as a solution to my own problem.
Christo: Nice.
Franziska: So what does…?
Christo: So what does it do? Tell us a bit more.
Anthony: So basically it‘s a free service that helps users find the best product. At the moment we started out by recommending laptops in the UK. Our free service asks users a short series of simple to understand questions. Our proprietary algorithm then translates these answers into specifications and features recommending the best product to the user.
Franziska: All right. Interesting… And what does Swogo mean? Do you have a meaning for the name?
Anthony: It doesn‘t have a meaning at all. I mean actually I ended up buying the domain name when I was buying and circling domains at university. And I came across a five letter domain, Swogo.com. It was pretty cheap but I noticed that its variance, .uk, .net, etc., were all available. So I literally just bought it. We actually had another name called Pricevault, but it was too focused on sort of price comparison when we‘re in fact focusing on product comparison so I didn‘t want that confusion.
Franziska: Swogo was already suggested by the domain provider. You didn‘t come up with the name or make it up?
Anthony: I didn‘t come up with the name. I bought it thinking that it could be sort of swipe and go for NCS payments.
Franziska: Interesting.
Anthony: But that‘s got nothing to do with our company.
Christo: Yeah, like swogo. Swipe, go.
Anthony: Yeah.
Franziska: Oh, interesting.
Anthony: When we do like the sort of the mobile interfaces maybe we can play along with that.
Christo: Yeah. I see.
Franziska: You‘ve just launched your new Swogo websites today, I believe.
Anthony: Yes. It‘s been up for just under 11 hours right now.
Franziska: So have you slept in the last week or what‘s been happening in your life in the last couple of days?
Anthony: Well I mean it‘s been like pretty hectic just preparing everything for launch. I mean we shot out around, I think, over 100 emails to the press this morning. So we had to prepare all of those. All of those were like custom written as well so that took a very long time. We‘re also using a package called GoSquared, have you heard of that?
Franziska: No.
Christo: No. GoSquared.
Anthony: It‘s just basically a real-time analytics. It‘s been working like wonders for us. I mean it shows like the sources that people are coming through so we‘ll know someone who specifically Tweets about us is bringing us say five users to the site. And we can go back there and start interacting with them or interacting on like blogs that say we‘ve been featured on.
Franziska: Oh, fantastic.
Christo: Awesome.
Franziska: That‘s really… So that‘s some real detailed measuring and then you actually go and interact with the people on social media.
Anthony: Yeah. And we do this like… It‘s sort of in real-time, so, we‘ve literally been staring at a big screen all day doing that.
Franziska: That is fantastic. So, and what‘s the outcome? Have you got any interesting conversations because it‘s a really interesting topic for our listeners so I‘d love to explore it a little bit more?
Anthony: We‘ve had a little bit of interest from investors approaching us. So far, today, I mean we‘ll be able to see on our analytics when it refreshes tomorrow. But I say in the region of about 750 uniques from low-paid advertisers so far.
Christo: Wow, awesome.
Anthony: It‘s eleven hours so.
Franziska: Well done.
Anthony: It‘s been like pretty good.
Christo: So that‘s unique visitors for our non-techie friends listening in.
Anthony: That is, yes.
Franziska: Fantastic. Now you‘ve spoken about, you know, you‘ve got a little bit of interest from investors and I know that we have spoken in the past about how you used crowd funding to launch your product and your websites. Can you talk a little bit about that and the benefits, the disadvantages, etc.?
Anthony: Sure. We used a crowd funding platform called Seedrs. It‘s actually the only financial service regulates it crowd funding platform available in the UK. And basically I actually worked for the guy. So I did a little internship there while I was at university. And basically, I mean in terms of like advantages of it, I feel that it‘s a really great way to raise capital for idea staged businesses. So at this sort of stage alone, a bank wouldn‘t provide you with a loan. And generally people would ask their friends and family for this sort of money but, generally, not everyone‘s in that sort of financial position. And angel investors are certainly not going to back a company without a minimum product built. And also you need that initial bit of capital to help you build that product. So, we raised £17,500.
Franziska: Through crowd funding?
Anthony: Yes. For 5% equity so, that‘s a £350,000 valuation.
Franziska: Well done.
Anthony: Which is a pretty good sort of valuation for us. And it also makes sense for the investors as well. We found that it‘s like a great way to validate an idea. So obviously, a lot of consumers would be using the site and we‘re B to C Company so having the crowd sort of back our idea kind of validates our idea for us and at least identifies that the problem we‘re trying to solve is a worthy one.
Franziska: Absolutely.
Anthony: Also, Seedrs took care of the entire due diligence process so all the paperwork for us. And actually the fee that they charged us, we would have got charged that anyway paying a lawyer to have to deal with it so it wasn‘t really like an expense for us.
Franziska: So did they take a percentage of the funds that you raised? Or how did they work? How can you explain a little bit for our listeners that don‘t really know what crowd funding is. How it works and how they get paid, etc.
Anthony: Okay. Sure. So basically, I mean it‘s an online platform. Investors sign up and entrepreneurs list their businesses on it. If the entrepreneurs, will say, for example, “I‘m looking to raise £100,000 for let‘s say 25% equity.” If the investors agree with that, they‘ll back your company. They can put anywhere between £10 and I believe £100,000. I think for our startup we had about 30 investors in total. And, I‘m sorry, I‘ve lost my train of thought.
Franziska: That‘s okay. So we were just talking about crowd funding and so then people can just online it‘s a website so they can say, “Okay this guy wants to put up a project,” and then they can say, “I‘m going to invest money into this project.” And you had 30 people doing that.
Anthony: That‘s basically it and Seedrs take a sort of fee if they‘re successful. I believe that was 6 1/2% or 7 1/2% of the total amount raised.
Franziska: It‘s very cool…
Christo: Interesting, yeah.
Franziska: Because nowadays, you know, especially those in Australia, it‘s not very easy to raise capital but there are more and more crowd funding platforms I believe available for small businesses to raise capital and I think that‘s just a really… A really huge advantage. There must be some disadvantages.
Anthony: Sure.
Franziska: Can you elaborate on some disadvantages or even some of the biggest mistakes when it comes to raising investments?
Christo: Risk or yeah.
Anthony: Sure. Okay. So basically I mean the issue is that anyone can join in on the route. So arguably you could receive what‘s called dumb money. But actually in fact for us, we managed to get some fantastic investors who helped quite a lot so this could be sending out an email to them and like saying, “Hey, can you give us some feedback on what we just built?” And working alongside them. I mean it‘s actually been a lot of help to us but you could also end up maybe a bit unlucky in getting somebody who doesn‘t want to be involved at all. But, for some people… Some people might actually be happy with that anyway. So, that‘s important to consider. In terms of mistakes. I would say raise the smallest amount of money that you need. It will allow you to raise it quicker. Allowing you to progress into the next stage. It also instills confidence in the investors and allows you to retain more equity.
Franziska: Fantastic.
Christo: Interesting. So we heard that you… In terms of marketing Swogo we‘ve heard you‘ve got your live marketing going on with GoSquared which you shared before. How else have you marketed Swogo so far? What sort of marketing are you using?
Anthony: Okay. So basically I mean we‘re aiming to drive initial sales through pay per click advertising in SCA. It is going to take some time but we can build that up. We aim to basically be seen as sort of trustworthy, helpful and experts in our field which we plan to achieve through PR, content marketing, social media, our blog and we also plan on doing distribution partners which is essentially we‘ll do a bit of business development where we‘ll integrate our services to say for example another tech blog. So helping their users to find the right products and laptops, etc.
Franziska: Fantastic. Is there something like that out there? Are you guys the first business to do that sort of thing… To provide that sort of service or is there something else out there?
Anthony: Well, at the moment, we‘ve got a few competitors. There‘s which? In the UK which is basically a paying service. But again, it points users to information not answers. So they‘ll provide them with sort of in-depth reviews. They also have a lot of pay all up resource. You have to pay for a subscription to access it. It requires time, research, money and understanding on behalf of the user as well. There are other two main competitors called Sourceable and FindTheBest which allow users to apply technical filters. So you could say, “I‘m looking for a dual core laptop, sorry, a dual core processor.” This assumes that they understand what these mean. And we found 77% of the consumers don‘t have a technical understanding, so, basically our approach is essentially we‘re asking users a series of simple questions. Let‘s say, for example, an expert install would ask them. So it could be like, “What do you plan on using your laptop for?” And they can say gaming, or everyday tasks, etc. So it‘s something that everybody has an answer to.
Franziska: So you‘re make it pretty easy for non-techies which is fantastic.
Christo: Yeah, it sounds good.
Franziska: For people like me that would be perfect. Now something else that I‘ve seen also is you‘ve only launched today and you‘ve got a Facebook fan page and you‘ve already got over 1000 people following. How did you… What are your strategies for social media?
Anthony: Okay. So basically, I mean we did a lot of networking before. A lot of these fans, say for example and we seeded our databases as well by obviously just reaching out to our own networks, our friends and family asking them to share. We also have been running a sort of startup diary with a blog. That‘s helped drive a lot of Facebook fans to us.
Franziska: Awesome. I love how you guys, you don‘t… Obviously, is it just you or do you have a business partner? Or do you have a team behind you?
Anthony: We‘re a team of five. Five founders is quite large.
Franziska: Yeah. Because obviously what I can see with your business because it‘s a startup and you only launched, you‘ve done a lot of groundwork. And I think that‘s a huge lesson for our listeners because when you do launch a new business or a new idea, sometimes, not sometimes, always you have to plan ahead do the whole pre-launch and getting things ready. And you guys obviously have really thought that through. Are you guys just super smarty-pants or who is doing your strategy? Is it the whole team or how do you work together?
Anthony: Well, basically it‘s myself and Ivor, he‘s our Chief Marketing Officer. Basically we did a bit of startup consultancy, sorry, startup marketing consultancy for a few small businesses. So we have a little bit of experience doing marketing say.
Franziska: Yeah, I can tell. I can tell.
Anthony: We do kind of brainstorm with the whole company anyway.
Franziska: Yeah, I can tell.
Christo: It‘s really good.
Franziska: It‘s awesome. Also how do you… I‘d love to know five people involved or five founders. Are you guys all sitting in one office? Or are you working virtually? How do you guys communicate?
Anthony: Okay. So. Basically we used to have an office. It‘s a house, basically all developers. Now our developers are based in Portugal so we got rid of the office and essentially we‘re working from my house now.
Franziska: All from your own… Everyone from home or everyone comes to your house?
Anthony: My house. It‘s in my living room.
Franziska: Awesome. I can just imagine all this smarty… Smart-techie guys like sitting behind their laptops and monitoring what‘s happening and doing all that stuff. How did you go with your PR today by sending out 100 emails? Have you already got some pickup?
Anthony: Sure. We had a few pickups. We believe that we made maybe a little bit of an error in that we haven‘t say pitched… Say maybe even a good enough story to certain publications. So something that we need to like address pretty much immediately.
Franziska: Did you adjust your pitch for each publication or did you just send out one press release to all of them?
Anthony: We wrote a pitch to each publication. I mean I‘m personally not so sure whether our angle was good enough. It‘s something that we still would need to discuss internally.
Franziska: Love it. So do you have a big company meeting in your living room tomorrow because I know it‘s already late at night now?
Anthony: Yeah. It would be straightaway tomorrow morning. First thing.
Franziska: This is awesome. Those guys that you work with. Are they like people that you‘ve known for a long time or how did you find your business partners?
Anthony: Well, most of them I actually went to school with so I‘ve known them since I was about 12 years old. So, I‘m pretty close to them. And our CTO, basically contracted him to do some work for us. And essentially we liked his work and we found that we worked really well together so we recruited him.
Franziska: Fantastic.
Christo: Nice. And I know you mentioned a bit about what sets you apart from competitors but how do you guys make sure… Well how are you going to make sure you stay ahead of your competitors in your industry? Or even make sure you stay ahead of the game? Do you have any tips for nurturing kind of innovation and staying ahead of the pack?
Anthony: Yeah. I mean we believe in getting as much feedback as possible so collecting a lot of data and just going up to people and asking them. I mean we popped into Starbucks and just said, “Hey, look, we‘ll buy you a coffee if you can just sit with us for a few minutes and give us some feedback.”
Franziska: Lovely. Lovely.
Anthony: So we sat with as many people as possible to get them to use it which identified a lot of issues straightaway which we managed to address before our launch.
Christo: Awesome.
Anthony: I think that really is important to just keep testing. Make small releases. Get your product out there and just keep iterating bases of data and feedback that you collect.
Christo: Yeah, very good. I love it. I love the Starbucks approach.
Franziska: Yeah, it‘s a great idea.
Christo: Just feedback from anyone and everyone. That‘s one of the things we find, too. Obviously with marketing people don‘t tend to ask their market as well and you know, what they would actually want. And in your case, putting it to them to test it. Golden feedback. You can find exactly what they want. So that‘s awesome.
Franziska: Did most people say yes when you went into Starbucks and you said, “Hey I‘m going to get coffee, help me out.”
Anthony: Not one person said no.
Franziska: Love it.
Christo: Wow.
Franziska: Love it. See, that‘s such a great tip for anyone listening. I love… Obviously research is one of the main things that is really important to get to know your market and also to improve on the product, but that‘s really hands-on research going where the market is. Hanging out with them and asking them questions. I just totally love that example. So thanks for sharing.
Christo: Yeah. I think everybody can take something from that and apply to their own business and start to see immediate results and things that they can tweak and change. It‘s a good tip.
Franziska: One other thing I‘d love to know is how are you going to monetize the service? Are you going to offer ads or through the providers? What‘s your plan to monetize your services?
Anthony: So basically we currently use an affiliate business model. So we‘re paid a commission for each time a purchase is made. We‘re going to look at implementing a CPC, so every time somebody clicks on a specific product we‘d receive a small fee for that. We also plan on sending consumer purchase intent dates in the future so we‘re essentially able to track what consumers are interested in by their answers to our questions. We plan on adding like a sort of social layout. Which basically will allow us to integrate Facebook into our application, so if you signed in on Facebook, onto our service, we basically know for example that you‘re 18, based in London, and female. Basically your answers will know what you are looking for. So that sort of data can be really valuable to say lots of manufacturers or even retailers.
Franziska: Absolutely.
Christo: So nice. A question we love to ask of all our business owners is what‘s the weirdest or funniest thing. It might put you on the spot here. But what‘s the weirdest or funniest thing that has ever happened to you in business?
Anthony: Okay. Well. Basically today we popped into an electronics store called PC WELT here. I went inside. I saw a few people looking at laptops. I just went up to them. Launched Swogo on one of the laptops in the store and stole a client from them.
Franziska: Oh, my god. You shouldn‘t have mentioned the store name. I love that.
Christo: From under their nose.
Franziska: You guys are totally underground and just awesome. I love how you guys… Are you guys all techies or all of you very tech-savvy? You obviously are because the way you talk I know that you‘re quite a technical person. Are all of you techie people as we would call them?
Anthony: Half of us are. The other half aren‘t.
Franziska: Because I‘m even very impressed how you guys and the techie people go out and it‘s probably a stigma that we attach to techies. You know, techies for us are… They‘re really super-smart guys that just sit on their laptops and hack the Internet and come up with these incredible ideas. But you actually go out and implement and do stuff and I just love that about you guys.
Christo: It‘s a good combination there.
Anthony: I mean, you know, we believe that we just have to sort of hustle our way through and we don‘t have a large marketing budget so we kind of have to do whatever we need to do.
Christo: Yup. Get it started. Nice.
Franziska: Fantastic. I‘m glad he didn‘t get caught today in the shop.
Anthony: Oh, no. The guy was approaching me. But we managed to do the deal before he came up to me. So it was okay.
Franziska: That is a great story. That is a great story.
Christo: Yeah, a nice one.
Franziska: Where can people find out more about you and your business, your services?
Anthony: I mean they can head on over to swogo.com. They can follow us on social media @goswogo on Twitter or on Facebook. And if they want, they can even reach me directly. Just drop me an email. [email protected].
Franziska: Awesome. And just for the listeners how to spell Swogo. S-W-O-G-O.com. Is it .com or .com.uk?
Anthony: .com
Franziska: Just .com. Awesome.
Christo: Nice.
Franziska: Fantastic. Thanks Anthony.
Anthony: Thanks a lot.
Christo: Thank you.