Since they’re in the tech space anyway, they grab it and will quickly use the features that we push out. The group that I see running with it is medium sized businesses who have grown rapidly and are technology natives.
Is there a sector that you would say has embraced AI more than the others? We stay in touch and I’m looking forward to collaborating with them in the near future. I also got to meet some of the other start-ups in the region that are supporting businesses, for example Callum Coombes at Safepoint. Sharing experiences with other entrepreneurs who are at all different stages was really powerful.
Who owns brisk how to#
I also learned more about how to set up as you leave the safety of a large corporate or incubator. That proved to be very helpful for me to plug some of the gaps, especially around fundraising. That was hosted out of the enterprise centre at UEA. Yes, I was part of the Invest East programme at the beginning of this year. You mentioned the incubator in London are there any other programmes or incubators that have helped you on this journey? Many corporates are starting to get their head around that now – thinking about how large corporates can work with start-ups. But Aviva remain involved they’re a partner, we’re doing a number of proof of concepts with them. They ended up wanting to invest in it further, so that culminated in me leaving Aviva in March of this year to carry on with it independently. My wife said that it was just me having a midlife crisis! But I went down to London and incubated the project. But they have a stake in the start-up incubator Founders Factory in London, so they sponsored me to go and join that for 9 months in 2018. Building an AI-powered virtual assistant was a few good years away on their road map. He said to me: ‘When can you go build it?’ and I said: ‘Well, this was just a hack event.’ So, I ended up pitching it to Aviva.Īt the time, Aviva was very focused on doing things like cloud migration and moving from legacy systems to strategic systems. He saw real value and potential in the idea of having a technological solution that would do that automatically. The business is a plant hire business, they actually said: ‘Wow this is really great.’ They are a 115-employee business, but they didn’t have people around who could look at things like employee safety, cyber risk, cash flow, late-paying customers and things like that.
We built a prototype of Brisk in 24 hours, based on an Aviva client, and they turned out to be our first client.
I’d been one of the judges in 2016 and then I thought: ‘Right, I’m going to have a go.’ I entered and got a team together. I entered it into an internal hack event. Yes – I had the idea and I tinkered with it through 2017. Was there support from them? Did they help you to develop? So, we both have to keep each other on the straight and narrow to stay focused.Īs you say, the idea and the potential gap in the market was identified at Aviva. I guess I’m the business side of things, but both of us are as mischievous as each other in terms of having ideas and looking where we can apply the technology and the ideas. Greg is cofounder and chief technology officer, so he is the tech side of it. I had the idea while I was at Aviva and then got together with Greg. James RussellĪre you a techy person yourself? Have you been developing Brisk, or did you have the idea? The idea comes from helping businesses save time managing risks. For the name Brisk, I have to give credit to a close friend of mine. As a business owner, while you’re spending time focusing on what you want to be doing, Brisk is in the background watching your back and keeping your business safe. It’s almost like having another pair of hands, but it’s driven by data and technology. So, what we put together in Brisk was essentially a virtual risk manager for businesses. Then Greg, as a business owner himself, was also experiencing the frustration of having to spend more time than he wanted making sure that he had the right protection and insurance in place. These are necessary things that one has to do, but they’re not front of mind when it comes to growing your business and doing the things that business owners want to be doing. While I was at Aviva, I was seeing small to medium size businesses really struggle to stay on top of everything – especially the risks and opportunities associated with keeping their business safe. My cofounder Greg Duffield has got 20 years’ experience as a business owner himself. My background is in insurance and consulting. First of all, can you tell us about Brisk? How did the business come about?
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