A quick Google search pulls up countless journals and papers full of articles on why financial crises are the best time to start a company. Their arguments are just as apt during the pandemic as they were back in 2008. Whilst several businesses have gone under during COVID-19, others have found and capitalised on new opportunities from it, while some entrepreneurs have done both. The ability to learn from one’s mistakes and to adapt to changing circumstances are both imperative to becoming a successful founder.
One year on from the first national lockdown, we’re focusing on a handful of steadfast entrepreneurs who have both lost and launched ambitious companies over the past 12 months. Some of these founders are addressing new demands, prompted by a shift in consumer habits as we adjust to the ‘new normal’, whilst others have taken advantage of businesses becoming more open to digital transformation during COVID. We found out how the pandemic has affected their companies, and why they chose to start a new project during this volatile time.
Finding these individuals was made simple using the Beauhurst platform, a searchable database of every high-growth company in the UK, plus the funds and accelerators that back them. We were able to run a search across people associated with high-growth companies that had become inactive or died since the start of the pandemic, as well as ones which had launched during this time. We can even see the effect the pandemic is having on these companies, thanks to our COVID-19 impact tags, reviewed monthly (at a minimum) and whenever new restrictions come in.
Emmanuel Hadoux, Scribe
Emmanuel Hadoux was Co-Founder and CTO of Persuadr.ai, a UCL spinout that launched in December 2019, a matter of months before the first national lockdown. Its software was designed to enhance the persuasive abilities of chatbots, to help businesses increase user engagement and conversion rates. The company’s technology simulated all possible outcomes of a conversation, then recommended the optimal argument and communication style to use with each customer, learning from every interaction.
Although Persuadr has been inactive since January this year, Hadoux is already running another successful business, Scribe, set up amidst the pandemic. Scribe is an automated decision-making platform, using artificial intelligence to accelerate lending and investment decisions in the financial sector. Founded in June 2020, Scribe quickly secured equity funding: it received £120k worth of investment in August. The company has also seen a ‘potentially positive’ impact from COVID-19, and has continued to create job opportunities throughout the latest lockdown.
Hadoux, who has a PhD in AI, explained the decision to close up shop and start a new venture during the pandemic: “We decided to stop Persuadr as COVID hit, as we saw that innovation budgets froze and focus moved towards more immediate value propositions, making it harder for us to generate traction. Applying my research background to Scribe, we’ve found that the crisis has actually worked the other way—clients in finance are accelerating change, exploring new solutions that can help alleviate strained resources.”
