One of the great things about being part of BIG is that you get to meet the people behind the brilliant new companies that come to life at IDEAL. I recently had the chance to sit down with Stace Hipperson, CEO of IDEAL resident Real Status, to find out more about what everyday life is like at the incubator.
MS: Thanks for taking the time to talk today, Stace. Tell me about Real Status; where did the idea for the business come from?
SH: Well, the company has actually been around a little longer than you might expect. I came up with the idea of visualising networks using gaming graphics. I was a keen computer gamer, and my professional world revolved around network management. I started wondering why you could use modern day information processing and visualisation for games, but not to manage I.T.
The traditional way of doing this uses technology that is over a decade old, but the problem with that is that once you get to a certain level, that network that you’ve spent days outlining just starts to look like a big bowl of spaghetti and you get information overload.
You no longer have any idea what’s really connected to what, and it’s difficult to look at the inter-relationship between the network and the way that applications run on it. So we worked with a company that specialises in video game lighting, who helped us build the initial prototypes of what became the main Real Status product. We call this Hyperglance.
MS: Right, so this helps you to make sense of a network using gaming graphics… clever. What happened next?
SH: As with most start-ups, the priority was getting enough cash together to actually get the product out into the market. When we were starting out, we did that by working with the angel community, with the company being run out of the back room of another technology company in the area.
MS: Excellent. You’ve not been here the longest time, but how have you found it so far?
SH: It’s great. It’s an ideal location for us. One of the things that we’ve been trying to do recently is to recruit development staff, and we have a couple of developers starting this month, and they’ll be located out of here – and, to be honest, it’s kind of a funky place to work. There are a lot of people out there keen to work in this sort of location. You think about your typical Shoreditch Java developer, and this is right up their street, so to speak.
I think the whole concept is brilliant. It’s relatively low cost for starters. You get to meet all kinds of people who can introduce you to potential customers. And then you also get access to some of the IDEAL partners, like Bird & Bird, the solicitors. You just get this entire ecosystem that you can connect to.
Unlike some other companies here, we did already have some of those things in place by virtue of the fact that we’ve been in pre-revenue phase for a couple of years now. But we’ve been able to supplement those and fill in the gaps where they existed.
MS: And atmosphere-wise, it must be a big difference?
SH: Of course. It’s very difficult to build that start-up ethos, or a vision that everyone can coalesce around when everyone’s working out of their back bedroom or home office. So actually having a centre where you can start to create the buzz that you need to get a start-up going is critical.
We also have a range of other start-ups around us, who are incredible for bouncing ideas off of and getting inspiration from. One of the things we found is that it can be quite difficult recruiting when you’re just getting going; we don’t have cash to throw at recruitment agencies like a big corporate would. So we were able to get some tips from some of the other IDEAL companies and use some of their tactics, which have paid off.
MS: You’re here for the next 6-12 months or so. What advice would you give to someone in a similar position to Real Status when the business started out?
SH: Wow. Tough question. It’s different for every company, I think. I guess that it’s all looking for a strategic fit. As we’ve learned, big companies can really help you get your idea off of the ground, but it’s about working with someone who has the same vision as you. So, look for a partner who can be a real strategic fit for you.
MS: Okay, brilliant. Thanks again for your time, Stace!
SH: No problem at all, thank you.
This post was originally made on the EMEAR Network here.
Authors
