VOOM 2017 is back. The famous pitchathon that sees the top tier start-ups from Ireland and the UK compete for a chance to pitch their industry-disrupting idea face to face with Sir Richard Branson, is once again open to contestants.
Last year, more than 7,000 businesses started their VOOM journey across the two competition categories, Start-up and Grow. As their names suggest, the first category is for would-be businesses that just need to get their world-changing idea in front of the right person to achieve lift off. Grow, meanwhile is designed for businesses that are already established but with the right investment and guidance could really ramp things up.
As well as putting some of the most promising individuals in tech in front of the business world’s most influential decision makers, VOOM also connects contestants’ businesses with potential customers thanks to a crowdfunding initiative.
Dean Douglas Evans co-founder of Golfbirdie.ie, spoke to the Virgin Media Business Blog about his growing business, what sets the outfit apart from the competition and his experience with VOOM 2016.
Tell us about your business?
We developed an app called GolfBirdie. We host visual flyovers of golf courses all around Ireland and around the world. It’s tee to green and we provide a promotional video of each course to the clubs themselves.
It’s a bit like booking.com for golf courses. Golfers can download the app, they can view each course before they go to play or plan their trip. It helps them if they’re playing new courses around the country or if they are flying abroad to play.
Who are your customers, the golfers or the golf course owners?
Both. For the golf clubs, we use the promotional video of the course as a marketing tool. We film their course and we attract golfers to view it and then book. We’re currently building a function into the system that if a user books a green fee through the app that we could receive a commission from the sale.
We have 72 courses from seven different countries. It’s mostly Ireland at the moment but we do feature courses from around the world.
Do the analytics show you that this is mainly a tourism tool?
One of the biggest aspects of the app is tourists coming abroad. A lot of Irish travel to the Algarve every summer and even the winter. The app gives them an insight before booking. Then there are the tourists that are travelling to Ireland that are downloading it before they land, seeing what courses are around, using features like distance indicator to see what courses are near the airport so they don’t have to travel too far.
Can you talk us through what’s involved in capturing a flyover?
Once we sign up a golf course we send two of our drone pilots to the course and they will film the 18 holes and capture the footage for the promotional video too. That promotional video that they can have is an incentive to let us onto to the course and get filming.
What’s the size of your team at present?
There’s five of us at the moment and we have another team member in England that’s trialling the franchise over there and there’s three guys in the States. All together there’s 10/11 of us.
A lot of the work is in the hands of our inhouse team. Two of us are licensed drone pilots and I have a background in film production. So, I would do a lot of the filming and editing myself. We have a graphic designer inhouse and a developer inhouse also.
What is some of the technology that underpins your business?
Two state of the art drones and Final Cut Pro for all the editing. We also look at the camera quality as new products come out and ensure we are staying up to date with industry standards. 360 videos and VR are our next ventures.
Did you have a lifelong passion of golf? Is that what kickstarted things?
My passion is in film and my business partner’s is in golf, so the business combined the two passions and helped us create this product.
Where did your business acumen come from? Was that something you’ve developed on the fly?
I happen to have a background in sales. And my business partner has experience in marketing. We have a lot of business experience between us and handle most of it ourselves.
What about competition? Have you encountered many businesses operating in the same space?
Not really. There are a couple of apps in the UK that are focused on one course so that doesn’t really affect us. There are also others doing computer generated effect videos of the course, but the drone videos that are HD are the big thing at the moment in our opinion.
What are some of the unique challenges that your business faces?
The weather. We don’t like to film on a cloudy day, because the course doesn’t look at its best. So we have to schedule all the courses that we have to film on a sunny day. We end up trying to get two or three done in a day, all so we can shoot courses in their best light.
Is there any business-critical ICT infrastructure for you that is lacking in Ireland?
Down the country, we have to use 3G and 4G to upload and edit things on the go. Searching for a strong signal can slow us down, and lead us to search for Wi-Fi. Other than that we have everything in order.
When it came to the VOOM competition were you up and running or were you a bit before that on your journey?
We were kind of in between, we were at a beta stage. The app was in development and we were only starting to film the courses, so unfortunately we couldn’t show the judges the app. It was more of a concept at the time.
Was that a disadvantage? Is it easier to pitch at VOOM when you’re a little further along the journey?
100%, I think that was one of the big factors for us that only got us as far as we got. The judges and the guys couldn’t actually see the product and couldn’t see that the market was validated. Now we have all those things and we’re proving that it’s working and it’s pushing us a lot further.
Have you entered any other investment competitions or sought investment or has there been a need?
To be honest, we’ve been too busy. We put a lot of effort into VOOM this time last year and now this year we’re using that same time and focus to concentrate and build our business and that’s working and keeping us busy.
We’d absolutely love to get involved in VOOM again.
Unleash Your #VOOM and Pitch For €6,000
Ready unleash your #VOOM? Join our festival of business and lap up a host of free advice and workshops in advertising, crowdfunding, marketing and more when the VOOM tour lands in Dublin at TechConnect Live on 31st May. Tickets to this event are free and you can register here.
Ready to pitch for €6,000 right now? Great! But be quick, registration closes at midnight on 25th May. Enter your pitch here.