Vision
StaySafe was created to provide a simple and effective mobile based safety solution for the fast growing population of Lone Workers whose employers are under an increasing pressure to comply with Health & Safety legislation.
The Problem
StaySafe aims to solve the problem employers have in monitoring Lone Worker staff who are in a potentially vulnerable situation should they suffer an accident or attack. Lone Workers by definition do not have the usual safety net of a colleague to arrange help.
Companies are under far greater pressure to comply with Health & Safety legislation these days with recent significant increases in corporate fines for transgressions and even recourse to the corporate Manslaughter Act figuring in director’s minds when they weigh up the cost of proving they have shown a duty of care. One wonders what ramifications there would be today were the circumstances of the Suzy Lamplugh case (The Disapperance of Suzy Lamplugh) to repeat itself?
Even though these seem like extreme risks, any small incidents we believe can do much to tarnish a company’s brand reputation, and in particular make it more difficult to recruit and retain the best Lone Worker staff. We believe that with growing acceptance of business process outsourcing happening in the background, there are fewer barriers to buying in a service such as StaySafe in order for the board of directors to sleep soundly at night.
In testimonials and case studies, our clients often cite any combination of the following 4 reasons for making StaySafe valuable in solving their business needs: (1) ‘fulfilling our obligation as an employer under H&S legislation’, (2) ‘protecting the reputation of our company’, (3) ‘providing a safe environment for our employees’ and (4) ‘increasing the morale of our workforce’
The Product (as described in the promitional video)
StaySafe is designed for companies wishing to protect their Lone Workers against accident or incident via a robust and secure cloud-based Hub where a defined number of smartphone users can be monitored in real time/precise location. Users are linked to the Hub by way of an App on their indididual smartphones. StaySafe works across the leading platforms Apple, Andriod and BlackBerry.
How we came to be and where we are today
In 2011 our founder Graham Mills was running a surveying practice of 50 professionals and discovered that the latest generation of field instruments allowed most projects to be done by one rather than two surveyors, thus creating a substantial business saving if he made the investment. As a consequence, these more skilled employees would become Lone Workers and be responsible for valuable equipment that is vulnerable to theft.
As a caring employer, Graham looked for a solution that would work with the smartphones his staff used for their work and so allow them to be protected while on the road from job to job, but found nothing that was fit for purpose. As an entrepreneur, he realised there was a gap, so commissioned a solution to his specification to fill it.
Important milestones:
Beta Product, 2013 – with 4 rounds of investment totalling over £600k, Graham oversaw the build of a beta product in 2013, which was then market tested, enhanced with a corporate grade back-end (The Hub) so that it was substantially more than ‘just’ an App. We are confident this is a substantial barrier to entry because one of our potential clients, Ericsson, the global telecomms equipment supplier, initially thought they could build their own solution but admitted it would be both tough and costly.
Product/market fit, 2014 – satisfied it was now the best solution on the market, in mid-2014 he then hired Don Cameron to replace him as CEO and work out how best to drive the sales forward.
Driving sales (including early international customers), 2015 – as of today StaySafe has over 80 business customers (total number of user licenses > 1,500), and in its short life has so far 100% of clients continue the subscription with us. Our monthly run-rate in May 2015 was £20k. This we believe will grow naturally as customers extend from pilot to licences, and then extend their licence numbers into other departments and divisions once satisfied. A good example of this is the Chinese Telco Huawei that began with a pilot of 12 users, took 50 user licences after a few weeks and has now extended to 100 licences worth £10k per annum to us.
How we will use this new investment?
Significant investment has already been used to build a product and prove it works commercially, split roughly 50:50 with sales and marketing. Going forward this will change to an 80:20 emphasis on the sales and marketing side to scale up the business, with some ongoing development to broaden features, create new API’s and explore future needs such as how to adapt to new technology, such as smart watches.
The investment will fund:
1) recruiting new channel partners, growing our network from 8 to 50, mostly international in the next 3 years. Of the 3 partners who are have been with us for more than 3 months, we have seen roughly £5k per month of average revenue so we would expect this channel to contribute £20k per month by the end of Year 1
2) growing our UK direct sales team headquartered in London in order to access key decision-makers. We currently have a pipeline of prospects contemplating pilots worth £500k in aggregate.
3) developing a ‘self-serve’ sales model to convert more of our many inbound sales enquiries into paying customers, even if they are small in scale today. In one recent week we had a potential £25,000 worth of enquiries which would equal an estimated £1.3m of annualised opportunity if this level of enquiries is achieved each week. We believe the potential of the product is well evidenced.
4) creating a marketing programme of collateral, PR, brand awareness and thought leadership to support all of the above, especially supporting our international channel partners.