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Cancer Awareness Trust aiming to deliver trusted info for patients

Level39-based charity is developing Cancer Platform as a resource for those with a diagnosis and their loved ones that’s set to launch in 2026

Cancer Awareness Trust chief tech and data officer, Daniel Woolf - image by Jon Massey
Cancer Awareness Trust chief tech and data officer, Daniel Woolf – image by Jon Massey

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We live in an unprecedented age of information.

Never before have so many people had access to such a wealth of content at the mere tap of a finger. 

But with the vastness of a largely unregulated digital world comes the issue of quality.

With not only humans (who are bad enough) but AIs churning out swathes of answers, opinions and hallucinations as they whisper what it heard or saw, humanity is increasingly submerged in a sea of at best confusion and at worst falsehoods.

It’s not so very long ago that wellness blogger Belle Gibson fooled hundreds of thousands of followers and Apple with her tale of overcoming brain, blood, spleen, uterine and kidney cancers,  mostly through exercise, healthy eating and a positive mindset. 

In reality there’s no evidence the Australian social media personality was ever diagnosed with the disease – but that didn’t stop her developing an app, gaining widespread influence and being embraced by one of the world’s largest tech firms. 

Her twisted story is especially relevant, given its use of cancer as a jumping off point.

About half of us will develop some form of the disease during our lives. 

Cancer Awareness Trust is based at Canary Wharf tech community Level39 in One Canada Square - image by I-Wei Huang
Cancer Awareness Trust is based at Canary Wharf tech community Level39 in One Canada Square – image by I-Wei Huang

searching for information

“At the point of diagnosis, the vast majority of people will go online to search for information, as do their loved ones,” said Daniel Woolf.

“But they can easily find themselves in the wrong place – TikTok or Instagram, for example. 

“A short-form video of someone who is very charismatic may lead someone to go away and make life-changing decisions because they are looking for a glimmer of hope.

“But are they trustworthy? 

“Something like one in three online sources is either misinformation or not pertinent to a particular individual’s diagnosis.”

That’s what the development of Cancer Platform is seeking to change.

“Sitting beneath the umbrella of the Cancer Awareness Trust – a charity based at tech community, Level39, in Canary Wharf – the mission is to create a free-to-use app which delivers expert information, stories and services. 

As the organisation’s chief tech and data officer, it’s Daniel’s job to oversee the app’s development, a task he’s relishing after a long career in the NHS.

“I planned to be there for four weeks and ended up being there for 17 years,” he said.

“I’ve been an engineer, a data analyst and have directed a number of teams at regional and national level.

“But as I moved through the various national bodies, I found I couldn’t have the impact I wanted.

“There are so many layers and I felt insulated.

“With so many different governments the chairs were always being moved around.

“What I wanted to do was use technology to help improve people’s lives.

“The bureaucracy in the NHS was enormous and so, when it came time for a career change, I wanted something small with the feel of a startup where I could be hands-on, albeit in an organisation with huge ambition.”

the Cancer Awareness Trust’s ambitions

The Cancer Awareness Trust is aiming big.

Drawing funds and support from its creative brand Evamore Music – which has released works featuring the likes of Ozzy Osborne, Cillian Murphy, Glenn Close and the late Sinéad O’Connor – the organisation is supported by Canary Wharf Group, among many others, in its efforts to deliver Cancer Platform.

“The trust’s aim is to empower people to change the course of cancer,” said Daniel, who was born in Hoxton and grew up in east London.

“Having the artists, music, events and that creative spirit involved makes us unique – it’s very different from the technology side.

“With Cancer Platform we want to hold people’s hands through their journey after a diagnosis. 

“We’re testing it this summer and we’re aiming to put it out there in 2026 and then to gradually build it up with more and more information.

“What we’re creating is a layer above the standard websites that are out there.

“Cancer Platform uses personalisation and AI to make the information highly relevant to each user.

“There is a lot of good information out there already, but it’s fragmented and often it’s left to the individual to find what’s relevant to them.

“Cancer Platform helps users to build up a scrapbook of information that helps them consolidate their knowledge and understanding from a trusted source.

“It’s about taking away the unpredictability of Dr Google.

“Cancer is complicated. Treatments may be available in certain regions but not in others. Ethnicity, background and age are also relevant.

“Our aim is to provide information and services that are relevant to each individual as well as relatable stories from people in similar situations, offering hopeful optimism where appropriate. 

“A lot of medical information can sound cold and clinical – more about the cancer than the person. 

“Our ambition is for people not to have to log-in initially.

“We want to build that trust first and some people might have a diagnosis they don’t wish to disclose – safeguarding is important to us and we won’t be selling their data.

“We also want people to be able to search for information that’s personalised to a degree, but then we’ll encourage people to sign up for an account so they can take the next steps and we can really hold their hands.

“They might come to Cancer Platform to ask about symptoms or a diagnosis and then what we’re doing in the background is pairing them up with relevant information, pulling it from trusted sources and feeding it back to them in an understandable way.

“The key thing is not just giving answers, but making sure we give them the right sources to guide people to specific charities. Then they are able to see the next steps.

“One of the things we’re trying to do is to inform people about the questions they should be asking when they next visit their oncologist such as whether they are entitled to a second opinion.

“Users will get responses, suggested prompts and stories of people like them so they can get an idea of what their own journey might be like.”

the process of assurance

Key to Cancer Platform’s aims will be ensuring the information it supplies to users is robust, accurate and clear.

This is one of the greatest challenges in its delivery and one Daniel and the team are already deeply engaged with.

“The assurance process is in development at the moment,” he said.

“It’s quite a new field. There are a number of academic papers, which are all looking at the area of trusted information.

“These include some principles and measures, which we’re then building our own assurance processes on top of as well as working with leading oncologists.

“We also have a team which is taking a granular approach in ensuring that the information we supply is accurate and comprehensive.

“For example, we have banks of questions from a wide array of sources, that say: ‘These questions are what people come to us to ask’.

“So we’ve taken those answers through our assurance process and then they’re assessed for their accuracy and fitness for purpose.

“It’s vital to get the balance right.

“We’ve got our oncology team working through that now and the results from them will show us what levers to pull next.

“Have we identified the gaps in our knowledge base?

“Do we need to tune the AI a different way to access and serve more information?”

a trusted source of information

Ultimately, the charity’s intention is for Cancer Platform to provide information on all forms of the disease, a project truly massive in its scope.

Initially, the plan is to focus on breast and prostate cancers before expanding out to other areas. 

“Admittedly, our ambition is huge so it’s about constantly focussing on the next step,” said Daniel.

“A number of specific charities already exist in these areas, so we can build out from that and make sure it’s working for those groups of patients.

“It also helps us to co-design with those communities.

“One of the biggest challenges – because there are so many good ideas – is to make sure we’re hyper-focussed. That’s my job.

“Building a platform like this is hard but we’re at a crossroads moment.

“Until recently, much of the information we needed just wasn’t there but it is now.

“We want to make it available to people and to do that without selling their data. We’re a charity so there’s no profit motive.”

key details: Cancer Awareness Trust

You can find out more about the Cancer Awareness Trust, Cancer Platform and Evermore via the charity’s website.

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Bombe aims to boost business’ bottom line via machine learning

Co-founder Mike Joslin talks success, growth, polling data and basing a startup at Level39 in Canary Wharf’s One Canada Square

Bombe co-founder and CEO Mike Joslin - image Jon Massey
Bombe co-founder and CEO Mike Joslin – image Jon Massey

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Mike Joslin is a man of clarity.

“The success of our company is down to the success of our customers – if they don’t succeed, we don’t succeed,” said the CEO and co-founder of Bombe.

For Mike, delivering that success means using data.

Having spent much of his career crunching numbers and utilising tech to help boost political campaigns for the likes of Ed Miliband, Angela Rayner, Keir Starmer and Sadiq Khan – inspired by Moneyball, a book by Michael Lewis and later a film that highlighted the importance of using metrics to drive a run of wins on the baseball field.

After working at the National Education Union for several years and running its campaign to improve teachers’ pay, he saw a commercial niche for the techniques and tech he’d developed to deliver results in the political sphere. 

Bombe, named for Alan Turing’s codebreaking Second World War machine that deciphered Enigma messages, was born and Mike quit his job in March this year to run it full-time.

the basis of Bombe

“Our thesis is that there is a lot of data out there which tells you what people are doing, but it’s not that interesting for a lot of businesses because you want to know why people are doing what they’re doing,” said Mike, who is based at Level39 in Canary Wharf’s One Canada Square with his rapidly growing team.

“That’s the basis of our company.

“This kind of machine-learning approach has been absent from products I’ve experienced in my career in marketing.

“I’ve been using machine learning for well over a decade – people think AI is ChatGPT but that’s just a powerful iteration of it.

“The technology has been around for a long time.

“When setting up Bombe, which is strictly non-political, we looked at the market, did an analysis of where we would fit, then developed our data proposition, working with our polling partner Deltapoll.

“A lot of people are obsessed with technology, but it’s not about technology, it’s what you use it for.

“Our tag line is that we’re trying to build the best audience and data targeting model in the world and I think we’ve done that – so do our clients and that’s why they’ve chosen to use us. 

“If you’re a business we can tell you for every postcode in the country the likelihood someone will purchase from you and the price they’ll pay for your product.

“Companies may have huge amounts of data, but they don’t necessarily know who is purchasing goods or services from them. That is a necessity.

“We’ve built a number of persona sets to reveal what is actually driving people’s decisions using machine learning. 

“Those groups have been battle-tested with our clients and that has propelled our success.”

Commuters come in and out of Canary Wharf Jubilee Line station – image I-Wei Huang

delivering a return on investment

The idea in some senses is simple.

Bombe’s service tells businesses where best to concentrate their marketing to deliver the best return on their investment.

“What our clients are buying from us are models,” said Mike.

“We make our own data – we’re not buying it. It comes from interviews, from machine-learning models, from statistical techniques, from battle-testing and then spending hours making sure it all works.

“However, how we’re doing it is less relevant than whether it works for our customers. What matters is what’s driving their sales, their top line, whether you’re going up or down and how you can change that. 

“What we do is tell our customers why their revenue is where it is.

“Some of our clients are seeing results that are 85% better with Bombe.”

Initially the startup is working with medium and large-scale businesses, but plans to launch products for smaller companies next year.

Bombe is open for business

“If you are selling to consumers, come and talk to us,” said Mike.

“Our mission is to help everyone who wants to engage with their audience to be doing it through us.

“We take great enjoyment and pride in doing that.

“We have a team of about 20 people, and we’re growing strategically, which is very important to us.

“We don’t want to grow too quickly, but we are offering something unique and different.

“We’ve seen the market reaction to that and that’s helping us to make sure our product is the best.

“We have to have the best data and we think we do, but we can’t rest on our laurels – the market is changing so quickly and we want to make sure that our customers continue to come to us.

“We think we’ve got an incredible team and Bombe would be nothing without the people working for it.

“Starting the business was a leap of faith.

“It’s hard, it’s tough, there’s always a challenge, always something to solve and always something more to do.

“You’ve got to be level-headed, have a strategy and a team to deliver it and I think we do.

“That’s really where our success has come from.

“Our clients need to see that they’re getting value, seeing an increase in their revenues from our product and that’s when we succeed.

“That’s what drives me to make sure that’s happening.

“I work extremely hard and don’t do much apart from that and look after my young son at the moment.

“If you want to start a business, you’ve got to be all-in.

“Your staff, your investors and your customers need that. If you’re not prepared to do that, don’t start a company.

“I don’t think there’s been a learning curve with Bombe, it’s just hard work. Success is 1% idea and 99% hard work.

“We want the best for our customers, so we’ve got to keep pushing. I like my work so I have no problem with that.”

success and growth

Bombe has attracted clients through the reputation of Mike and his team as well as press exposure.

The company also hosts webinars to showcase its data.

“Most of our work has come from people coming to us,” said Mike.

“We’ve got a growth strategy team who have significant commercial experience and they’re doing a really good job.

“We’re doing a number of webinars over the coming months to showcase what we do via LinkedIn.

“The first will be on November 19 at 11am with Joe Twyman, co-founder of Deltapoll and will reveal key insights into the shifting patterns of Londoners’ transport habits, using the latest data from TfL.

“It should be really interesting for readers.”

Transport links played a part in Mike’s decision to join the tech community at Level39 in Canary Wharf too.

“It’s a really buzzy area,” he said.

“I came to Level39 a few times before I took space here and they’ve done a great job with it.

“It’s a really interesting environment, with so many events and the view is fantastic.

“The wider area is also great – the shopping is amazing and the food offering here is the best in London.

“It’s incredibly accessible, too with the Elizabeth Line.

“It has changed the way a lot of people behave in the capital and between it and the Jubilee Line, pretty much anyone can get here, so that makes Canary Wharf good for recruitment, good for the company and good for clients.”

setting goals

It’s also not a bad environment from which to target fast growth – former Level39 startup Revolut is set to put its name atop YY London in Reuters Plaza in the not too distant future.

“Our objective is to be the best in the world,” said Mike. “We believe we have the best data, and we think that means the market will respond to it.

“Our ambition is to grow rapidly as a business, if that happens and we have the investors backing us and the team to do that.

“We want to be a name that rings out alongside the other market leaders in the space, and we think we’ll do that.

“Perhaps people reading this will be sceptical.

“There are thousands of data companies in this country. What I would say is come and talk to us to understand how we are different.”

key details: Bombe

Bombe is based at Level39’s One Canada Square offices in Canary Wharf.

It currently offers a one-off Targeting Package for businesses priced at £5,000 aimed at telling clients where and what they should be saying and who it should be directed at to best reach their audience.   

The firm’s £25,000 yearly package includes monthly reports specific to the client’s industry and access to its platform and AI dashboard on an ongoing basis.

At £5,000 per month, clients also get a strategy manager to run campaigns on behalf of their business.

Those interested in its services should email contact@bombe.io for more details or visit its website.

Read more: Will you take on the Santa Stair Climb in Canary Wharf?

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- Jon Massey is co-founder and editorial director of Wharf Life and writes about a wide range of subjects in Canary Wharf, Docklands and east London - contact via jon.massey@wharf-life.com
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Ben Goldsmith set for CrimeLandTown preview at The Pen Theatre

Affectionate spoof of mob movies is set for month-long run at JustTheTonic for the Edinburgh Fringe

Image shows a smiling man with blue eyes and red hair in a black and white check jacket and white T-shirt in front of Billingsgate Fish Market's red brick buildings
Comedian Ben Goldsmith, also founder and director of Goldsmith Communications

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Like many involved in the murky world of organised crime, Ben Goldsmith leads a double life.

By day, he’s founder and director of Goldsmith Communications – a public relations consultancy specialising in serving tech and venture capital clients.

But, by night, he can be found indulging his other passion – trying to make people laugh.

“Comedy is never a fork in the road decision – as a kid you know you’re a bit of an idiot and that plays out at school,” said Ben. “You just have it in you.

“I was used to teachers telling me off – that we should be getting on with maths rather than telling jokes.

“But my A-Level theatre studies teacher, Coral Walton at Monk’s Walk School in Welwyn Garden City, just thought it was great – that I was good at these things and she encouraged me.

“I don’t come from a family of performing people and it was Coral who, as a director at the local theatre, told me I should audition for a play she was putting on.

“This was never on my radar and I thought: ‘No way’ – it just wasn’t cool at 16.

“But she insisted and even drove me to the audition.

“I got the part and then, up until the age of 21, I did a bunch of acting stuff alongside university, where I worked on student papers and got into the world of journalism and PR.”

Comedian Ben Goldsmith mock-punches himself in front of an air vent to promote his show CrimeLandTown
Ben plays all the characters in his show CrimeLandTown

a move into comms

Ben’s career in communications then took over, seeing him move through various roles including running the PR operation for Canary Wharf’s tech community, Level39.

But he remained interested in the performing arts and especially comedy.

“Every August I’d go to the Edinburgh Fringe and I loved it,” he said. “It was like my perfect theme park, seeing comedians I liked and discovering new performers.”

After five years concentrating on his career, an encounter with Graham Dickson’s improv show at the festival sparked something in Ben and he returned to London, enrolled on a comedy class and started performing again.

“For years I did improvisation alongside my work,” he said.

“When I was 27 I set up Goldsmith Communications and the comedy was incredibly helpful because, when you’re setting up a business, every day is completely new and you have to adapt to it.

“The other brilliant thing about improv is that there are no lines to learn, so it fits in if you’re busy. It’s a huge part of my life – I met my wife through comedy.”

Ben narrows his eyes and peers at teh camera with his mouth half open
Ben Goldsmith says his show is an affectionate spoof of mob movies

Ben Goldsmith on his love for mob movies

The success of his PR business means Ben has a bit more freedom now to once again pursue comedy and he’s indulging another of his passions – Mafia movies – in a move away from improv.

“I’m making a show and taking it up to Edinburgh, which is massive,” he said.

“I took a piece called Steve’s Last Day to the Prague Fringe, which was all about a copper’s final shift with all the action taking place in the village hall.

“I did it six times and it went down really well, but I decided to put it aside because I knew what I really wanted to do.

“I’ve always loved mob movies.

“The characters are so much larger than life – they’re such a bunch of goofballs – so you can play with those stereotypes.

“I’ve been working on CrimeLandTown for the last year or so, building it up and presenting it as a work in progress.

“If you enjoy Mafia movies, you’ll enjoy the show.

“The idea is the audience is involved in what’s happening – you’ll always be a part of what’s going on.

“You might be part of a heist that one of my characters is leading, or guests in a club.

“You’ll meet mob bosses, the FBI and a bar singer who gets in too deep, then wants to clear his name.”

Comedian Ben Goldmsmith raises a finger in a mock salute while making a funny face
CrimeLandTown will have several previews in London before transferring to Edinburgh

playing all the parts in CrimeLandTown

For Ben, the show is a labour of love, poking fun at a genre rich in tropes and silliness, but from a place of respect.

Playing all the parts himself, it’s structured as a series of sketches that all combine to tell a story of wise guys and dodgy accents.

“I describe it as an affectionate spoof,” he said.

“People are familiar with these movies, which are often a bit like a high wire act because while they are about serious topics, many of them are also super funny.

“If you’re parodying anything, it’s important to work out what people already know – if you’re a nerd about those things, you’ve got to be aware how geeky you are.

“I’ve watched the movies and the TV shows, so I know what will be familiar to people who like the films, but hopefully a lot of the stuff will be funny to those who are not so familiar.

“In the show, the main character – a bar singer who always wanted to be a wise guy – sees the impending heist as a chance to live his dream of becoming a mobster.

“We’ve all had dreams and made compromises, so this guy takes a singing job in a mob-adjacent industry – then gets his chance to become part of it and it all ends one way or another.

“Of course, people who like the genre don’t want to see me take the piss out of them.

“CrimeTownLand just aims to celebrate the funny things about them. “

Ben Goldsmith wears a pair of sunglasses and makes a silly face in Canary Wharf while promoting his new show CrimeLandTown
Ben says, like those in organised crime, he’s always wanted to push against the everyday

Ben Goldsmith on transgressing

“When you watch a mob movie, everyone in it is rejecting the conventional,” said Ben.

“They’re living outside the legal norms and everyone is transgressing. There’s a thrill in that.

“Personally, I’ve always wanted to push against the everyday too.

“Comedy is funny when people are trying to skewer the world and look at everything from a sideways perspective.

“Being at Level39, I was around a lot of business founders and it dawned on me that many of them just wanted to kick the crap out of the nine-to-five and do their own thing. 

“Similarly, people doing comedy want to see what’s out there and then to try and bend or break it, just like the characters in mob movies.

“Starting my own business totally changed my life.

“It’s now given me the time and the bandwidth to create shows and do these festivals.

“There’s a lot to do, but it works if you plan things.

“I know a bunch of comedians who are working and went into it without a safety net, but I needed to have the security of having the career side sorted.

“Right now I just love that I’m able to do it.

“When I first went up to the Fringe I didn’t know anyone who was performing.

“I wasn’t doing improv and my local theatre days were behind me.

“However, the people I met up there ultimately put me in the position to make this show now. Compared to others, it’s tiny – a 60-person room for 24 days in August.

“But hopefully it will be a step on the way to the next thing, whatever that is. 

“Either way, it’s been a dream to take a show to Edinburgh – it’s worth a go and it might just pay off.

“After the Fringe, I’d love to take it to more places round the neighbourhood.

“I’m keen to keep going because it’s just a really fun thing to do.”

So, you’ve got the dates. Just remember, don’t forget about it.

our thing

Ben Goldsmith’s CrimeLandTown will be performed at The Pen Theatre in South Bermondsey on July 11, 2024, at 7pm. Tickets cost £8.30.

Ben Goldsmith will also be performing his show at Watford Pump House on July 20, 2024, and Aces And Eights in Tufnell Park on July 25, 2024, before taking it to the Edinburgh Fringe at JustTheTonic from August 1-25, 2024.

Find out more about the show here

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- Jon Massey is co-founder and editorial director of Wharf Life and writes about a wide range of subjects in Canary Wharf, Docklands and east London - contact via jon.massey@wharf-life.com
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My Friend AI app aims to help youngsters with mental health issues

Strategia Data Sciences is developing a platform so schools can use technology to aid their students

An image of Stephen Smith, CEO of Strategia Data Sciences, a man with short cropped grey hair wearing a T-Shirt and a dark jacket
Strategia Data Sciences CEO Stephen Sharp

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It took me a while to get what Strategia Data Sciences’ project is all about.

The company, which has offices at Canary Wharf’s tech community – Level39 – has created My Friend, a digital platform aimed at helping identify and address mental health issues in children. 

This is a big problem. In 2022 about 25% of those aged 17-19 were thought to have a mental health disorder (up from one in six in 2021).

Around half of such issues are thought to become established before the age of 14 and about 10% of children aged five to 16 in Great Britain may have a clinically diagnosable mental health problem.

I realise after my interview with Strategia CEO, Stephen Sharp, that comprehending what he and the team are trying to do is tough.

That’s because it requires an unpleasant admission that – despite the backdrop of grim statistics – kids are being failed by what’s currently in place and things seem to be getting worse. 

It’s not that the idea of using an AI-powered avatar to help children with their mental health is better than face-to-face human interaction.

It’s that, for many right now there isn’t really a lot of help available – few nets to catch this sort of thing early.

An image of a lonely boy looking out from a rain-streaked glass balcony
Strategia has create My Friend to help address mental health issues in children

building solutions

“Strategia was set up to create innovative technology in areas such as health, education, sustainability and the environment,” said Stephen.

“I spent about 40 years working in investment banking technology and had a good career in that.

“But I wanted to do something that could give back to society, that would help people in need.

“A colleague of mine who works in Dubai had been talking to a school out there about something completely different but there were some proper horrors that really resonated with him.

“So we started talking about how we could build a solution – an application – that might help kids in school. 

“We did some research and found there were lots of text-based things where kids could  send questions and get answers.

“But then, the next thing was they were being told they should talk to a psychologist for $150 an hour.

“We decided we didn’t want to go down that path. Instead, we’ve been working with conversational artificial intelligence since January.

“AI is transformational and we’ve got to the point where we’re running a pilot in a number of countries with children talking to our app and getting the right responses.

“It’s built on the back of ChatGPT – as everything is these days – but we’ve created the model in the middle, which controls the input and output. It’s always supportive, passive and acts as a friend.”

A girl sits alone reading a textbook in a classroom
My Friend offers children a way to interface with their school through an AI-powered app

branding My Friend

Specifically, My Friend features Kano, an avatar designed to appeal to the app’s audience of eight-to-12-year-olds.

“We’ve gone with a non-gendered super hero teddy bear and his pet dog,” said Stephen.

“We didn’t want there to be any gender or race barriers to using the app or to get involved with political issues in what we’re doing. 

“The platform works in partnership with a child’s school. Staff can monitor the conversations a child has with it so, if a kid is being naughty in class, for example, they might be able to see why.

“It’s important, of course, that the children know this up front – that they’re aware their issues can be addressed.

“The platform forms a neutral, objective interface between the child and the school and removes any bias. 

“It’s also designed to remove any concern a child might have about talking to an adult if they have a problem. 

“With My Friend, they’re talking to a character who’s on their wavelength.

“It’s not just communicating about their challenges either – during testing, children have asked Kano about dinosaurs, for example, and the platform can give them information like this too.

“At present the application is browser-based, but we’re working on turning it into an app which could be accessed via the iPads kids are routinely given.

“Today there are 740million children in primary schools – if we help only 0.01%, that’s beginning to change the way people think.”

Much has been written about the potential fragility of AI – it’s capacity to simply make up plausible-sounding facts and present them as truth in what the tech community charmingly refer to as “hallucinations”. 

But the Strategia is well aware of the potential pitfalls and believes it has created enough safeguards and guide rails to prevent My Friend pushing out nonsense.

A boy sits alone with a teddy bear on some wooden planks
Mental health issues can start early in childhood

safeguarding My Friend’s users

“We’ve been really prescriptive about the responses it gives,” said Stephen.

“If a kid wants help, the app will seek to understand what the problem is and present a congenial approach to the conversation.

“Everything we’ve seen it produce has been accurate – we’ve asked it all kinds of nasty things, including whether it will help build a bomb and we’ve always had the right responses.

“In that case, it simply told me it was illegal and changed the subject. 

“We’re precise in what we do, so our first question was how we get the technology to stay honest and protect the children using it.”

My Friend is still at the testing phase so Stephen and the team don’t yet have all the answers.

They’re still working on how schools will use the platform, which might see conversations colour-coded to help organisations identify potential problems – but feedback has been very positive.

Stephen was keen to stress that no personal data on the children is collected by Strategia, with only the schools able to see who is talking to Kano. 

Based at Level39 since October, the team is keen to collaborate locally as the project unfolds.

tacking a range of issues with My Friend

“We’re trying to build something that can address a whole spectrum of problems children face,” said Stephen.

“I live in a small village in Buckinghamshire and, until I spoke to a local school, didn’t realise the poverty in what I thought was an affluent area. 

“There, a single parent might have three jobs – their child might have to go to school alone, come back alone and cook their own tea.

“If that’s a seven-year-old, for example, that neglect is frightening.

“For children everyday life can be a problem and we want to help.

“If we save one life by doing this, it will be worthwhile.”

key details

You can find out more about Strategia Data Sciences and My Friend via the company’s website as it continues to develop and trial the technology.

Find out more about Strategia Data Sciences here

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Canary Wharf: How Pitchflix is connecting startups with investors from Level39

One Canada Square-based firm livestreams demo days and hosts in-person events for founders

Pitchflix CEO Shane Smith

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Pitchflix is a two-way street.

Put simply, the startup, based at Canary Wharf’s Level39 in One Canada Square, connects entrepreneurs with investors and investors with entrepreneurs – digitally and in person.

“It’s an attempt to oil the wheels and reduce friction,” said Shane Smith, the company’s CEO.

“When founders are trying to raise venture capital, we aim to connect them with an investor network to help them do that.

“If you’re trying to raise money for the first time as a business, that’s the toughest time for you, because you’re not on anybody’s radar.

“It’s also the toughest time for investors, because, on the basis that you’re new, there’s no history, no track record – no-one’s done any research on you.

“At that stage, both sides have a pretty tough time finding the right match.

“Given that lack of information, the most valuable thing investors have to go on is the founders themselves.

“The way to understand founders is, ideally, to sit down across the table and have a good conversation about what they’re doing.

“The problem with that, is the economics don’t stack up for the investors to arrange those conversations and physically sit in locations all over the world to have them.”

Shane founded Pitchflix to address the issue, building on a career that’s long focused on providing information to people and companies that need it.

“My background has been between technology, financial markets and research,” he said.

“I started as one of the founding team in London for what was, at the time, a small startup in the US called Bloomberg.

“I was hired to the London office originally, and I moved on from there to set up my own research business, initially in Paris, then brought it back to London.

“We ran that until 2009 when it got beaten up by the credit crunch.

“Then I switched focus to investor communications rather than research, gradually moving from large listed companies, primarily in Asia, down the scale to smaller businesses.

“Pitchflix is an exercise to connect those smaller companies with investors.

Pitchfix aims to increase the reach of demo days beyond a physical audience

“This is the most interesting part of the market, because startups are generally doing more interesting, innovative things – there’s quite a buzz at the smaller end because tomorrow’s mega corporations are being created today.”

The next best thing to sitting in a room with investors is video – how can we get a short piece from founders, even a couple of minutes, in front of them?” said Shane.

“Startups which have been through an accelerator programme will typically do a demo day at the end, where investors come to listen to founders present.

“Our approach is to help accelerators livestream their demo days so international investors can view them from wherever they are, overcoming the geographical obstacles. 

“There are firms who try to bridge that gap, but they typically operate in the corporate finance space where they are trying to broker those deals – we take a very different approach.

“We’re a media business – we help founders advertise themselves to an audience – we don’t get involved in the deals themselves.

“Pitchflix is a conduit that tries to remove friction in the connection and communication between the two parties.

“Investors might be conventional venture capital, corporate venture capital or companies looking to put money into early stage businesses.

“They might also be angel investors or angel syndicates.

“They all face similar problems and we’re trying to solve them.

“For example, if an investor decides to attend a demo day, they might only be interested in a specific sector, but this might involve sitting through pitches from 20 businesses in other fields just to see the one relevant one.

“That’s not a good use of their time.”

Founders’ pitches are hosted in video form on Pitchflix’s site

After livestreaming, Pitchflix hosts founders’ videos on its site, so investors can review them at their leisure.

“The next stage of the business was to turn that model on its head and have investors pitching to founders,” said Shane. 

“We wanted to do that because we’d observed that, while there are lots of demo day and pitch competition events all over London and the rest of the country, nobody was systematically hosting investors who could pitch to an audience of founders to tell them what they were looking for.

“We call them ‘Rev’ for reverse pitch series. We needed to find a bigger space to host them and we discovered Level39. 

“That’s where we put them on, every six weeks or so, and we have a lot of community members coming to them.

“We’re also based there. We started the business in 2019 and, as Covid restrictions, melted away, it was really hard to build a cohesive team and culture while working from home in spare bedrooms or at kitchen tables.

“We hired one person who did a fantastic job of getting up to speed from home, but we felt we needed more than that for the next people coming on board – our recent hires since we’ve been together in one place have been very quick getting into the business and are really productive.”

IN-PERSON

Pitchflix’s next Rev event is set to take place on February 27, 2024 at Level39 with further events in Singapore, Hong Kong and New York in the pipeline for March, April and later in 2024, respectively.

“Rev events are a very concise, efficient use of a founder’s time,” said Shane.

“For two hours attendees will sit and listen to up to 15 investors giving lightning, five-minute showcases of what they like to invest in and why.

“They’ll tell you how much they typically invest, whether they like to collaborate with others, whether they like to lead or follow, a lot of reference data about them, and you’ll get out of it and a sense of the personality and chemistry you might have with them.

“Is this an investor you think you can have a really productive five or 10 year relationship with?

“Are they someone you’d like to have a beer with?

“These are the kind of insights you’re not going to get unless you’re in a room with that person.

“After the presentations, there are audience questions and then there’s networking with some drinks.

“The idea for founders is it’s an opportunity to make themselves memorable, so that when they email the next day with their pitch, they’ll be on investors’ radars.”

Founders tickers for Rev events in London cost a nominal £20, aimed at ensuring those who have booked a place turn up.

At present, Pitchflix’s platform is free for both businesses and investors to use with the eventual aim of charging startups an affordable fee once the marketplace is consistently matching entrepreneurs with capital.

“This is very different from the brokering model, where those firms charge a retainer,” said Shane.

“We also don’t get involved with the production of the demo days themselves because there are tons of them happening.

“We’re just trying to make the process more efficient and extend their reach.

“Bloomberg started life as a business solving one problem – Mike didn’t have a crystal ball for the next 40 years, they were just trying to build a better mousetrap.

“There’s a sort of trend now that investors want to see how things will develop in the next five or 10 years, but you don’t need to.

“You just start with something that’s profitable, and then you explore, listen to your clients, be agile, nimble and develop.

“In our own investor presentations, we describe what we’re building and why it’s great for the market ecosystem. Have we got the full picture – no – but we’re listening.

“Very often you get the first signals about new and emerging stuff from entrepreneurs and what they’re talking about.

vWe’re recording that and analysing it will give you a pretty good indication of what’s coming down the road at 100mph, six months later.

“We have many ideas about how to develop Pitchflix and that’s something we’ll be looking at over the next few years.”

Find out more about Pitchflix here

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Canary Wharf: How Lyll aims to reinvigorate news brands as channel for SME adverts

Norwegian startup comes to Level39 as it looks to grow investors alongside the publishers it works with

Lyll CEO Camilla Frydenbø

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The idea that the way things are at the moment is how they shall continue to be.

But the world rarely stands still, especially in the world of tech.

There’s a danger in this – in getting too comfortable with the prevailing winds, lest they all too rapidly change when one isn’t paying attention.

Innovation Norway has been running its Tech Executive Accelerator (TEA) programme at Canary Wharf’s Level39, more or less since the community launched in 2013.     

Back then, people talked of Big Data, with a few early adopters whispering about the blockchain.

Challenger banks emerged, crypto wallets proliferated and there was much talk of machine learning. Now it’s generative AI.

During this period, small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) have seen social media become the dominant marketing channel for their products and services. 

But nothing in the digital sphere is guaranteed forever – the lustre of Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok and even LinkedIn, has started to tarnish, with the inevitable consequences of light regulation and a limited appetite or capacity for in-house moderation. 

So what of the future? Part of the answer may come from Norwegian startup Lyll – currently in Canary Wharf as part of the TEA’s latest cohort. 

Launched in June, 2023, the company aims to offer SMEs a simple, self-service approach to advertising on digital news sites and is spending six months here as it targets growth. 

While the column inches on these sites are often filled with discussions on the impact of and posts on social media, it’s perhaps easy to forget that much of the most well researched, potent and popular digital content is created by the news brands themselves, with millions of readers turning to them as trusted sources.  

“I’ve been working in marketing for 25 years and online newspapers are my favourite marketing channel,” said Camilla Frydenbø, CEO of Lyll.

“I have a lot of love for them and they are important for brand building, which companies need if they are going to grow. 

“But it hasn’t been very easy for SMEs to use this channel, because they typically have to talk to a salesperson.

“Most media businesses do not have self-service solutions, so many firms turn to social media because those platforms have made it easy to advertise and firms are welcome with any budget.

“Companies often perceive online news brands as expensive, so they don’t contact the salesperson as they feel like they need a big budget. 

“What we’ve done is create a platform that makes it even easier to advertise on these sites than it is to use social media.

“We think businesses will use these channels if they know they can place adverts on these sites with a minimum budget of £50, which most companies can afford.

“The price of an ad view is similar to what they pay on social media – that makes it competitive.”

Lyll currently has more than 5,000 news sites on its platform, spread across nine European countries – a demonstration, perhaps of the publishers’ desire to uncover new streams of revenue in a tough climate.

“Our slogan is: ‘For your growth and a free press’, because we also think in this world where everyone is talking about sustainability, if we don’t have the fourth estate we will all have a problem,” said Camilla.

“We see in countries where there are fewer journalists and news sites being read, you don’t get a high level of debate or a nuanced picture of what’s going on.

“We hope that it will be part of a business’ sustainability plan – how they choose to spend their marketing budget and what they are funding with it.

“We have more than 200 companies in Norway which have signed up to Lyll with an account, although not all are active yet.

“We see it takes a while between when people create an account and when they start advertising, but the interest is definitely there.

“Companies know they need to reach a wider, mass market and when they don’t get the effect they used to from Facebook, it’s a perfect storm because they are willing to listen now.

“If they want to be on TikTok, for example, they have to make videos three times a week, at least, and small firms may not have the resources to produce the coolest thing on the platform.

Lyll is spending time at Level39 in One Canada Square as part of Innovation Norway’s TEA Programme

“When it comes to LinkedIn, if you’re selling to consumers, then it’s not the right channel.

“Then you have women, primarily, using Facebook, and men on YouTube. That’s how the social media market is dividing right now.

“Going beyond this, bringing news sites into the marketing mix, will see firms continue their growth.”

That’s partly because the two streams serve different purposes.

Camilla said she would never encourage a company to abandon social, but spread marketing onto more than one channel.

She said: “It is important for businesses to always be better at brand building – creating something sustainable which gives them growth over time and makes them more profitable.

“A presence on national, regional or local news sites is how you do this.

“Firms need to be more patient with news sites.

“With social media, everything is so fast.

“Companies are always having to come up with new photos, videos, text – which is a little bit tiring. 

“If you are always chasing sales, doing special offers or discounts, then you will never succeed.

“Businesses that put most of their marketing budget into brand building are the ones that win the market, but you don’t do that in three months or six months.

“You need a plan which goes over several years. 

“We don’t say companies shouldn’t use social media, because we think they should. The best effect is when you use three to four channels with a single campaign.

“In Bergen, for example, we have a concert series. Until recently they were selling their tickets through Facebook. 

“But since that was declining, they wanted to try Lyll.

“They took their small budget and divided it between the two newspapers in the city.

“They told us they had never sold out faster than when they divided the budget. 

“Lyll can support what a company is doing on social media – their platforms are often more geared towards making ticket sales, but people also have to know there’s a concert on in the first place.”

Lyll’s idea will likely be welcomed by digital publishers, many of who have spent the years since the arrival of the internet attempting to thrash out viable business models.

Reach PLC, which has kept its sites such as mirror.co.uk and express.co.uk free to access, recently reported a 16% decline in digital revenues – albeit a collapse  largely blamed on Facebook’s decision to send less traffic to news brands.

Camilla said engagement with companies like Lyll could help.

“It’s been very valuable to be in London at Level39 on the TEA programme,” she said. 

“We said we were looking for investors and partnerships and we’ve had meetings with investors and big media companies.

Lyll has built a self-service portal for advertisers to access digital news sites

“The latter see that they have a need for a self-service solution but they have one concern, whether it will have an impact on jobs.

“Sales people are definitely still needed to serve large advertisers – Lyll is not built for their needs – but we think they can activate sleeping customers.

“These companies have huge customer bases that we can appeal to.

“In the end, if they don’t do anything about this problem, they can’t complain about advertising going to social media because, if it’s difficult for companies to buy space on these platforms, they won’t do it. 

“We make money by taking a small cut of the advertising spend – it’s programmatic advertising made easy.

“Another benefit is that while Google’s display network allows placement of ads on these sites, customers can’t choose where their ad appears. 

“They might be placed on strange websites or bad websites, even. These things happen and brand safety is very important.

“If you want your advert to appear on the Financial Times’ site, for example, and you think you’ll get that from Google, you’ll probably find as little as 3% of your budget will place it there and the rest could see it placed somewhere else.

“With Lyll, you get to be in front of the audience you want – you decide where your money is spent.”

As for the future, Lyll is very much eyeing expansion to London following its spell in Canary Wharf.

“The networking with the TEA programme has been fantastic,” said Camilla. “I live in Bergen, which is the second largest city in Norway but is still very small. 

“The investor pool is limited there in marketing tech.

“That’s why we wanted to come to London – here you have the best marketing people in Europe and the things we’ve been able to do, the little network we’ve been able to build – we’d have never been able to do this from Bergen. 

“I think expanding to London would be a natural step for us.

“When we get more funding, the next thing is to hire a salesperson and they would have to be an English-speaking person who can talk to media companies around the globe and try and get them into collaboration with us.”

While the future of media online remains uncertain, the plummeting revenues at X following Elon Musk’s takeover of the platform and its descent into a frequently toxic space which companies are keen to avoid, could well be a cautionary tale.

With brands eager for a safe place to reach people, perhaps Lyll will help reignite a channel that’s been looking for a fresh approach for some time.

Follow this link to find out more about Lyll

You can find out more about Level39 here or Innovation Norway here

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Canary Wharf: How WyzePay aims to save its users cash on regular purchases

Level39-based startup uses pre-pay to guarantee retailers income and consumers discounts

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What if I told you I could take £400 and instantly give you an extra £100 to spend at a specific venue in Canary Wharf?

Well, I can’t, but WyzePay can.

The startup, now based at tech community Level39 in One Canada Square, relies on the premise that businesses will be prepared to offer better prices to customers who pre-pay for their services.

Suppose, for example, I get a coffee from the same place every day on my way into the office (yes, I’m not hybrid working on Fridays or anything like that).

It’s habit – a ritual that I enjoy – and it costs me £3.20 per day.

For the sake of argument, let’s say I work 47 full weeks each year, so the bill would be £752. 

Provided I’m happy to use WyzePay – and cough up the cash up front in chunks of £400 – that cost will only be £601.60.

I wonder what I’ll buy with the £150.40 that I’ll save? 

“The current way of paying for things – credit and debit cards – has been around since the middle of last century,” said Ian Rae, CEO  at WyzePay.

“From a consumer perspective, we thought there could be a better way of doing things.”

Born in Mile End, the grandson of a docker, things have somewhat come full circle for Ian.

During an extensive career in technology for financial services firms, he’d moved steadily eastwards ending up in Hainault before heading back in, to Wapping High Street.

Ironically, his aunt told him that his grandad hated the building he wound up moving into as it was formerly a sugar warehouse and the commodity was too heavy to nick.

In a sense – albeit completely legal – WyzePay is also about getting something for nothing. Ian and co-founder Joe Channer decided to relocate the firm to the heart of Docklands, following a spell proving the concept in Queen’s Park.

They are now engaged on applying its offering across the Canary Wharf estate to demonstrate its benefits both to consumers and businesses.

“When developing the idea, we looked at Starbucks, which in 2018 put its loyalty scheme on an app and raised about $1.5bn in a matter of months,” said Ian.

“There was obviously something in the idea that people would be willing to prepay for things they were going to do anyway and that would benefit the retailer.”

For the consumer, the attraction is simple.

Pay up front and get a discount on what you’re buying. 


WyzePay offers users the ability to buy credit in the form of coins dedicated to a specific retailer. These are then held in a digital wallet and can be spent with the venue via the app. This example shows the difference in savings by pre-paying for £30 and £500 at Boisdale Of Canary Wharf in Cabot Square

“You’re going to get a better return than from that money just sitting in a current account, so it’s a no-brainer,” said Ian.

“The merchant gets the cash up front – which is extremely valuable for a business – and the discount rewards the customer who keeps coming and loves the service.

“It’s buy now, take more later – a bit more responsible than take now and pay later.”

WyzePay is currently undergoing a growth spurt. Ian and the team are in the process of striking deals with various restaurants, bars and businesses in Canary Wharf, with some already live and available to use.

At present, coins can be purchased for The Grandstand Bar, Boisdale Of Canary Wharf, 640East and Brick Lane Bagel with each offering up to 20% – meaning an outlay of £400 gets you £500 of credit at the venue.

Seoul Bird and Obica have also signed up, offering maximum discounts of 11% and 15% respectively. The minimum discount for all venues is 10%.

WyzePay’s tech is blockchain based, allowing it flexibility of form in the future although, at present, credit bought for one business can only be used at that venue.

“We’re in active discussion with several other businesses – it’s important to get the right fit,” said Ian.

“In this phase we’re aiming for 10-20 retailers by the end of October with about 1,000-2,000 consumers using the platform.

640East is offering up to 20% off via WyzePay

“That allows us to unlock some more funding and then to push on with the project.

“Canary Wharf is a great place to do this because it’s that community approach which fits with what we want to do further down the line.

“We have an idea to explore a community coin, where instead of spending the credit with a specific retailer, it would be possible to use it with any of the retailers that are signed up.

“We’d also like to set up an exchange where credit could be moved from one business to another.

“Then it becomes an alternative way of paying for things and a way to disrupt some of the lazier players in the market.

“If you look at gift cards, for example, you have an industry that’s really quite inefficient.

“It’s well known that even though it’s digital, a percentage of the money that’s been paid just sits there and isn’t spent.

“That’s no good if I’m the giver or the person receiving the gift – we think there is a better way of doing things. 

“As a business, our revenue comes from a percentage on the purchase of coins through WyzePay, which is charged to the merchant.

“However, every time you use a credit card there are charges they are paying and we cost less than that.”

Boisdale Of Canary Wharf is offering up to 20% off on the platform

Right now, WyzePay is all about awareness – signing up businesses for its platform and attracting users to give it a go.

That includes the likes of sponsoring the Action For Kids Beach Volleyball in Canada Square Park, which runs until September 28, 2023, and reaching out to companies on the estate to explain the offer.

“We’re focused on hospitality  because it’s easy for people to get their heads around,” said Ian.

“But really WyzePay can be applied wherever there’s a supply chain.

“The options are endless – but it’s better to start somewhere to demonstrate what it does.

“We’re also very clear that we won’t be for everyone – the lazy, rich and indolent, for example. It’s for people who want to get a good deal.

“Our dream is that WyzePay will one day be used as a verb.

“Imagine you’re in a restaurant and someone says: ‘I’ll WyzePay that’.”

That, of course, would put it in the big leagues alongside hoover, google and, increasingly, Uber (which hasn’t quite dropped the capital letter yet).

Just remember, it got big on the Wharf first.

Find out more about WyzePay here

Seoul Bird is offering up to 11% off via WyzePay

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Canary Wharf: How Skillwork provides software services to companies of all sizes

Jan Gasiewski and Ali Youssef created the Level39-based firm after meeting at UCL on the estate

Skillwork founders Jan Gasiewski and Ali Youssef

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Business is all about relationships and it’s pretty clear there’s real strength at the heart of Level39-based Skillwork.

It’s also emblematic of how London provides the crucible that allows individuals to come together, fused and more powerful as a consequence.

In a nutshell, Skillwork provides software development services to startups, small firms and corporates looking to run innovative breakaway projects that fall outside their main areas of operation.

But at its heart lies much more than technical prowess. It’s the enthusiasm, energy and passion of two men – co-founders Jan Gasiewski and Ali Youssef.

From Poland and Bulgaria respectively, the pair met and founded the business in 2020 while both studying for their masters degrees in entrepreneurship at University College London’s School Of Management in Canary Wharf’s One Canada Square.

Both had previously studied in the UK – at Lancaster (Jan, business administration) and Northampton (Ali, computer software engineering) – before heading to the capital with perhaps a sense of something unfinished.

“Lancaster is a great university,” said Jan.

“But what you need if you want to go into business is exposure and the nearest city is Manchester. Even that is just far away enough that nobody goes.

“I’d applied for placements at Microsoft and HP. At the assessment centre for the former I didn’t know how to approach it – everyone just said: ‘Be yourself’.

“But the feedback was that all the product work was done in the States and that I didn’t show much human emotion, so I got into HP instead. 

“It remains my only ‘real’ job, but there wasn’t much work to do so I wound up mostly reading books rather than getting experience.”

Ali said: “I’d gone back to Bulgaria, thinking I was going to be a software engineer and I got a job.

“But on the day I was supposed to start, I called the guy and said that I didn’t want to do it. 

“Then I told my dad that I wanted to study entrepreneurship instead and his response was that  business courses were for people who didn’t know what they wanted to do in life.

“But I applied to UCL, got in and that was my first experience of London – coming to Canary Wharf I was so shocked because I had never seen a place like it in my life. 

“It was a place you could talk to anybody – I was having a coffee with a guy and he turned out to be a fund manager in control of millions of dollars. 

“When he asked me what I did, I had to say I was a student.

“In Bulgaria I thought people like these were superheroes that I would never meet in real life.

“But London showed me you could talk to people who were very successful. It changed everything.”

Jan, in a “rare display of extroversion” messaged his course mates at UCL to see if any of them would be up for meeting over a drink.

Ali was the only respondent, and they bonded over food at Honest Burgers swapping tales of their fathers. 

Skillwork’s London base is at Level39 in One Canada Square

“Both our dads had businesses,” said Jan.

“We both grew up looking up to them and both were screwed over quite badly by their business partners.”

Their friendship flourished and they decided to go into business together, with Skillwork founded in 2020 while they were still studying at UCL.

Now based at Canary Wharf’s tech community, Level39 at One Canada Square, it employs some 17 people in London and Bulgaria.

“We always say our partnership is the cornerstone of the business,” said Jan. 

“Because of our fathers’ experiences, we created a set of rules when we started to ensure that nothing like that could happen to us.

“We are very transparent with each other and love working together.”

“We really wanted to be very entrepreneurial from the start,” said Ali. “We were surrounded by people in that environment both at UCL and at home.

“It’s also about an acceptance of potential failure and an appetite for risk.

“To start with, we had no experience, so we decided to plug ourselves into the world of startups and build up knowledge as we went, using that as a catalyst to create something.

“Today we work with small businesses and corporate innovation labs and the core of what we do is software development for those clients.

“We like to mix pragmatism with technology.

“You get people who come to us all guns blazing saying that they’re going to build an AI model to do something incredible but they haven’t yet got any traction.

“So we might apply the brakes there and persuade them to go one step at a time. On the corporate side, we are leaning towards what’s called venture building, where a big company decides it needs, for example, a digital presence, and brings in help from outside to help it develop one.

“So we sit down and discuss with them problems which they are interested in solving, and then we help them to see what ideas might be a potential business plan.

“Then we help them build that product up, and then they take it over and run it.

“We’ve been around now for a little over three years and in that time we’ve been able to work with the likes of pharmaceutical giant GSK and fusion power company Helion.

“We’ve also managed to build all this without any investment. We now have employees who rely on us and fortunately we have a good, strong network of mentors.

“Generally speaking what’s happened is that our success comes from our clients’ success.

“We’ve worked with the majority of our clients since day one and many have seen a huge degree of success.

“They’re all big-name people, so it’s all going very well as far as our reputation is concerned.

“We’re now in a much healthier position, with strong cash-flow and a sound profit margin. We’re now looking outwards to expand.”

While Skillwork’s technical operations take place in Bulgaria, London remains key to the business’ plans for growth.

Having studied at UCL on the 38th and 50th floors of One Canada Square remaining in the tower was a natural step. 

“It was quite prestigious for us to come to Level39 – it was a marketing thing as well, because meeting clients here makes a good impression,” said Jan. 

“I also think it’s one of the best spaces in London. If your working environment is good, then your work will be good and we’re very fortunate that we can afford to be here. We have some clients in Dubai and that might be a place we expand into. 

“Our strength lies in the fact that we have contacts in so many countries and the ability to access them.

“One thing to remember is the UK is and always will be a global power.”

Ali added: “That was the key benefit for us of coming to the UK – when we came here, we were exposed to all these different cultures.

“London isn’t going to go under anytime soon. The reason we’re looking outwards is that we’re a bootstrap business, with not too much cash in the bank, so we have to keep expanding.

“There are only two choices – you go up or you go down. Out next step is to become innovation leaders in the Middle East for anything digital – that’s our ambition.”

Who would bet against them?

Read more: See the moment One Canada Square was topped out

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- Jon Massey is co-founder and editorial director of Wharf Life and writes about a wide range of subjects in Canary Wharf, Docklands and east London - contact via jon.massey@wharf-life.com
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Canary Wharf: How Alchemy Machines provides smart transcription services

AI driven platform is set to launch in November 2022 aimed at businesses in the legal sector

Alchemy Machines platform could make note-taking by hand a thing of the past

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Singer, martial artist, entrepreneur.

These are Dia Thanki’s passions but it’s in the third where our chief interest lies.

So it’s not Motown classics or her practising the graceful forms of Wing Chun Kung Fu that will fill this space, It’s her latest business venture.

Alchemy Machines, the company she founded and runs as CEO, is set to launch its first product in November following two years of development.

Based at Level39 – Canary Wharf’s tech community and workspace at One Canada Square – the idea for the business grew from a personal experience.

“I was involved in a car accident quite a few years ago,” said Dia.

“I was coming off the motorway, going downhill and there was a lot of traffic ahead – it was gridlocked.

“I stopped my car but there was a van going at top speed, which crashed into the back of my vehicle – leaving me with whiplash and chronic back pain.

“As a result I was having a lot of meetings with my personal injury lawyer, but the discomfort I was in meant I wasn’t able to focus on what was being said.

“I decided to look for an app that could transcribe voice to text, but the technology was generally very primitive at the time.

“It was then that I thought how wonderful it would be if meetings could be automatically transcribed accurately with who was speaking and when. 

“People could then read or listen back and there would be an audit trail.”

Dia had been exposed to the emerging area of artificial intelligence (AI) as a student, first at Cass Business School (since renamed Bayes Business School) and then later during a masters in management information systems at Cranfield University.

“Back then, no-one really cared about it – it was a research topic, but there were very few real-life implementations,” she said.

“But I was fascinated with its potential and my final year thesis was in the area of multi-agent systems.

“It was all about process modelling using software agents to be able to replicate real-world phenomena to convert them into a virtual world. 

“That’s when I began to think about the endless possibilities of a technology like AI.”

However, life took Dia in a different direction, as after graduating, a career as a singer beckoned and she eventually set up a business as the founder of label Diamanté Records.

After pursuing that course for a little over four years, Dia changed heading, going on to discover a strength in project management.

“That’s really my forte – starting with a concept for a web application or a mobile app and taking it from idea to a tangible product,” she said.

“In the process of doing that, I was working with developers, designers both onshore and offshore, globally for organisations such as BT, BUPA and Apple.

“Just before I set up Alchemy Machines, I was working for Tech Nation which is very well known in the tech ecosystem.

“I was its Future 50 programme manager – curating events for the brand and through that work I became fascinated with the world of startups.

“Then Alchemy Machines got a grant offer and there was a need to focus on the company full time and build a team.”

Alchemy Machines founder and CEO Dia Thanki

With machine learning having taken off in the intervening years, it was time for Dia to explore the creation of something that has been in the back of her mind since she sat in the room with those lawyers.

“I’d reached out to various computer scientists, people who had worked at Google and Amazon and senior researchers – had lots of coffees and built up my knowledge,” she said.

“I did a lot of different courses and then found some money to build a prototype, initially from Innovate UK, which is funded by the Government.

“The reason we chose to focus on the legal sector was that there seemed to be a demand, although the product we have developed could be as relevant in healthcare or financial services.

“Alchemy Machines solves the problem of unlocking workflow productivity for corporate professionals.

“The way we do that is to develop a voice intelligence platform that can transcribe sector-specific speech into text, and then also analyse those conversations and summarise them. It’s a feature-rich voice intelligence platform.

“People confuse us with an AI transcription company, but Alchemy Machines is much more than that.

“Given the high rates at which people leave jobs in the legal sector and everything that’s going on in the world at the moment, now is the time for a technology like this to really come to the fore.

“While there are other areas where this kind of technology has been prevalent for a while, that hasn’t really been the case in the corporate and legal worlds.

“I think that’s because they haven’t embraced innovation as fast, although in recent years they have been forced to do so, partly because of the consolidation that’s happening in the sector.

“Legal firms were some of the last to embrace email, for example, but they are now using cloud technology with many companies migrating – it’s only a matter of time before everyone in the market follows.

“People are very risk-averse in the sector.

“There’s a lack of understanding about AI machine learning and sometimes that triggers fear, although it can also trigger excitement.

“There are many offerings out there and it can be difficult for businesses to differentiate.

“But we have a clear focus, we know that being GDPR compliant, for example, is very important for companies in the sector and we have worked with Legal 500 firms to build feasibility scenarios and really test our platform before launch.

“It works like this – let’s assume there’s a dispute resolution case within intellectual property law.

“A group of lawyers – a senior associate, a trainee and a client – are having a virtual meeting to discuss the case.

“Normally, the trainee lawyer would be typing out or writing notes before producing a final version in consultation with the senior associate before it’s given to the client or stored in-house.

“That’s a huge waste of time – especially for trainee lawyers who want to get their hands on high-value casework and not spend their time on boring admin tasks.

“It might be useful for them for a couple of months as part of their training, but afterwards it becomes tedious admin work.

“With Alchemy Machines, all they would need to do would be to press ‘record’ when the Zoom or Microsoft Teams meeting starts.

“The software then sits in the background and, for a one-hour meeting, it would take about 15 or 20 minutes to generate the report in our web application.

“There, the user will find the audio file, the transcription, the analysis and the summaries.

“That will include things like the ratio of who is speaking, the total number of people on the call and a sentiment analysis expressed as a percentage, based on whether mostly positive or negative words were used.

“The platform also tracks the duration of the meeting and the accuracy of the voice recognition itself and these are just the things we can measure now.

“I’m super excited for the launch because this wasn’t a product that was easy to create – it’s very complex because of the machine learning elements, but also the amount of time that’s gone into testing it with real-life users to ensure we’ve built something that’s simple, intuitive and valuable.

“The feedback has been phenomenal.

“I was speaking to a firm we’ve been trialling the platform with and they thought that our product was both more accurate and easier to use than a very well funded American competitor.

“Creating this product and this business has been one of the most challenging experiences of my life because it has demanded such a level of focus and resilience – and I trained as a martial artist for five years.

“There have been two really big challenges.

“The first is the same for any tech company selling solutions to large corporations and that’s establishing credibility.

“The second has been fundraising. There are still very few women seeking investment in businesses in general and especially in the tech and STEM sectors and that makes it tough.

“That’s slowly beginning to change and there are a few different initiatives that are encouraging girls and women to embrace technology and see the potential of it. 

“As a business, we have some key targets to try and attract more women to join the sector and one of our machine learning engineers is a woman, so it’s been a great experience to share this journey with her.

“I hope many more will come to work in tech for Alchemy Machines or others.” 

Dia will be speaking at LegalEx at 2pm on November 23, 2022, at Excel in Royal Docks. Alchemy Machines’ platform is set to officially launch next month.

Read more: How Bureau is offering creative workspace in Greenwich

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- Jon Massey is co-founder and editorial director of Wharf Life and writes about a wide range of subjects in Canary Wharf, Docklands and east London - contact via jon.massey@wharf-life.com
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Canary Wharf: How Utilidex helps its customers manage their energy

Co-founder and director of the Level39-based company talks billing and climate change optimism

The topic of energy is ever-present in the headlines in 2022
The topic of energy is ever-present in the headlines in 2022

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The topic of energy is seldom out of the news at present.

There’s the government plan to cap household bills at an average of £2,500 through 2023 with six months of equivalent support for businesses at a cost of more than £100billion. 

Then there’s the longer term problem that, unless humanity brings down global carbon emissions by finding ways to generate the power we need in more environmentally friendly ways, then our activities on this planet will be the end of our species.

Whatever is going on in the market or with the planet, organisations’ ability to accurately know their own usage and impact is essential.

That’s where Utilidex comes in. Founded in 2012, the company is based at Level39, Canary Wharf’s tech community, spread across various floors of One Canada Square.

“We create software for businesses, the public sector and industry,” said co-founder and director Mike McCloskey.

“We do three things. Firstly, we do billing and, by default, bill validation for our customers.

“Secondly, we handle energy procurement – that means buying energy for the future for large corporates and industrials particularly.

“The reason we do that is so companies are less exposed to big changes in prices, to mitigate big shocks in the market.

“Then thirdly, from the data we receive, we create, assess and monitor the carbon footprint of an organisation based on the latest conversions.

“These actually change every year based on how much renewable energy is in the system.

“Once you have that data, which tends to be in half-hourly granularity in the UK, you can make observations – a business can monitor things like how much energy is being used when a property is vacant or a floor is empty in a building.

“You can work out things like energy intensity per square foot and then compare different buildings to see how they differ.

“That’s how you start to understand whether you’re wasting energy.

“Once you start looking at data in this highly granular form, then the observations become more interesting.

“These days, companies are devoting a bit more time to this – they are carbon aware – but even prior to that there was still a requirement for people working in facilities management to understand day-on-day, week-on-week, month-on-month, whether the organisation was making energy reductions and procuring power more effectively.

“These are the sorts of things we try to inform our customers about.

“With our software, it’s all about usability and understanding how the system works – getting as much benefit as you wish and deciding how much activity you can and want to devote to energy.

“In terms of value, we can measure the impact of projects and behavioural change – for example, swapping to LED light bulbs.

“The data can provide the justification for doing things like that.

“We also do the basic things like ensuring our customers’ bills are accurate.

Utilidex co-founder Mike McCloskey
Utilidex co-founder Mike McCloskey

“If your bill is £5million, then you’ll want to know if it’s correct or whether you’re under or over.

“It could be that a company is still being billed for a property it no longer owns, that the rates have changed or that the meter data is either not coming through or has been poorly estimated.

“There’s a lot of talk about energy suppliers over-billing, but in my experience, they’re just as likely to under-bill which is equally problematic if there’s a shock at the end of the year and it wasn’t in the budget.

“Traditionally much of this work was done manually, which was time consuming and prone to error, so we do it digitally.”

Utilidex, which has recently added water to the list of utilities its software supports, did not spring fully-formed from the minds of its founders – Mike and co-founder and CEO Richard Brys.

Instead it is a company where change and evolution have shaped its activities, growth and direction.

“When you start a business in the utility sector, especially if you’ve got some experience, you usually have a plan,” said Mike.

“But as the market evolves there has to be re-calibration and sometimes chucking everything out of the window and starting again.

“All these things happen in a dynamic fashion, but you have to adapt to those changes to stay in business. 

“We were very lucky. Our first two corporate customers – Bourne Leisure and Aviva – had massive environmental awareness in 2014 and still do today. 

“Their interest drove us into an area where we had to learn quite quickly what had to be done to support behavioural change in buildings.

“Nowadays, every organisation above a certain size in the UK has a carbon target.

“These are set at board level, so have to be adhered to, and there are lots of opportunities where our data can be used either by consultants, developers or sales providers to build a business case for a project.

“We want to build our business in the UK and grow it here – there’s a lot to do.”

One of the parts of its business  Utilidex hopes to expand is the ways it supports organisations to reduce their carbon emissions.

Mike says industrial companies will invest in making their own energy
Mike says industrial companies will invest in making their own energy

“I’m actually more optimistic now about climate change than I was eight months ago,” said Mike.

“Sadly, that’s down to the rocketing energy prices.

“They will cause a dark winter where energy conservation becomes really important for financial survival, be that for households or businesses.

“The impact of this will accelerate the process because it will force everybody’s hands and that should be a good thing for the planet.”

While Mike said there were no easy fixes for businesses facing escalating bills, he said some would be in a position to take action.

“It’s a massive problem and will need to be addressed in a variety of ways,” he said.

“One way for organisations to do that is to become both producers and consumers of energy as well as investing in batteries to help avoid peak rate tariffs.

“Where firms have the capital, now would be a really good time to invest in wind or solar – and make their own energy. That’s the way industrials will need to go.

“It’s also good because it creates additionality as well – there’s one more solar panel or wind turbine generating power that can be used or fed back into the grid.”

Read more: How Third Space helps Wharfers make the most of their time

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- Jon Massey is co-founder and editorial director of Wharf Life and writes about a wide range of subjects in Canary Wharf, Docklands and east London - contact via jon.massey@wharf-life.com

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