Announcing our Investment in Scribeless
Where did we find this deal?
We were first introduced to Alex and Rob at an event in London and had multiple meeting with the team before investing.
What is Scribeless?
Scribeless has developed a software that can learn anyone’s handwriting and robotics that re-create the idiosyncrasies and nuances of human writing.
What RLC Ventures likes most:
- AI productivity gains – Scribeless are putting a proposal together for a US company which currently employees 50 people who physically handwrite notes to clients – crazy that this happens all over world let alone the USA – solving this problem alone would scale Scribeless into a significantly sized business.
- Client base – is extremely varied, and hence the market is large, but we especially like the application to areas such as real estate (sgents closing and winning deals via more personalised touches) & banking CEO’s (having to send apology letters & campaigns).
- Business to Business sales – strategy creates a more defensible business and ensures capital is not wasted on B2C marketing.
- Scale – Given that Scribeless have moved to provide software behind the handwriting engines to allow people to use their own or use others, they can scale rapidly without having people or printers or robots - think Onfido for this space.
Competitive Advantages:
- Scalable software – that creates handwriting letters at least 15x faster and 50% cheaper than both humans and robots can.
- High defensibility – as the company has already built a large handwriting database with all the AI technology built in house.
- Low cost structure – as the core team is strategically based in Bristol, lower overheads than in London.
Who is behind it?
Alex Robinson (CEO) has had previous experience as a data scientist at J.P. Morgan as well as being a former CTO at LivePrize.
Rob VDB (COO) has been involved in a number of start-ups before starting Scribeless
Founder-market fit
We were really impressed with the founding teams prior experience (having built and sold a company to Twitter) as well as their passion and drive to deliver a solution that will change live content delivery worldwide. The road to achieving their ambitions will be challenging, as with any startup.
Traction to date
The company has sent over 100,000+ letters and has the likes of Diageo, NatWest and Panasonic as clients. They have also seen a lot of success implementing a Shopify plugin that enables e-commerce sites to use their notes easily for marketing purposes.
Market Opportunity
With a huge struggle to appear authentic when marketing your brand, personalisation goes a long way, just take a look at the man who built a £1bn business off writing handwritten letters. The team at Scribeless have brought back what so many people have missed out on as one of the best communication and engagement tools around.
With 95%+ open rates, 35%+ engagement rates and a huge element of personalisation. Scribeless is making it accessible for brands, bankers and business owners to access a unique customisation tool at a scale not previously possible. £4.4bn is currently spent annually on advertising and business direct mail, with over £10bn also spent on greeting cards annually.
Through Scirbeless, a unique low cost opportunity for marketers has emerged, offering higher levels of engagement and personalisation.
Co-Investors
RLC Ventures has led a £420k with participation from Super-Seed Ventures and Ascension Ventures and a number of notable angels also committing to the round.
Venture Pledge
Alex has yet to select his Charity.
Relevant Links:
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- Why We Invested In Condense Reality