INTERVIEW: How London startup Beem had closed their 1.8 milion Euro investment round remotely.

Why did you decide to look across the borders in terms of fundraising?

2020 brought about a number of market shifts which made us look at raising cross-border capital. UK investors are known for having low risk appetites at the best of times and with increased uncertainty from the pandemic and the country in lockdown, many venture capital firms and investors were busy supporting their existing portfolios and no longer looking at new deals. On the plus side, the shift to remote working meant that meeting face to face was no longer an integral part of raising capital which lead us to explore overseas investment opportunities.

How did you find Depo Ventures?

A few weeks into lockdown, we connected with Eliska from Depo Ventures and demoed our product. Whilst unusual not to meet investors face to face, our technology lends itself well to virtual meetings and we were delighted to be invited to pitch to Depo’s network of investors.

What happened next?

After the pitch we were contacted by a number of interested investors including Michal Ciffra from Grouport Ventures. We spoke regularly over the weeks that followed regarding our business and our plans to launch Beem, the first augmented reality platform for artists, celebrities and influencers that lets them live stream themselves and have their followers see those broadcasts wherever they are. After conducting thorough due diligence on us, we concluded an investment in September.

When you were talking about serious investment even you’ve never seen each other life – How does it make you feel?

To be honest it didn’t feel that different to concluding an investment in person. All humans are intuitive and even from our first interaction with Grouport, it was apparent they were professional, reliable and trustworthy. That said, we still went through a thorough process of due diligence which gave us ample opportunity to build a relationship and get to know each other better.

Do you think it’s a new way of investing? What would you tell founders, what they should consider when they are considering foreign investor?

The pandemic has been vastly disruptive to ways of doing business and one positive has been the removal of barriers to overseas investment. When considering investment, I would encourage founders to first and foremost trust their intuition but also to do their own due diligence by speaking to investors’ portfolio companies for references.

Does the investment from Czech Republic’s fund effects your expand strategy? Do you even plan to enter onto Czech market?

Absolutely, we are already leveraging Grouport’s network to find new clients and use cases for our tech. We are excited to break into the Czech market.

Do you plan to visit Prague? 

We would love to, but with the current restrictions in place, for now we’ll settle for beeming ourselves there instead.

What do you expect from the cooperation with Grouport?

We are relying on Grouport’s expertise to help us expand into the Czech market and have requested their insight into decision-making processes related to new technology in fashion, retail, media and content businesses.

Share with us more about your plan with Beem?

2020 has been about setting in place structure, process and delivery frameworks to accelerate our go to market ability. Q1 2021 is laser focused on user acquisition, scale and monetisation. Beem V3 launches today with the ability to set ticketed events for broadcasters, while V4 and V5, which are both scheduled for release in January and February, will see the addition of group subscriptions, donations and gifting. All purchases are managed through App Store accounts enforcing a trusted paywall for users.

We are increasing the usability of the app and WebAR campaigns by making journeys simpler with clearer call to action and signposting. There is more critical thinking going into user engagement with the need to provide much deeper and richer engagement for both broadcasters and viewers alike.

Enterprise customers will be unified across Beem through the app and WebAR campaigns by the addition of private channels. This will allow enterprise customers the ability to host such events as private trunk shows, and CEO company-wide announcements etc.

We have changed our hosting structure to allow for much easier deployments for clients both on traditional marketing websites and e-commerce engines, such as Magento and Shopify. A simple unique asset reference now offers clients the ability to integrate and deploy experiences as fast as their product, brand or marketing teams can move. Each asset is also now published with a unique QR code to allow users to scan and go. In doing so we have moved closer to the purchase funnel with the options to ‘add to basket’ and ‘buy now’ links from holograms. Data is at the centre of everything we do now, and will objectively inform business and product decisions more heavily in 2021, with full integrations across Amazon Web Services, Apple, Google, Unity, Clever Tap and Apps Flyer, helping us to gain a much deeper understanding of user and customer engagement. AB testing will be our byword as we seek every opportunity to test, test, test.

Thank you for the interview, Janosh. 

Thank you.