The entrepreneur with a business idea that has Amazon's attention
The entrepreneur with a business idea that has Amazon's attention
Earlier this year Kevin Pope’s fledgling firm Biostart won a South West FSB business award, but the accolade distracts from a company with so much potential major corporates are watching closely.
Dear Readers,
Welcome to your Friday edition of The Raikes Journal. It’s been an interesting week here at Raikes, as we hope you’ll agree if you’ve read the previous two editions.
Monday saw us help reveal and celebrate the finalists in one of Gloucestershire’s business awards, staged by Cirencester Chamber of Commerce. As we said at the time, it is always fascinating to see the new names, faces and stories such awards unearth.
And yesterday we ran a long-read - reaction from the county’s main chambers of commerce to a number of questions we put to them about this year’s election. Not least, ‘what do they want to see from the next government?’.
Today we give you a story of a very different kind, about an entrepreneur battling to bring to market an idea that already has the eye of major corporates like Amazon, who see incredible potential in the technology.
But it’s about so much more than that. It’s about the man driving the business, the journey he is on, and why we think there could be some lessons in there for all of us.
We have paywalled this edition for the benefit of our paying subscribers who’re vital to making possible the service this community interest company offers and the support we try to give the county. You can read some of the story of Kevin Pope below, but to enjoy the whole of the long read please do consider becoming a paid subscriber too. You never know, we could be writing about you and your business next!
We hope you have a great weekend.
Please do continue to bear us in mind for your stories and ideas. Contact andrew.merrell@raikesjournal.co.uk or telephone 07956 926061.
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Some briefing notes…
💸 Nearly 90 members of the county’s business community gathered to hear inspiring speakers share their personal experiences and insights about influential women in their industries at the Women in Leadership event in Gloucestershire. The panel featured Helen Richards, church operations director at Ecclesiastical Insurance Group, Rachel Howie, CEO of The Diocese of Gloucester Academies Trust, Sarah Dunning, chair of Westmorland Family (Gloucester Services), David Owen, director of economy and environment at Gloucestershire County Council and James Forrester, CEO of Gloucester Hartpury WRFC. Hosted by The Benefact Group, the event raised £7,000 for The Nelson Trust charity. Azets, Benefact Group, Meta Advisors, and WSP raised £3,500 from ticket sales and sponsorships. The Benefact Trust then match-funded that amount.
🏆 The deadline has been extended for the Lloyds Bank British Business Excellence Awards to June 28th, allowing more time for you to enter and have your business showcased on a national stage. The prestigious event offers a platform for businesses of all sizes, from start-ups to established industry leaders, to gain recognition across 18 categories, including new awards The FTSE 100 Business of the Year and The Customer Loyalty Award. You can find out more here.
💪 A new B Local initiative, to support and showcase the expanding network of B Corps, will be officially launched at a private event staged by leadership development specialists QuoLux at Blackfriars, Gloucester, in July. Glos B Local will aim to create connections within the community around social and environmental responsibility within business, maximise the positive impact of the local B Corp community and raise awareness of the B Corp Movement. It is co-chaired by Camilla Barnes, who runs Better Business, Better World, Katharina Child, from Invivio Healthcare, Charlie Hayward from Optimising IT and Victoria Petkovic-Short from recently accredited Beechurst Serviced Apartments. Currently the group is 40-strong.
The entrepreneur with a business idea that has Amazon's attention
Earlier this year Kevin Pope’s fledgling firm Biostart won a South West FSB business award, but the accolade distracts from a company with so much potential major corporates are watching closely.
By Andrew Merrell
When you come to write the top line of Kevin Pope’s story – that his business idea might well be snapped up by a big business and him rich, it still feels like you have missed so much from his story.
It’s not just the getting there, it’s how Pope is doing it.
He already runs the award-winning Gloucester-based vehicle tracking business Protrack, but it is the technology he has been developing for his other venture, Biostart Security (part of Protrack Group), that could be a game-changer.
That tech will make all vehicles nigh on impossible to be stolen by being driven away.
Years of research has gone into the software and hardware that will allow a business to be sure only allocated staff can drive any of its fleet vehicles and only when it wants them to, that it will always know where that vehicle is, and that it cannot be hijacked by another driver.
Biostart Security the business already exists, but the next generation product it is close to bringing to the market has multi-fingerprint authentication and more that makes it both efficient to use and simply impossible to work around, trick or reprogramme.
“Amazon has estimated thefts of vehicles costs them £15,000 a day. That’s more than £5 million a year,” said Pope, namedropping a firm that he has been in talks with, trials even, and that likes what it sees.
Just one of Amazon’s direct service providers operates 300 vehicles in the capital alone.
Which gives you a sense of the scale of the market Biostart could be about to disrupt – if Pope can get the funding he needs. This is the hurdle he’s currently jumping.
“We’re still running Protrack, but we’re investing everything into Biostart’s development at the moment and have been for the last 12 months.
It has gone through countless revisions, tweaks, redesigns, to ensure it is as secure and robust as can be.
Endorsement doesn’t come much better Thatcham Research, described as “the UK’s only not-for-profit automotive risk intelligence organisation”, dedicated to proving the safety, security of products for the automotive industry.
This is the British organisation that wants to rubber stamp the Biostart system. Approval would make an industry sit up and take note.
“We partnered with Thatcham last year. They said they really want to help us get this product to market. They told us they are so impressed they want to fit it to their vehicles, which is an incredible endorsement,” said Pope.
“The route to market is through the insurance industry. The product would essentially render a vehicle impossible for a driver to steal, so you can see why they would be interested.
“Thatcham has said it will host an event to show the insurance industry what the product can do,” said Pope, still energised by a challenge that has consumed him and his small team.
The second market would be resellers and the third would be by selling directly to service providers, like we’ve mentioned, the Amazons and FedExs.
“We are about to apply for a piece of funding we hope will take us to where we want to be,” said Pope, and it is here we come to the other piece of his story that is already a win over and above whatever the end game may deliver for him.
And we are not talking about money.
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