 You create content using a variety of digital assets. If so, it's likely that they live in multiple places in different formats, or they're in Google Drive or SharePoint or Dropbox or Box or other platforms. And it's also likely you spend a lot of time hunting, pecking and wrangling these digital assets. Hello and welcome to this CUBE conversation, the next in our startup stories program where we feature innovative software startups, their missions, their visions, founding and fundraising journeys, and the value that they bring to customers. My name is Dave Vellante and I'm pleased to welcome Jessica Story, who's the CEO of Stockpress and Ian Parks, the Chief Revenue Officer of Stockpress. They're a startup in the digital asset management space is trying to make it easier for digital teams to get work done. Folks, welcome to the CUBE, good to see you. Thanks so much for having us. Yeah, thanks, Dave. Yeah, you bet. All right, let's start with your founding story. Where did it begin? Why did you start the company? Yeah, I can take that one. It's a fun story. So we actually have two other co-founding partners, Bart and Camilla, and the four of us ran a digital agency for about 12 years together. And we were consistently coming up against the same problem where we worked with freelancers and project-based teams and had lots of clients that were spread across the world, really. And the one problem we always had was sharing files with them, receiving files from them, but most importantly, having one place where they could access all the stuff that we made for them whenever they wanted it. We were handling Dropbox links, Google Drive, we transfer links, and believe it or not, even back then, hard drives being kind of mailed around to everybody. And so at the same time, we were actually customizing an open-source digital asset management system for a client. And one of the things we looked at was, why are these tools categorizing, tagging your files not available in some of these other platforms? So we actually decided to build Stockpress for ourselves as a solution to an issue we were dealing with, which we did. So we built it on kind of nights and weekends and started putting all of our customers into the tool. And pretty quickly, everybody started turning around and going, well, what is this? Are we able to use it? Can we add our files to it? And pretty quickly, Ian turned around and said, hey, guys, I think we have a business here. And we started kind of working on it more full-time. And yeah, trying to solve that problem that everybody has is how they can keep all their files and all their digital assets in one place and make sure everyone can access them when they need it in an easy to use way. Interesting. So you guys weren't software people, a digital agency, but the software's eating the world kind of thing. And believe me, we do know, because we bring hard disk drives to every show that we do because video files are huge. But what specifically was it that led you to believe that the world needed a company to focus on the solution? Sounds like you were looking at open source tools. I presume you looked at other tools. You just couldn't find anything? Yeah, so the main thing for us was that user license fee. So because we had so many people distributed around the world that we worked with and we had different project teams that were doing specific things for different clients, we couldn't really add everybody into the one workspace without incurring additional costs. And we would add people to tools that we were using. And then when the project was over, we'd remove them and then six months down the line, someone would say, hey, I really need to grab that asset. And we'd go, okay, we got to add them and incur another cost again. So one of the big things that we tried to do or we are doing with Stockpress is we have an unlimited user model. So we encourage you to put everybody that you're working with into the platform so that everybody can work kind of collaboratively together. And we think that was definitely something missing from all the tools that we were looking at at the time. And the same thing goes for kind of the idea of categorizing and tagging your files. Google Drive is in Dropbox and Box. They're not bad platforms. They work for some people and some teams, but for us, it just didn't really do the job that we needed and we ended up with kind of a mess and certain cases, people coming into our tools and deleting things they weren't supposed to and there was a lot of that going on. Right, so Ian, Jessica mentioned, you said, hey, I think we have something here. It's always an exciting time. You're out in front of customers. You think you catch lightning in a bottle so your heart starts beating faster. So where did you go from there? How did you initially fund the company? Did you sort of take the cash flow from the existing company to seed it? When did you go out for venture funding? Explain that for our audience. Yeah, sure. And I think what Jess is trying to say there is actually it's my fault. So we joke about that a lot. Yeah, the funding of the company, I suppose, is quite a balanced one. It's one of started in kind of blood, sweat and tears, which I think is no bad thing that that's where these things start. I think there was a large element of throughout the years we've worked with lots of different businesses. We've seen lots of people come up with some great ideas but then subsequently try and sell those ideas. And I think for us it was about making sure that we were selling a product as early on as possible. So we spent a lot of time actually kind of working out our own needs, speaking to those early customers just to kind of find out whether our kind of assumptions were accurate. And then we're really kind of working on the product weekends and evenings, as Jess said. So we did do that kind of period of graft where we were running a full-time business. We were building the product weekends and evenings. We had that kind of magical period of time that not all startups get where we were able to use the product for ourselves. We were able to use the product with our customers and really try and iron out some of those kinks before we'd kind of gone out to the world and really started marketing. I think we probably all got to the point where we looked at each other at the end of 2021 and the bags under our eyes were getting bigger and it was just more of a struggle to be able to maintain the kind of the effort that the overall kind of quality of what we're doing. And I think at that point, we'd tested out some pretty big assumptions around volume of usage on the platform, the types of accounts that had started to use it. And I think that was the moment we decided that actually it was time to wind the agency down and go full-time with Stockpress, which we did at the end of 2021 and went into 2022 actually with some funding from Stage 2 Capital and Alumni Ventures. And really that capital came into the business to kind of further some assumptions that we'd already had around whether we could be a product-led business, just how much we could go down the freemium route. And actually it just enabled us to spend the start of 2022 testing out some of those assumptions, seeing what was right, seeing what we still needed to work on and just keep moving the business forwards. It was our first opportunity to have some fuel in the tank to be able to actually go out and market. Most of our business had come through referrals up until that point. But I think the really important part of going out and getting funding at that point was we were very much in that kind of startup mentality still. So it was value every dollar, make sure that we're only spending on the things that we really need to spend to move the needle and run those experimentations that we were doing with our marketing. But it wasn't about kind of going out and bringing in a huge team. It was about just getting close to those customers that we had, trying to start that kind of repeatable motion. And it was very much the rest of 22 was spent doing that, was working out what's working, what's not. Where can we kind of start to index more on those things that are working? And that actually put us in a position very recently actually, of closing out a seed round, which we happily closed out a couple of weeks ago. And this is really now about that kind of growth phase, where those assumptions that we've seen working, we can kind of double down on. Definitely still got some experimentation to do. It's never finished. But the money we've raised this time round means that we can go out and get some more people on the bus and hopefully push forwards in what we're doing, because we see a big opportunity ahead of us. Was it hard to convince the investors that it was a viable opportunity because you were really a services company and sort of transitioning? Or did you have enough proof points that it was less friction there? I can add a little one there. It really depended. I mean, there were a lot of cases where people went, well, wow, there's clearly a need for this because you guys were living it and breathing it. And then there were others that said, well, we don't have this problem, so it must not exist. So it was definitely cut down the middle, I think, for me. And you might feel otherwise. But I think showing the customers that we did have and showing the use cases that we were solving, we were solving a lot of different use cases. And this is something that we're still battling with today. I mean, we can be used across a very, very large variety of customers and use cases. And I think that's something that helps us in a way. I mean, we really can scale the product from three to five users all the way up to 15,000 users. And that's one of our differentiating features that I think kind of helps us as we move forward is that it's pretty easy to configure and work on your own. So I want to ask you what your superpowers are. Oh, go ahead, Ian, please. I was just going to say that the one thing that I would say about the funding process that we've just been through and given, there's definitely a lot going on in the world that probably made it a more interesting time to go out and raise money was really spending time understanding who the right partners are. And I actually think that was a part of the process that we definitely enjoy that part of it. And I think the route that it's taken us down from day one very much was around the operator-led VC approach. And I think that actually made the experience this time around slightly different in terms of those elements that for non-operator-led VCs that you might have to dive into a little bit further. I think we found partners that really understand the process. So I think the proof points, there are enough proof points in terms of how we kind of acquire those new users, how those workspaces build out more people introduced to the product. I think that's what most people kind of saw when we were talking to them that got it straight away. And I think, again, the beauty of working with those operator-led VCs is they've been there and kind of done it before. So I think in some respects, that actually means that you can go out and raise a little less money in the round because actually you're really kind of gaining that experience of people that have been there and done it. You know, it's definitely about getting balance in the VCs that are around you. And I do, I think we've got a fantastic team around us that can really help us cut through the noise of the market and the general kind of macro trends that we're seeing at the moment. Well, thank you for that. So we're always interested in what's unique, what do I call them superpowers, others use that term. You've got domain knowledge, so that's a check. You know the workflow, although I have a kind of a two-part question there. And then you've got this use case variety that Jess was talking about. So scale from small to large. But so what are your unique capabilities? And then the second part of the question is the workflow that you had at your digital agency, you know, might've been different than some at larger scale. And you know, what gave you confidence that you could apply this to those variety of use cases? I'm really interested in that. But what would you say are your really unique attributes? Yeah, so there's a couple of things. I think our unlimited user model is very unique in the market. And we don't see anybody doing that. And I think there's obviously a reason. For us, it makes sense. Everybody that you're working with should be able to collaborate on things whenever you need them to. So that's one point. In terms of the product, we've combined two technologies. So one of the things I think that we have that others don't is that we actually built the platform from a digital asset management idea first and then backed into kind of the more easy to use file management folder structure. And we still have that. So we have combined kind of two technologies, the digital asset management idea of categorizing and tagging your files, AI tagging, facial recognition, things like that. But we've also combined it with that idea of just having that folder structure and organizing things in a way that might work for you. And you know, that was based on feedback from our customers. When we first started out, it was digital asset management focused. And what we realized is not everybody even knows what digital asset management is, but everybody knows that they have trouble if they have trouble kind of organizing, finding and sharing their files. So the ability for us to kind of come back down a little bit and go, okay, we wanna make this a little bit easier for those people who might not have a digital asset management degree, and don't necessarily have the time to learn a really complex platform. And that is why we actually changed to this premium model. So anyone can just go to stop, press, sign up and get started for free. And that's something that we really pride ourselves in. We spent a lot of time on the user experience and making sure that things were easy to configure. You know, our game is not customizing things for our customers. You know, that's what a lot of digital asset management systems do. You go in and you say, well, this is what I need. This is what I need here. And they're kind of a modular approach for us. We go, hey, you don't wanna use AI tagging? Cool, turn it off on your own. You don't really need our help. Although we do love to help. We do love to kind of help people with their workspaces. We've found that they don't really need it. So you've essentially codified your expertise into the product. You're focusing on simplicity because I mean, the unlimited use is great, but some big competitor could say, hey, we have unlimited use too, but they don't have that expertise built in. Am I getting that right? Yes, exactly. And I think that's where it, for me, and that's kind of the feedback that we've gotten from our customers is that the platform is really easy to use. And it's really easy to learn how to become, a digital asset manager if you wanna use those terms. It's really easy to understand how tagging can help you find your files, all the permission sets that we have. And I always use this example. We had been working with a company kind of before we went full-time with Stockpress and they gave us access to one of their file management systems. I won't name any names. And I was able to, I didn't of course, delete everything in their platform. And that's something that always kind of horrified me is that people shouldn't be fearful of adding someone into their workspace and thinking that all their stuff's gonna disappear. They're gonna be able to do something they're not supposed to do. And in Stockpress, you can really, really go granular into what a user can do, whether it's only viewing a file or only uploading or only downloading or only sharing, you can really customize that tool to work for you. Yeah, you've really thought through those granular permissions. Who do you sell to? Who's that ideal customer that you walk in to go, oh, this person is gonna love us? Yeah, so I think that is one of the things that is somewhat of a blessing and a curse to us is that we can go very broad in terms of the types of customers and the industries that we can operate in. I think what we do is such a foundational part of people's businesses, you know, communications, you've got project management and you've got file management. I think if you've got those three things nailed down and people can collaborate around them, you've probably got a pretty good basis operationally to run a company. But there are some use cases that are kind of really coming to the fore of what we're doing at the moment. We've had some really good success in education and interestingly, not necessarily the interaction between the student and the educator, actually more in terms of the administration of a university or a school system. There's lots of information being exchanged through different departments, different faculties. And actually what we found is that that communications and a marketing element really sits at the heart of that operation. So the easier it is that they can ingest things into the system, then organize those things and then distribute them back out into the wider world. The better they can perform their function. We've also seen the media spaces has definitely kind of adopted us with open arms. So anyone that's producing huge amounts of high resolution assets has the need for a team that might be very distributed, a team that might work, the team member that might work for them for one day, a week, a month, a year. So the ability to be able to add them into that workspace and again collaborate and then have a target at the end of it to distribute that media to different people whether it's the press or back into a sports teams, for instance. So that's been a use case that we've really seen come to the fore as well. And I'd say the third use case that we're really kind of diving down into at the moment or in a lot of respects is finding us is e-commerce businesses and those brands that exist there. So lots of different file types. They might have images for their website. They might have SKU sheets that go with the product. They might have web copy. They might have video. All of those assets where there's kind of a rich tapestry of them really kind of coming together in one place. That's definitely been a kind of win for us as well. As I say, we're balancing out that element of we can go far and wide. But as a startup with time pressure making sure that we're making every dollar count we are really focused on winning those kind of key areas to begin with and then work out how we expand from there later on. Okay, and it's not like you're not disrupting Google Drive. People are going to continue to use box and Dropbox. It's almost like, it's a little bit like RPA where you're just bringing in automation, good workflows and solving a problem. But is that correct that you're not so much, there's not some big enemy that you're going after to disrupt? Yeah, I'm really glad you said that because that is something that we really like to push is that we're actually not here to knock anyone off. There is definitely a place for everyone, I think in the world. One of the things we're actually seeing recently, which is great is that we're being used alongside digital asset management systems. And I can give you a quick example. Our platform is so easy to set up and use and because of that unlimited user model and the ability to kind of get everyone in the workspace we're being used on a department by department level. So traditionally a dam might be used by an entire enterprise organization. And what we're finding is they still have that kind of single source of truth in that final place. But they're using us on a department by department level to replace another tool or to be the only tool. Maybe there wasn't somewhere where they kind of worked on files. So we really like to play nice with others. I mean, we do have an integration with Dropbox Box and Google Drive. So if you are using one of those tools and you need something that's a little bit more but you're not quite ready for a company-wide digital asset management system we're a great choice. One of the things I didn't mention before in terms of features which I can't even believe is that we have this ability to automatically identify duplicate files in the system. So if I was to import all my files from Box for example, Stockpress gives every file a fingerprint and automatically identifies if you have duplicates across the system and can merge them together for you. And what we find is people think they need a lot more storage than they actually do because they have so many duplicate files because of that kind of bolder mentality. So that is something that we're really proud of in our platform. Is that AI? My question is how are you using AI? You mentioned AI tagging and facial recognition. Is that part of what you're doing with machine intelligence? Yeah, so that's completely separate. So we are leveraging AWS for our AI tagging and facial recognition tools but the identifying duplicates tool which is what we call it we actually built ourselves. So it is a proprietary tool and we basically give every single file a fingerprint that is just like a person. So you can rest assured that the file is definitely an exact copy. We get a lot of questions about, well, is this file is cropped or smaller? Is it the same file? No, because it's not exactly the same dimensions. It's not at all, it's not the same file from a kind of fingerprint standpoint. So, but we did build that ourselves. We're not leveraging anything for that. Okay, so it's a SaaS platform. It runs on AWS I'm hearing. It's explained a little bit more about the unlimited use model. How do you price and deliver the product? Yeah, sure, so we're lucky in the sense that we've got a couple of other metrics that we can use to be able to build out our pricing. So in the initial kind of early days of stock press we very much focused on the amount of storage that people would need. So we basically tiered the pricing according to that storage requirement but as we built the platform out we've built in a ton more features as just alluded to earlier on. And what we've really started looking into is what types of customers exist in the packages that we have. And actually because of those customer types what features do they need to get from the platform to be able to get the most value out of it? So we've recently introduced pricing that has access to different features. And like I say, it's really focused on delivering value. I think a lot of our experiences of running a business ourselves with the platforms we love is they very much allow us to choose the level of kind of technology that we need to do a good job of things. So we look at platforms like Asana for instance that we've been able to understand what we need, what we don't need and have that kind of pricing set accordingly. That's the approach we're taking ourselves as well is that there is a necessity that is normally around the storage. There is a value set that is based around the features and we're hoping to just give people the choice to be able to take the package that they need. Okay, so you'll bundle the AWS costs into your pricing? Is that right? Absolutely. So yeah, we just try and make it as transparent as possible and as straightforward as possible so people can budget according to what they've got to spend and what they need from the platform. And how do you go to market? Is it primarily direct today or do you have a channel that you're building? It's a great question. I think the go-to-market question for any business that's in our position at the moment is probably the burning question. I think the way that we try and break it down is into three kind of key areas. It's attract, engage and convert. So we look at those different areas in very different ways in terms of the tactics that we're able to employ. Because we're a freemium platform we've spent a lot of time looking at our digital footprint. One of the things that we're really keen to do is that we understand the difference between attracting attention and capturing intent. What we do is very much intent-led and I think this is what we're learning more and more is that the chances of someone on a whim choosing to change their entire file management system is relatively slim in comparison to those that are feeling such an amount of pain that they go online to really find a different solution. So I think as we build the company out over the next 12 to 18 months, capturing intent is incredibly important to us because I think that increases our chance of growing our revenue, getting to customers that are in the market and also trying to help them make a buying decision before they find this will get to us. And when they do get to us that we can spend less time getting them over the line, it might be ironing out any kinks or asking any questions that are very specific to them. I think as we grow the business we'll definitely be looking more to that attracting attention element. I think that's really where we start to grow the brand out so that that proportion of people that aren't in the market at that certain time are really starting to get to understand who Stockpress are, the values that we live by and the experience they can expect so that when they are ready to change we become that kind of go to option for them. We're in that stage still where it's very much been found to lead selling. We've been out there, we make those connections, we help people see the value and then bring them in as customers. But again, I think we're at the stage now where that direct sales element of the business makes sense. We know a bit more about our market. We've actually seen a move upstream towards the mid-market and enterprise probably a little bit earlier than we necessarily anticipated, which is fantastic. So yeah, the direct element is definitely something we're doubling down on through the course of the rest of this year and next year. Great, thank you for that. We're out of time, but Jess, maybe you could just bring us home. What do you want the audience to take away about Stockpress? I think maybe the takeaway would be that if you're struggling in any sort of way and don't feel like there's an alternative to what you're using that's easy, we're here and you can try us out for free. We really, really believe that there is something missing in this kind of mid-market area between that Dropbox box and Google Drive and a digital asset management system. And we feel like we can cover it. So if you are struggling or you're using multiple tools and you want to just give something else a try, you can come and try us for free. Guys, thanks so much. Appreciate you sharing your story and would love to have you back as you progress and congratulations on what you've done so far and good luck in the future. Thank you so much. Thanks for having us. You're very welcome and thank you for watching this CUBE Conversation. This is Dave Vellante and we'll see you next time.