My name is Serge Acker, I'm the CEO of a company called OCL, which is a software platform for customer engagement and acquisition. We're a small startup and 10 people focused on software as a service. We're lucky to have a technology that is versatile enough that it can apply to different things.
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What was the main business challenge you tried to resolve?
The challenge always is - you think you have a great idea. How does it stack up against the market? How is it going to be perceived? How do you need to package it? It's always nice to have people who have that breadth of experience who can help you hone in on what are the key messages, what are the key pillars of the product that are going to resonate with your market. Originally, the company was focused on developing solutions for content owners to monetize their content and apps. But really what the platform does is understand how transactions are made without necessarily needing personal data. So the music business took a little longer to evolve, and we transformed it into a zero knowledge authentication platform that can connect brands with people without the need to track who they are, their phone number and things like that.
What were your goals and objectives?
When we got in touch with Aurora, I think the one of the challenges we had is we had a very good grasp of the music business and certainly the retail business on my side and luxury. We also knew that in the context of authentication, we needed to penetrate a market which was harder for us to penetrate, which could give us a sort of a seal of approval on authentication and seriousness, which is the banking industry.
So partly in terms of using them as a distribution network. Part of our technology required the sale of a token that could be bought in a store or in our vision, could use a network of trusted branches (like bank branches) or post offices, which would then deliver a service to the end user to certify that they are what they said they were. But we also thought that the banking sector could be one where we could provide our services beyond that. So that was to be our entry point that we had. We struggled in terms of how that could be more immediately beneficial and what type of products we could offer the banking industry. That's where Aurora came in.
Did you manage to solve your challenge and how?
Going into the workshop, we had a vague idea of where we wanted to go into the banking sector. Coming out of it, we had a very clear sense of four or five products that we needed to define a little bit more, but a very clear idea of what we could offer, who we could offer it to and how to present it. In the next stage of the interaction was meant to be actually building a pitch with Aurora to actually go and meet people. Sadly, a bunch of things happened, all of this was sort of mid-2019. Our first product was meant to go to market, didn't go to market for a bunch of Brexit related reasons. So we had to pivot on a dime. Nothing to do with Aurora's expertise. The context is that the market changed. So we had to put that exploration on pause.
What was the impact on your business?
I think it certainly improved our prospects in terms of fundraising, for example. Going into fundraises, initially we were talking about music, about a potential product that could improve the ability for businesses to authenticate without using personal data. Adding banking to this was a credible source of product and revenue generation. It helped our prospects.
What were your key decision factors to opt for Aurora?
There is a deep knowledge of the banking sector in Aurora. Both the principles we engaged with. They’ve spent decades in the banking industry, knew how the banking industry works, especially from a software standpoint. So for us, it was a no brainer to engage with them because they made a lot of sense.
Strengths
To be frank, we didn't really know of any competitors in that sector. I think there are a lot of consultants left, right and center, but few who have that approach of advising a client, not just in the concepts of things, but that could potentially accompany you to the next steps.
What was unique/special about Aurora?
What's unique in Aurora's product offering is they take you from inception to execution. In today's cases, they help startups develop their pitch. They help them meet with people, and I think they're a lot more results oriented and deliverable oriented than a lot of other consultants I've met with. But in their space, they're quite unique because they have that specialization in banking.We engage mostly with Sean and Matthew, who both were really helpful, easy to talk to and very good at extracting the information that they need to help you.
What were you most impressed about?
Sean and Matt are absolutely brilliant. You expect a consultant to listen, but you don't always get it. I think a lot of consultants suffer from a form of arrogance that they know a lot of stuff and they want to show off. I think what I found really good with both of them is just letting the client speak, let the client bring the information forward and tease some of that information out with the right questions. They have a genuine curiosity for what their clients are trying to achieve, and that shows in how they interact with them. Project management is a good one as well. There were very clear timelines, what to expect, timely communication with the customer. All these things are meant to reassure us and did with us. We knew exactly what we were getting into, what we were going to be doing on a couple of days that we interacted and what we were going to get out of that. In many cases, they even gave us more than we expected, sometimes outside of the boundaries of the engagements, whether it was introductions to people or otherwise.
Areas to Improve
At the time, I think they've improved that since. There was perhaps a bit of a narrow focus on a particular sector. I think what they've overcome, and I think that probably has opened up other sort of blind spots. But what they've overcome is a monolithic focus on a particular sort of area of business. They've expanded since into more of a scalable recipe to accompany any type of business in any type of verticals to address their needs. But the key being focused on actionable deliverables, something that moves the needle rather than a PowerPoint that sort of leaves you with no clue how to go next. Now, I guess part of the issue they might have (that depends on the customers) is that they're too practical or they are making themselves too indispensable so that once you reach a certain point, you have to continue with them. I haven't yet found that to be the case, but I could see that some people would have that issue.
What was the key success factor?
I think for me, the key was an understanding what we were trying to achieve, a good ability to reframe the problem, to distill, to help us think through the problem and reach a key actionable point for the next steps. Right. So that is ability to synthesize deep knowledge of the market, that we're trying to do. Deep knowledge as well of the type of situation we were in and the ability to adapt to the fact that we're a startup and that we needed to do things in a certain way, that we had a certain history with our product and therefore just taking all of this and coming with something that's very actionable, very useful.
Recommendations to others
The key for us in the exploration before we engage with them was to make sure that they understand what you're trying to do. They've got very versatile minds. They're able to understand things very quickly. But each business has its unique specificity. So up front, just give them as much information as you can because they can only help you with as much transparency as possible. Even if there are things that are seemingly secret and you sign an NDA with them anyway, the idea for them is to be able to help you. The key is just to trust them and to go into the relationship, giving as much that you expect in return. We were talking to them about potential re-engagement. There's no doubt in my mind that I would work with them again.
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