Amplyfi has long since been touted as the business most likely to become Wales’ first unicorn.
A unicorn is a start-up valued at more than $1bn, and as yet no company in this country has reached this goal.
It would not only be a feather in the cap for the first firm to achieve the status, it would also be a real boost for the country and its fast-growing tech sector.
The road to Cardiff was a long one for Amplyfi’s co-founders, Chris Ganje and Ian Jones.
For Ian it wasn’t as far, well, not in comparison to Chris.
Born and bred in Kent, Ian had a varied career before Amplyfi. This included work in the third sector supporting the 海角视频’s overseas aid programme, specifically in agricultural research, as well as managing commercial operations at power stations across the 海角视频.
For Chris, it was a slightly longer journey. He was born in Aberdeen, South Dakota. At university, he was an All-American volleyball player and crossed the Atlantic to complete an MSc in Politics from Edinburgh University.
Following Edinburgh, he moved to Bangalore, India, and formed a start-up focused on developing wind power projects across the Indian state of Karnataka. From India he joined BP, where he held a variety of roles spanning technology, strategy, operations, and finance.
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It was at the oil giant the pair met. They were both involved in a major project the company conducts every four or five years to generate insights into how the world’s energy system might evolve out to 2050.
“Essentially [it’s] a joint global technology and policy impact assessment,” says Ian. “Its purpose was to identify future sources of disruption and, within that, generate opportunities for BP that could inform its strategy going forward.
“The project led us to think about how such exercises could be completed faster, deeper, and cheaper by combining artificial intelligence with open-source content held across the internet.”
This led to the pair coming up with Amplyfi.
Ian explains exactly what the company does as basically as possible: “Amplyfi enables organisations to significantly enhance their business intelligence and market research capabilities by using artificial intelligence to unlock both the internet and their internal data.
“Our products demonstrate leadership in accessing the Deep Web – deeper into the internet than standard search engines such as Google, Yahoo, Bing, Baidu etc – generating insights from unstructured data, as around 90% of all content held on the internet is unstructured, and working across every modern language, which removed the final barrier to generating insights from the internet.”
For two globetrotters setting up in Cardiff seems like an odd choice. They had considered London, San Francisco, Boston, Beijing, and Cambridge as a possible site for their headquarters but decided on the Welsh capital.
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The pair are happy with the choice, even if many leading venture capitalists had advised them that to achieve the success they would need to be based in Silicon Valley, London, or Berlin.
“We chose Cardiff back in 2015 because the level of ambition in Wales, particularly across the first-class universities, and initiatives under way to build a global reputation as a leading centre of digital, software, machine learning, and data science capabilities, was obvious and something we knew would benefit us hugely,” Ian explains.
“Central to our thinking was advantaged access to talent and the lack of local competition for the best individuals graduating from the local universities. This is certainly no longer the case as an extensive, vibrant, and innovative community has since grown up around us.
“Being in Cardiff also enabled us to stay below the radar screen in those formative years as we went about the business of developing and commercialising our technologies.”
From the outset the company had a relationship with the Development Bank of Wales.
“Having a sovereign investor involved not only helps make us an attractive proposition to other investors but also gives us access to the Welsh Government’s global network, international offices, and trade missions that we leverage as we expand our global footprint,” explained Ian.
But from day one the company was revenue-generating, which, according to Ian, is very ususual for a deep-tech start-up.
“This meant that along with the founders’ initial equity we were able to delay the point at which we reached out to the wider investor community for our Seed funding,” he said.
“This enabled us to mature the technology and generate more commercial proof points in order to negotiate the best terms possible for the company. It also meant that we rapidly gained the respect of investors with VCs queuing up to invest. Ultimately, we were able to be selective about who we brought on board.”
Being based in Cardiff has not hindered the company from getting investors from around the world. In the latest round Hong Kong-based investor QBN Capital joined the Amplyfi family.
From the first day Amplfyi was a global company.
“We never set out to establish a customer base in south Wales, then gradually expand across the 海角视频, Europe, and beyond. From day one we were securing overseas clients and we now work with some of the world’s largest organisations spanning the 海角视频, Europe, North America, Africa, the Middle East, Singapore, and Taiwan,” explained Ian.
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This brings up the question about the unicorn in the room.
“Achieving unicorn status is just a milestone on our roadmap,” Ian insisted. “We still have a distance to go, but the first 10% of the way is always the hardest and we are confident we have achieved that step.
“From the very beginning, our mindset has always been that we are a multi-billion-dollar, multi-national company and, consequently, we have always operated with the confidence of one.
“We constantly challenge ourselves to ensure that we meet the standards of excellence expected of a Blue-Chip company. One of our board members also serves on the boards of Standard Chartered Bank and Cathay Pacific, which means that the only questions they know to ask are those of a mature corporate. It also means that the answers they receive must meet their expectations; a requirement that assures we exhibit the right behaviours, attitudes, and ambitions.”
The pair share no sign of slowing down.
Chris says the goal going forward is “continuing to work with our world-class talent to develop exceptional technology and deliver value to our customers – all while pushing the industry and our competitors to be better – is what drives me.”
Ian gets more specific: “The plan is to continue going until either I stop having fun or our AI is outperforming the biggest consultancies in the world; something that I tell them every time we demonstrate the platform to them.”
So, while they continue on the path to achieving this fabled unicorn status in some ways it seems it doesn’t matter as they work and feel as though they are already there.