The first agency to partner with global startup accelerator and incubator
LONDON, July 20, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Wunderman, the
leading global digital agency and part of WPP, has entered a
partnership with Founders Factory – a corporate-backed incubator
and accelerator, founded by Brent
Hoberman and Henry Lane
Fox.
The partnership provides Wunderman's global clients with early
access to promising startups, a systematic approach for
identifying, connecting and partnering with elite entrepreneurial
talent and ongoing education for Wunderman staff.
The accelerator and incubator has been backed by six blue-chip
investors, who are Founders Factory's exclusive global partners
- L'Oréal, Aviva, EasyJet, China's CSC Group, Holtzbrinck and Guardian
Media Group. These investors work with Founders Factory to
identify opportunities for startups and ideas for new companies
within their respective vertical sectors of Beauty, FinTech,
Travel, AI, Education and Media.
Wunderman will work across all vertical sectors and startups,
partnering with the right companies to solve business
transformation challenges including: customer experience design,
marketing technology and digital innovation for its
clients.
As part of the agreement, Wunderman will work to help Founders
Factory reach their goal to build and scale 200 new businesses over
five years.
Mark Read, Wunderman's Global
CEO, said: "Growth is our clients' top priority and that depends on
innovation. Now we can help them innovate, not just in their
digital marketing, but by working with Founders Factory's global
ecosystem of promising young startups and, in return, help these
startups build their businesses for the future."
Henry Lane Fox, Founders Factory
CEO, said: "Founders Factory was developed to tackle a common
problem within big business - how to innovate internally. We are
committed to building and scaling over 200 new businesses over the
next five years. Wunderman and their clients will not only provide
expert marketing advice but also numerous commercial opportunities
for our startups."
The Founders Factory portfolio of start-ups, which cover new
technologies spanning artificial intelligence, new content creation
methodologies, blockchain and ecommerce solutions, will be
introduced to the partners and their global networks across every
market.
Some of the startups Founders Factory has worked
with so far include:
Vidsy: A Self-serve platform for brands to commission and
distribute video content from a community of 1,500 film-makers. The
company is now working with a number of international brands
including Vodafone, Barclays and Unilever. They recently raised
£1.3m from Delin Capital and Guardian Media Group, became official
Facebook & Snapchat marketing
partners, won Facebook's Innovation
Spotlight 'Creativity around Video' Award for 2017 and won an
Instagram Partner Innovation Award at Cannes Lions 2017.
Flourish: Allows brands to connect multiple live data
feeds and create complex data visualisations. The company has
raised $1m in seed funding from Local
Globe and is now working on briefs with a number of international
media and financial companies. Flourish recently won the Global
Editors Network start-ups for news competition 2017.
people.io: A data rewards app that allows people to extract
value from their personal data in exchange for credits, that can be
redeemed against a number of digital services. They recently
launched a co-branded version of the app with O2 parent Company
Telefonica in Germany that is
being distributed to their 44m customers. The company has raised a
total of £2m and their founder Nicholas
Oliver was recently named one of NASDAQ's rising stars.
Medshr: enables medical professionals to share and discuss
medical cases and images through its app in an attempt to encourage
the sharing of knowledge and expertise. They recently raised £1.5m
in a Seed round led by ex-investment banker Karl-Georg Altenburg and the family office of
Udo Müller, founder of Ströer SE.
About Wunderman
Wunderman is a
global digital agency whose mission is to inspire people to take
action. It
is Creatively Driven.
Data Inspired. In 2015, industry analysts
named Wunderman a leader in marketing database operations as well
as a strong performer in customer engagement strategy and its
creative work has won numerous awards globally. Headquartered
in New York, the agency brings together 7,000 creatives, data
scientists, strategists and technologists in 175 offices in 60
markets. Wunderman is a WPP company (NASDAQ: WPPGY). For more
information, please visit www.wunderman.com and follow
us @Wunderman.
About Founders Factory
Founders Factory is a new model in business creation, with
genuine ambition and breadth, backed by some of the world's leading
corporates across six sectors: easyJet (Travel), L'Oréal
(Beauty), Aviva (Fintech), Holtzbrinck (Education), Guardian Media
Group (Media) and CSC Group (Artificial Intelligence). Founders
Factory's in-house team is also composed of digital experts, many
of whom are successful entrepreneurs themselves. Positioned at the
very heart of the global tech community and benefiting from its
strong links to Founders Forum, Founders Factory will build and
scale over 200 early stage technology companies across six sectors
over the next five years. Founders Factory is accepting
applications from tech startups across all six
sectors: https://foundersfactory.com/accelerator/ www.foundersfactory.com @foundersfactory
Contact
Martina Suess
T: +1 (212) 210 3859
martina.suess@wunderman.com
Amy Grimshaw
T: (+44) 7817240004
amy@foundersfactory.com
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