A Q&A with CANDDi co-founder and CEO Tim Langley. The Manchester, England–based company was founded in 2009 and raised £370K in new funding in late September.
SUB: Please describe CANDDi, and the value proposition you offer to website owners and developers.
Langley: CANDDi has developed an innovative ‘prospect analytics’ platform which helps website owners understand who is on their website, what they are interested in and then to provide the ability to take action. We use a combination of intelligent normalization of data collected from each website visitor—click stream data, opt-in personal data etc., machine learning driven categorization and then the ability for website owners to define the appropriate intervention action that they wish to take for this category—send email, ask survey, get feedback, display advert.
SUB: Who are your target users?
Langley: Currently, companies who use digital marketing, but who close their sales offline. This can be B2B companies, automotive or high-value B2C sales.
SUB: Who do you consider to be your competition?
Langley: There are lots of potential competitors in this space. We used to believe that the closest competitor was Performable—purchased by Hubspot.
SUB: What differentiates CANDDi from the competition?
Langley: CANDDi requires zero programmer effort to configure.
SUB: When was the company founded?
Langley: 2009—Tom Cheesewright and I were both working for a digital agency at the time.
SUB: What was the inspiration behind the idea for CANDDi? Was there an ‘aha’ moment, or was the idea more gradual in developing?
Langley: Mostly gradual in developing. We took part in an accelerator program, The Difference Engine, and the mentors in this helped to shape our thinking. Since then we’ve been predominantly customer-driven.
SUB: How did you come up with the name? What is the story behind it?
Langley: Campaign and digital intelligence equals CANDDi.
SUB: What have the most significant obstacles been so far to building the company?
Langley: People and customers. People with staff, recruiting, management, team, culture. Customers with finding, need identifying, etc.
SUB: You just raised £370K in new funding. What are your plans for the funds?
Langley: To recruit two new executives to strengthen our team.
SUB: Why was this a particularly good time to raise more outside funding?
Langley: We are a cash flow positive company. However, there were some key team skills which were holding us back. We raised money to recruit a senior tech and a Google executive to lead our sales—both of whom are amazing employees to join an early stage startup.
SUB: How does the company generate revenue or plan to generate revenue?
Langley: Selling SaaS—we’re a B2B company so sales are generally harder to come by but more profitable.
SUB: What are your goals for CANDDi over the next year or so?
Langley: Increase customers, increase our profile.
CANDDi – www.canddi.com
