London based Start-up, Quill, is helping brands deliver high quality content across a wide range of topics, formats and languages.
Company: Quill
Sector: Content Marketing
Location: London
Regions covered: Global
Founded by: Ed Bussey
Is he a rocket scientist? Ed is a serial entrepreneur and now Founder and CEO of Quill, his third successful internet start-up. Ed began his career in the Royal Navy and subsequently held various security and diplomatic appointments around the world. Prior to launching Quill in 2011, Ed was Chief Operating Officer at Zyb, a mobile social networking pioneer acquired by Vodafone in 2008. Ed was also part of the founding team and Global Marketing Director of Figleaves.com, acquired by N Brown Plc. In 2010, Ed completed an unsupported trek to the North Pole in support of the Global Angels charity. So, although he studied Chemistry and Psychology at Cambridge University, he’s probably more of a “rocket” now than a scientist.
Who are you major backers? In 2014, we successfully closed a £5m investment round with Smedvig Capital. Previously, we secured funding from a group of successful digital angel investors and Ariadne Capital.
What’s the track record? Quill is backed by a group of influential investors with digital success stories such as AOL, BBC Worldwide, Demand Media, Graze, iSubscribe, Loaf, Mr and Mrs Smith, Toptable, Techlightenment and Vice.
What do they say? “I’m privileged to be a fellow traveller on the Quill journey” Peter Read, Google Ventures
“Ed conceived and developed a great concept, implemented it faultlessly and is now scaling Quill very successfully” Karen Hanton, Top table
What does this mean? Quill shares it’s vision with digital entrepreneurs who have successfully built and exited their own innovative ventures. We deliberately sought to attract investors that would talk the same language as us, and we benefit from their knowledge and experience as we continue to expand our software and service offering.
What makes your company different to its competitors? Quill is purpose-built to deliver high performance content. We are built around three unique capabilities; our global network of content creators, our proprietary software and our experienced account management and in-house quality control. We provide a more efficient, cost-effective and scalable solution, delivering high-quality content across an unparalleled number of topics and formats.
What sets us apart is that we’ve been multi-lingual since day one. Our global network of content creators created 1.3 million words of content across 22 languages in 2014. We are working towards producing more than 10 million words in 2015.
First clients: Quill’s first clients were Shop Direct and Seatwave. Since launch we’ve worked with over 100 companies and today we’re a trusted partner for global brands and agencies including LA Fitness, STA Travel, Reckitt Benckiser, 888.com, Aegis and Publicis.
How could your company change the world? Our mission is to make more compelling content experiences for brands and consumers. In an increasingly crowded and competitive marketplace where consumers are suffering from information overload, we help brands to engage their customers more effectively with content. We are purpose-built for the digital content age, helping brands to become publishers. We exist to make the Internet a more inspiring place to be.
Who do they compete with? We define our key competition as technology-enabled content producers who are able to deliver quality-controlled content at scale. There is no one else in Europe with this capability, and we work with several global agencies on a white label basis, enabling them to provide their clients with quality content, cost-effectively and at scale.
Who should be worried? Agencies that are ultimately lacking in the skills and expertise, technology and processes needed to deliver quality content at scale. Particularly those who are repositioning and “rebadging” themselves as content businesses in order to capitalise on the new discipline of content marketing.
If you could choose any investor globally who would it be? We would continue our relationship with Smedvig Capital. They are a large but selective fund that share the same values as Quill, and are hugely supportive of our ambition to become the global leader in our space. Their investment represents a significant vote of confidence in the fast emerging opportunity of content marketing.
If you could poach any member of staff from any company in the world who would it be? Sir Martin Sorrell – and with any luck he’d be so impressed with Quill that he’d consider getting involved in the business in other ways.
