Business Showcase : Vox Pop

By @SimonCocking

Describe the company – the elevator pitch ..

Vox Pop, we boost the engagement between journalists and their readers. Vox Pop allows anyone to easily send video opinions and stories to digital newsrooms.

How are you different?

Vox Pop introduce a new crowd-sourcing tool for the news industry to best engage with their audience. With Vox Pop, news organizations can just post their video-questions directly on their sites and everybody can video-answer to it. News is not a one-way flow anymore, it is about push and pull information, in real time and from any websites.

Thanks @Raj_Samani #inspirational talk at @startplanetNI pic.twitter.com/uKmQYHVYZE

— Media Vox Pop (@MediaVoxpop) January 17, 2017

Why will the company / product do well?

The product is extremely versatile and can be embedded in any website. Vox Pop opens up a new conversation on how digital media interact with users, enabling them to freely comment and participate to an ongoing storytelling process. This approach works not only for news but it’ll work for other industries as well.

Where are you based?

We are currently based in Belfast, UK. We recently moved here for the StartPlanet NI acceleration program.

When was the company launched?

The company was started in March 2015.

Ready to accelerate 🙂 #startup Thanks @startplanetNI @liaonet Let the journey begin pic.twitter.com/Y2ZvRE1Cr6

— Media Vox Pop (@MediaVoxpop) January 12, 2017

What have been your biggest wins to date?

In 2016 we have been awarded by VICE media as innovators in journalism and we have been funded by Google through the Digital News Initiative. The validation of our concept by two big names while we were still in working on the actual product pushed us a lot. So we understood that the news industry is changing a lot and fast, and we believe our formula can become an extraordinary tool for newsrooms worldwide.

What type of people (market segment) are you trying to attract to your product?

Every news organizations and publishers, from local to international size, who are looking for a deeper engagement with their audience. At the same time, we know that our technology is very suitable as a marketing tool and we are now exploring partnerships in this industry.

Tell us about your team?

Fabio and Davide, the two co-founders, started Vox Pop in Chile thanks to the StartUp Chile accelerator. The Italian duo joined their different backgrounds from economics and journalism. After one year of activities, Leandro and Sirio joined the team: both full-stack developers with founder experiences in startups. Today the team is solid and works very well despite it is often a remote relationship.

#smau16 pic.twitter.com/JdF9pqAeiC

— Media Vox Pop (@MediaVoxpop) October 26, 2016

What are you long term plans for your product / company?

We believe Vox Pop technology can be adopted by many different purposes and goals. Our plan is to grow together with our clients and find new ways to interact with their users. Social networks are certainly helpful for content gathering and we are working right now at integration with them. On the other hand, social networks were not designed as a journalist tool and we are now seeing their side effects. Our long-term goal is to democratize the news production process but also to preserve and innovate the role of journalists within a connected society.

What are your favourite tech gadgets? What tech gadgets do you wish you could use to help you?

360° cameras are quite cool! It is a much deeper experience than flat videos, and their quality is increasing fast! I think that in few years for now 360 videos will be quite widespread, and surely Vox Pop needs to keep an eye on this trend.

How do people get in touch with you?

Davide Mancini, co-founder >> [email protected]
Fabio Capoferri, co-founder >> [email protected]
Genera > [email protected]

If you would like to have your company featured in the Irish Tech News Business Showcase, get in contact with us at [email protected] or on Twitter: @SimonCocking