Expodo

Co-founder, Tim Helweg-Larsen, tells us more “It all started because I love photography, but I was confused by my camera. I was frustrated that my photos were missing the magic that I saw around me. I always prefer to understand things visually. I eventually taught myself to understand the workings of the camera by doodling and drawing a simple infographic of how the core ingredients of a camera work together to create a photo. That graphic was a donut chart, made of coloured arcs around the circle. Each arc represents one of the four essential elements to creating a photographic exposure. There’s a trade-off between them and if they all add up to a complete circle then your picture will be the perfect brightness. This visual representation was extremely helpful for me”

Tim continues “It become clear that this was something that hadn’t been done before. And to help the largest number of people it needed to became the user control interface on cameras. This is what prompted my wife and I to patent the technology and start our business, Expodo.

Expodo connected with OxLEP about 3 years ago, as part of the eScalate programme. “We got involved with the Power Hour sessions they were offering. They were incredibly helpful. They covered a variety of subjects including social media, marketing and finance which were and still are really helpful to us as a young business. I’ve been so impressed with the Power Hour mentors I’ve recommended them to half a dozen different business owners – ranging from small start-ups to much larger growth enterprises. I look at OxLEP as a hidden super power in Oxfordshire that more businesses should know about.”

Expodo are at an exciting point in their business and were recently looking for investment. They were invited to take part in OxLEP’s Pitch to the Panel – an event that gives businesses the opportunity to meet and pitch to a group of Oxfordshire based investors. A total of nine businesses were invited to take part. Tim told us how it all came about “Our contact at OxLEP mentioned the Pitch to the Panel event. We’ve not reached out to VCs in the past as we are still at an early stage, but this looked like a good opportunity to expand the base of investors we are talking to. The OxLEP team were, as always, super supportive, they helped us prepare our pitch slides and also did a few dummy runs with us to help us prepare.”

“We didn’t end up getting our investment through this pitch event, but the feedback we received from the investors was super helpful. We’ve been talking to angel investors, but getting exposure through the event to VC’s at this stage has helped us up our game and think about how in future we will need to pitch for support in the next stage of our growth.”

When asked how things look for Expodo in the future Tim tells us “We have big plans. And I can see that OxLEP will still be an important input for us for some time to come. They have already helped us in many ways through the power hours. And we learnt a lot from the Pitch to the Panel. Perhaps even more importantly that event has given us the opportunity to build relationships with a broader group of investors, VC’s, that are well placed to support our future plans.“