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“Espaço Empreendedores” (Entrepreneurship Space), good morning.
Today we have with us João Diogo Ramos
founder of Collectors Bridge, a portal targeting collectors.
- João Diogo, good morning. - Good morning.
- Thank you for joining us. Please tell us about Collectors Bridge.
What is it exactly? Is it a collectors’ portal? How does it work?
Collectors Bridge is basically a typical technological start-up, a product company,
whose sole purpose is to launch a platform that aims to be THE reference place for
collectors to share their items and collections in a very social way....
- Kind of a social network?
- Yes, kind of, but using and interfacing with the existing social networks.
The idea is not to create new networks of influence or add new friends again, rather,
it is intended to use today’s ecosystem of available social networks
and complement it with an offer that, in our opinion,
does not exist and that is related to the sharing and display of
the “treasures” each collectors posses.
- And how is that interface with other networks going to work?
Will it be easy to reach Collectors Bridge?
- Yes, simplicity is one of the key aspects...
Nowadays technology already allows for a very simple interface between
other solutions and Facebook, Google+ or any other existing network.
So basically, anyone who has an account in one of these networks will
be able to register in a very simple way, without the complications from some years ago,
where you had to manually input all your personal data.
Afterwards you can publish any information and it readily becomes accessible through your network
of contacts and people who share the same interest on what is being collected.
- You brought with you some “items”... - Devices
- ... that can be collected. Which type of collections can exist?
What is this specific example?
- If you allow me, I would start by referring that the habit of collecting started long ago.
Since ancient times, with references to the Renaissance period, increasing during the
industrial revolution and with the appearance of the Internet
(which increased the capacity to collect items worldwide),
so no one can judge what is a collectable. All my life I have collected several things,
I have a few collections...
- So everything can be collected? - Yes, why not? I mean, I’m not going to judge
a person who collects items that may not be of particular interest to me.
I think that that is something typical of collectors:
to like whatever they collect and to not be much interested in other stuff.
Thus, this is one of the challenges of our platform: to gather people engaged in a given subject,
on a themed portal, while preventing they be bombarded with information from
other less interesting topics to them.
Collecting is this old habit and, in our opinion, this is a little bit what differentiates
us from all the rest, we believe it is based on 3 main aspects that are related to
the items I brought with me… One of the key aspects from collecting is its
educational component. The collector is someone who has to study and by studying he/she gains
a large amount of information that he/she can share with other people.
I brought with me some computers from the eighties, which are part of a collection I am very proud of.
I brought them because of a single aspect: they all look alike,
yet they are completely different. This results from studying a specific
subject and to be willing to share it with others who identify themselves with the topic.
This can be easily verified. You just need to go to Facebook, publish something with
a photo and see how people react… or even today, when I arrived at this studio
and heard comments like “oh, I had one of those computers”
or “this brings back memories”. All these are relevant aspects.
For example, these three computers, although they look the same,
these three here… well perhaps I should focus on these two.
- Mainly those two last ones are very alike… to me they would be the same.
- Mostly, these two… More than five million units were sold, and this is one of the first seven thousand.
Its single apparent difference, and that people don’t recognize when you don’t have them side-by-side,
is the colour of the keyboard.
So the first seventy thousand had this grey keyboard, all others changed to
a more bluish keyboard. This is a tiny detail, as there are others such as the colour on which
the symbol appears on, that tells you if the computer was produced in Spain or elsewhere.
I am very proud of this one, despite the fact that it was a commercial flop.
This one was produced in Portugal! In the eighties, Timex Portugal had a very
important role and produced, under licence from Sinclair
(the English company that produced these computers),
most of the computers sent to the USA market.
This is one of such items and was part of an educational kit that was available to professors in the USA.
This last one, out of curiosity, is one of the first computers…
was the first computer that revolutionized this area, as it was the first home computer
for less than 100£ in the English market. It is a computer from 1980.
- Low-cost already back then...
But this, basically to explain the educational component of collecting.
Then, obviously, each collector wishes to increase his/her collection, to complete it!
And that brings a marketplace opening for such a project.
Obviously there is eBay, Olx and many others, but the collector searches for all the tiny details…
looks for items in mint, original condition.
In addition, the more specialized the portal is, the easier it is to get that information.
Finally, what I believe is the biggest differentiator is the “Passion”.
The Passion component to me is completely related with how user friendly it is,
thus the proximity to the social networks, and the possibility to interact with other people
with the same interests. That is what I think is missing in
the solutions that try to cover this area, thus this is one of the biggest
differentiators on which we want to invest and build upon.
- João Diogo, you have won one of the prizes from the Arrisca-C Entrepreneurial competition,
- João Diogo, you have won one of the prizes from the Arrisca-C Entrepreneurial competition,
namely the prize for the best Business Plan.
I’m sure that makes you proud, but also gives you leverage to grow.
- Yes, the main aspect from wining such a prize is to have people, without any link to the project,
confirm the potential that we believe the idea has. Besides that, because there is a monetary reward –
it was one of the main awards, namely the one for the best Business Plan – also warrants that we can
go to market in this first year.
Basically, this was the way we identified to get most of the funds needed to launch the project.
According to how the market will react from now on, in a one-year timeframe we may
consider other additional alternatives.
In haste, the prize ensures we will be in the market this year.
- Is the network already available?
- No. We are already receiving user subscriptions to test the network.
It will be launched closer to the end of the first semester 2014.
My suggestion is that everyone that has some interest in these matters,
to go to www.collectorsbrige.com and subscribe.
- Thank you very much João Diogo for your testimony here in Espaço Empreendedor.
- Thank you. Have a nice day.