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I moved to London in 2007 to study, met a lot of great people. Three of them I started
working with on a group project. We got along well. And those three friends and myself came
up with this funny idea that's now turned into a business called Bare Conductive.
We were interested in looking at how we could make materials that had to do with electronics
somehow more accessible to your everyday person. And then came up with the idea of a conductive
paint. So, essentially the material can be used in
really three ways. You can power a small device like lighting up a light, you can use it kind
of as a glue or as a conductive glue, but you can also use it as a sensor.
One of the best things for us is showing what we do to people who have never seen it, and
they are just totally blown away by this ‘thing’ that to them seems completely magical.
I guess it started when we presented the paint during the interim show at the Royal College
of Art. It got a huge response. We got tonnes of emails
lots of phone calls saying hi, I'd like to purchase some or I want to work with you.
Can we buy this? We want to do this with it and that with it and that was a really exciting
moment. And that's the point at which we started taking
it much more seriously, started looking for funding.
We heard about the digital innovation challenge from the Technology Strategy Board.
And we thought there is a good opportunity there but would they ever take us seriously.
The answer was a definite yes. We won and we got Ł100,000 in funding.
It was both exciting and daunting. There is no question that, that was the single
moment that turned our project into a product and turned a group of four friends into a
business run by a group of four friends. It was absolutely the most crucial moment in
the creation of the business.