What do you currently do?
Seequestor is all about building effective security teams, wether that be the police or private sector. Where we have seen teams limited by technology we are looking to allow them to become an order of magnitude more productive and better equipped to analyse video footage such as CCTV.
What is your inspiration in the business?
I co-founded the company with my colleagues Henry hyde-thompson and Tristram Riley-Smith, so the origin of the company, really stems from Tristram. Originally, he was a senior member in counter terrorism in the UK for large portions of his life one of his initiatives was looking at new technologies to suck into counter terrorism, looking at new capabilities for UK security purposes and needs. So having spent 30 years or so in that space, Tristram is deeply aware of technological gaps in these capabilities and having spent a good year looking into these flaws we settled on some work that was being done on video analytics, particularly looking at something called reidentifaction, which allows us to track you across, potentially petabytes of data gathered from wherever.
Who do you admire?
The big names are always inspiring, if you look at Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, these are the two most inspiring people in my lifetime in terms of entrepreneurship and in terms of vision and changing the status quo, and also in terms of philanthropy. Having gone through the process of building a ginormous company and dedicating most of their life to that cause, they have then turned their attention to giving back and developing human kind. So to me they are two extraordinary visionaries for different reasons, and they’re both great examples to follow.
Looking back is there anything you would have done differently?
We’re so young and we’ve made a few mistakes already but hopefully not too many. However, as we’re so young I don’t think we’ve had much of a chance to have any regrets so far, but I’m sure there’ll be something around the corner.
What defines your way of doing business?
We are trying to build a system which is responsible as well as powerful. The nightmare situation for us is to sell our product to someone and for it to fall in the wrong hands, so we’re trying to pursue a vision where there is a great need for our product and it’s great when you can use our company and what we do to try and solve a problem.
What advice would you give to someone starting out?
It’s so much effort to build a company so you need to come up with something that is meaningful and something that is going to make a difference and of course that is also needed. You have to have firm beliefs and a vision needs to be set where you believe that your idea can make a real difference.
