A fast-growing Liverpool-based start-up is looking to raise £1m on the crowdfunding platform Seedrs.
Entrepreneurs Darren Galvin, 37, and Danny Webster, 23, funded the launch of Expert Apps in May 2018 on their credit cards and generated revenue of £250,000 in their first year of trading.
The pair originally created apps for industry sectors like property investing, martial arts, football and knitting and invited experts in those fields to share content via the apps.
However they pivoted the business when they realised the experts wanted their own apps and started charging a licence fee, beginning at £4,200 but rising to £25,000, as demand soared and the technology improved
Expert Apps is based at Liverpool Innovation Park and now employs six people but with plans to increase that to 15 over the next year.
CEO Galvin said: “We decided to raise investment in order to scale the business. We went down the crowdfunding route because clients, friends, family and our followers said they wanted to invest and they can do for as little as £250.”
Companies including Revolut, Bux and Aduna have all previously used the Seedrs platform to raise money.
“The other reason for the investment is we want to charge people an affordable monthly fee for the app rather than a big one-off charge,” continued Galvin. “This gives us recurring revenue and creates ongoing relationships with our customers.”
Even before the Seedrs campaign has been officially launched it has attracted a significant six figure sum in pledges.
Galvin left school with no qualifications and worked in website creation, marketing and SEO before identifying a gap in the market for apps. He met his business partner Danny Webster in 2016 and they launched Expert Apps two years later.
“Expert Apps helps anyone with expertise and industry knowledge to share and monetarise it through an app,” he said. “The app is constantly improving and we’ve now got nearly 50 clients covering sectors as varied as dolls house miniatures to business coaching. One of their clients is former Apprentice finalist Khadija Khalifa, who runs a business mentor programme.
“We are super excited about this coming year and are feeling very confident. We think we’ll grow our customer base to 300 inside three years with a turnover of more than £4m. The funding will enable us to reinvest in the technology so that our clients can take their customers on a journey through their apps.”