My Startup: SPINR, Manchester

Why did you start SPINR? 

Right now, in both the tech and business sectors, there is a huge amount of attention on Digital Transformation as businesses scramble to make themselves relevant and competitive in the digital economy. As part of this, we see emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Internet of Things and Big Data, becoming the new industry buzzwords. However, the reality is that for these technologies to ever deliver on their potential, organisations need the ability to access, move and unify the data they hold across their back-office systems. Even the mobile apps, that we now take for granted, are simply empty shells if they cannot connect to the data that drives them. 

We saw that there was no affordable data integration solution for smaller businesses, even though they all have data challenges. Only large enterprises could afford the expensive integration technologies, and the teams needed to run them. So, we set out from the start to bring enterprise-grade data integration to medium sized businesses. 

We believe every organisation should have the capability to create a single view of their data, regardless of where it’s stored. SPINR has been built as an enabling platform, for companies of any size, to fast track their digital transformation and adoption of innovative technology. Simply put, it is the power of data that will drive future innovations to improve people’s lives.

Tell us more about the software behind the product?

SPINR is a data and API integration platform, sometimes referred to as Hybrid Integration Platform (HIP), that has been built from the ground up by our team in Manchester. We have a growing connector ecosystem of over 200 software products – these connectors allow users to orchestrate the flow of data across both their on-premise and cloud-based applications into new web and mobile services. 

For example, using SPINR, an organisation could join the customer data they hold in a CRM application, such as Salesforce, with the marketing data they hold in HubSpot and the bespoke ordering system they’ve built in SQL Server. Once that data is connected, internal customers can then create views of that data and expose new APIs for downstream services. They can also create custom workflows that automate the flow of data across systems. 

Where’s the business at right now? 

SPINR was commercially launched in January of this year, after two and a half years of internal R&D within our sister company Shaping Cloud. The market launch of SPINR followed a round of investment from the Greater Manchester Core Investment Fund and Mercia Technologies, on behalf of the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund. 

Having launched our first marketing campaign, we’ve already seen a strong level of interest from a broad range of vertical sectors, including financial services, healthcare and public sector. We’ve seen a significant response from both tech and non-tech companies building out their own digital platforms, that requires an integration layer to make them work effectively. 

We are now regularly conducting online demonstrations of SPINR with companies across the UK, North America, Singapore and Hong Kong, which is a huge validation of our value proposition. Now the focus is on scaling up our business with new customer wins and hiring the talent we will need for our next stage of growth. 

What are your aims for the next year? 

Our big North Star right now, as with any ambitious SaaS startup, is to get the platform to £1m in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR). This represents a big milestone for the company and opens up a new world of potential funding options and the promise of becoming a true scale-up in the global software market. The market opportunity for SPINR is significant, with Gartner forecasting the global data integration market set to reach $25Billion by 2027, with a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of over 14%.

However, the promise of this success is just a dream without the supporting teams, processes and infrastructure. We are working hard every day to improve all parts of the business, so we are optimized to bring on and support new clients with the best customer experience possible.

What’s been the hardest thing about getting SPINR off the ground?

The SPINR product was entirely bootstrapped through our sister company Shaping Cloud – making that investment in R&D for two years, whilst still trying to build and maintain a growing consultancy business, was a huge challenge from a resourcing and working capital perspective. Securing the round of investment has now allowed us to begin building the sales and marketing engine that will drive the business forward.

Once you have created a product, no matter how perfect you think it is for the customer and market place, the biggest challenge is that nobody out there knows, or cares, that you even exist. Our challenge now, is to make people aware that there is an affordable solution out there to some of their biggest data challenges, and to trust us to help them. There still remain lots of challenges ahead, as we move through the different growth phases, including taking SPINR to international markets. 

Why should more people be using or investing in SPINR?

Every business out there will have a myriad of data challenges frustrating them on a daily basis. Working with data is usually a very complex endeavor, and every organisation could be doing more with the data they hold. Traditional middleware and integration products require a high level of investment, both in terms of expensive software licenses and also because they require highly technical skillsets in order to be effective. 

SPINR attacks the data integration problem from a very different angle, putting the power into the hands of the people who understand their data most. It acts as a virtual database for your company, pulling together all of those strands and fragments of data into a unified view, that can then drive your digital transformation initiatives. Further, the economies of scale offered by our cloud platform, means that our pricing is accessible to all organisations, not just large enterprises.

How much will it cost users? – and why is it worth the investment? 

SPINR packages start from as little as £500 a month. Every business that starts on that package should see an almost instant return on investment, whether that be simply through the time saved from manual data management processes (often driven from Excel spreadsheets) or through gaining new insight on their customer data that was previously unavailable. Our mission is to put the power of enterprise integration into the hands of every ambitious organisation.

In order to demonstrate our belief in SPINR, we offer a free 30-day trial for people to begin using the platform, with no commitment to purchase. This allows them to see for themselves the huge potential of deploying an intelligent core into their business, that can connect and orchestrate data, ensuring their digital transformation strategy delivers on its promises.