Newcastle Startup Week

What will the technological society look like in five years’ time? A look into PROTO: The Emerging Centre of Technology provides a flavour of dedicated North East entrepreneurs developing their visions using the latest technologies. On ‘day 2’ of Newcastle Startup Week, these entrepreneurs will be sharing their stories at our Immersive Tech showcase. Let’s meet them!

This week we sat down with Peter and Angela from SUB 10, who are disrupting the education and training industry by improving user learning experience using immersive technology.

1. Hi Peter and Angela. How does your business use technology to help others?

Using immersive technologies such as virtual reality allows us to place the student at the heart of the learning experience.  It is a well known fact that “learning by doing” is the most effective method and early studies show that learners placed in a virtual reality environment will retain 80% of the information they are shown up to a year later.  So we believe by harnessing immersive technologies we will increase the engagement and effectiveness of training for employers and employees alike.

2. How is your business disrupting the industry?

By creating fresh, engaging learning experiences that last less than 10minutes each but that still fit together to form an effective curriculum and taking advantage of established learning mechanics to level and pace the student’s experience.  We believe that we can bring a new level of effectiveness and evaluation to learning, that will bring a higher return on training (ROT) for employers and more engaging and effective for students.

3. What would you do again if you were to re-start your business journey tomorrow?

I would definitely attend Newcastle Startup Week again…let me explain that!  The most important thing is to give your business a sound foundation and quickly build a support network.  Work through a lean start-up process, get a good accountant and solicitor, choose a suitable “home” that provides added value i.e. we are based at PROTO which has the tech and community that is quite unique.  Then hook into the digital community and support bodies such as VRTGO labs, Digital Union, Digital Catapult – you will chat and discover a world of advice to help you jump forward.  All of this you can learn and start to make the contacts at Newcastle Startup Week in one amazing 5 day period.

4. What would you definitely not do again if you were to start another business?

Focus too much on the set-up and ignore getting the message out to potential customers until you are ready to launch.  It is a real shock to the system how much you can go back to point zero in terms of customers and product to show once you are a new start-up.  Yes, it is vitally important to set-up correctly but you need to get something to show and display to potential customers and you need to start those conversations asap.  Building a sales pipeline takes time, especially as a new unproven business, so the sooner you start the better.

5. From your experience, what are the important dynamics of founding teams?

I think for Angela and myself at SUB 10, the most important thing is having a common passion and believing 100% in what you are trying to achieve.  It is also very useful to have skills that both add things to the founder “mix”.  So Angela has a design background and is creative,  I have a production background and I am very practical, so designing and building new projects has a strong foundation, we also both have similar levels of experience within the industry.  Then of course what any start-up team needs…self-belief, sense of humour and determination.

Want to know more?

Visit the SUB 10 website to learn more about their education and training programmes.

You can also be part of the SUB 10 community by following them on Twitter @SUB10Learning, liking them on Facebook at Facebook.com/SUB10Learning & following them on Instagram at Instagram.com/sub10learning.