An up-and-coming entrepreneur says young people are behind left behind by a tech industry hungry for fresh talent.
Carl Wong is the CEO of LivingLens, an artificially intelligent video platform which helps brands such as Virgin, Netflix, Colgate and the BBC gain a deeper understanding of their customers.
The Liverpool-based firm has just made a raft of new commercial hires across its offices in New York and Toronto as it targets the huge North American market.
Wong says the 鈥渉eartbeat鈥� of the company he founded in 2013 is in Liverpool 鈥� but he is expecting great challenges ahead when it comes to attracting further talent.
鈥淲e鈥檝e fought tooth and nail over the last few years to build a world-class engineering team in Liverpool,鈥� he told 老九品茶Cloud. 鈥淲e’re at the cutting-edge of what we do and we鈥檙e going to begin to struggle soon to build the team out further.
鈥淭here has been access to talent so far because companies like Sony pulled out of the city a number of years ago. There is also great retention of our universities’ graduates.
鈥淗owever the聽Liverpool tech community is growing and growing; it can only be sustained in the short-term by the legacy that was left by the likes of Sony. The talent pipeline聽needs fuelling.
鈥淚t鈥檚 a real challenge: young people are being left behind in terms of how difficult it is to get a job in the market. As a nation we have to think about arming our young people with workplace-ready skills 鈥� and especially coding.鈥�
Citing industry-led education initiative Agent Academy鈥檚 12-week courses which help prepare graduates for the workplace, he added: 鈥淲e need a fundamental rethink about how to get them involved in the digital and tech industry.鈥�
LivingLens, named as one of our 鈥�101 Tech Start-up Disrupters鈥� last year, is currently hiring data scientists and engineers for its Liverpool team as well as commercial staff for its London base.
However, more than 40 per cent of its revenue now comes from North America so it has built a seven-strong commercial team across the Atlantic.
鈥淭hat鈥檚 been grown from here in the UK,鈥� said Wong. 鈥淭he reality is that North America is the largest consumer and tech market in the world by quite some way [so] we’ve hired people who know the industry deeply.
鈥淲e’ve got to aggressively grow the value of our relationships through those guys over the next year or two and add to those people as well.鈥�
Wong backed Liverpool Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram’s ambitions to connect the region with North America and described the industry experience of聽the politician’s聽team聽as “breathtaking”.聽Claiming that聽past growth strategies have not been followed through due to city politics,聽he said he聽hopes聽Rotheram’s wider geographical聽remit聽will allow him to turn soundbites into action.
The company has secured 拢2.5m of funding to date. It allows clients to get to the core of how customers feel by capturing their feedback on video and analysing it for emotion and tone of speech.
鈥淲e’re all becoming much more comfortable with filming ourselves and giving feedback on that basis,鈥� Wong explained.
鈥淲e鈥檝e helped our clients change the way they schedule staff rotas; the packaging on their products and the actual products themselves; the ingredients in meals, such as more sauce; and how they advertise.
鈥淧eople just say more on video 鈥� when you scale that up to thousands of people, it gives a much deeper insight into why people feel the way they do.鈥�