Sramana Mitra: Let’s say I had my first Huddle account set up because I’m a client of WPP. My employer is also going to use Huddle, what happens? Do you create duplicate accounts? How does that resolve? Andy McLoughlin: You have your own account. You’re paid for by whoever is managing your account. If you’re
Alastair Mitchell: There’s been lots of news flicking around about how people’s entire personal online lives have been hacked through telephone phishing. Companies like Apple and Amazon who have incredibly strong hardware, software, and security in place have their security negotiated because the processes they had in place allowed a human operator to give out key
Andy McLoughlin: The other key trend is the mobile trend. The way that people expect to work has changed. The idea of the office as ‘four walls that you’re in from nine to five and forget about when you leave’ has disappeared. I think we are all 24-hour knowledge workers now. Combine that with the
Sramana Mitra: Interesting. That’s very clear. Obviously, SharePoint has been one of the main Intranet and Extranet building tools in the market. What else do you view within your space?
Alastair Mitchell: Being able to access and share work information in a very social and collaborative way is a huge theme. We are owning that middle space around secure collaboration internally and externally. As a result, we get to work with some amazing customers. 80% of the central U.K. government use Huddle and we also
Andy McLoughlin: We took some angel money quite early on from a guy that I worked for. Charles McGregor had a business called Fibernet in U.K., which he eventually sold to Global Crossing. Bucking the trend in the U.K. where angel investments wasn’t a big thing, he bet his cash on us and that allowed
If you are wondering what is happening to enterprise collaboration as cloud, mobile, and social trends converge, this interview is an in-depth study of one of the most exciting startups in the field. Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with introducing our audience to Huddle. Tell us about you guys. Where do you come from? How did