NOTES FRO
M FOUNDER
S

THE ALCHE
MISTS

Issue 02 Vol. 0
2
STARTUP S
TORIES
STARTUP STORIESNotes from Founders: The AlchemistsThere’s no magic formula for creating a successful business,
but a lot can be learned from the founders you’re about to
meet. From conjuring a global brand out of thin air, to taking
sci-fi from abstract to reality, they’re applying fresh thinking
that’s never short of a few surprises.
05
Discover how this French startup
is disrupting legacy transportation
systems by ushering in a new era
of autonomous vehicles.
04
Be inspired by a former
university professor who’s using
cryptocurrency to help customers
fight intellectual property piracy.
01
Read how one founder left a
career in commodities trading to
start a business out of her living
room that’s now transforming the
bulk shipping industry.
02
03
Learn how this founder took a university
project, and grew it into an award-
winning business that helps companies
automate financial auditing workflows.
The Alchemists
Find out why it was third-time lucky for
a Finnish games startup, whose global
hit has been downloaded over
10 million times.
1
STARTUP STORIESNotes from Founders: Shipamaxshipamax
small
giant
GAMES
CUSTOS
NAVYA
xain
Making waves
in shipping
‘My first business was a failed
university project’
For most of my life, I’ve wanted to start
a company, and I had my first attempt
while I was at the University of Bath.
Four of us created a website for people
to meet language exchange partners.
Unfortunately, we were pretty clueless
about technology and didn’t have any
idea about what we were doing, so the
site was pretty crap. It ended up being a
typical university project that never really
took off.
Jenna Brown and Fabian Blaicher founded Shipamax in March
2016 with one main aim – to transform the bulk shipping
industry through technology. The pair graduated from the
Y Combinator startup accelerator a year later, securing a funding
round of $2.5 million to create cutting-edge machine learning
technology for the shipping industry.
Shipamax reduces manual administration, by extracting and
organizing key data from the thousands of emails and files
supply chain companies receive each day. The startup has 10
staff and is headquartered in London.
After learning the ropes at London-
based startups Adzuna and GoCardless,
Jenna Brown teamed up with former
colleague Fabian Blaicher to launch
Shipamax. Jenna lives in north London
and on rare days off, can be found
scaling the walls at the nearby Castle
Climbing Center.
Jenna Brown
Co-founder of Shipamax
2
STARTUP STORIESNotes from Founders: Shipamaxshipamax
small
giant
GAMES
CUSTOS
NAVYA
xain
‘Working for other startups gave me
crucial experience’
I was born in Bolton, in the north of
England, but moved near London with my
family when I was four, so that’s where I
call home. I worked for the commodities
firm RWE Supply & Trading for a while,
but I found the London tech startup scene
so exciting and wanted to be a part of it. I
left RWE to work for Adzuna (a job search
portal), and then GoCardless, which is now
huge. Spending time at those startups was
like learning by osmosis, as I got to see
how everything fit together and learned
about all the functions of a small business.
‘I’d never seen anything that made me
want to quit my job’
I’ve always been the kind of person who
brainstorms new ideas, but there was
never anything that really made me
want to quit my career and jump in the
deep end until Shipamax. I’d met Fabian
Blaicher at RWE and we’d kept in touch.
He came to me with this idea for a tech
company that could revolutionize the
logistics industry. We did some research
into bulk shipping and container shipping,
and I realized this was something I’d give
up a secure job for.
‘It wasn’t about having an idea and
charging in’
At first, we had conflicting ideas about
which markets to focus on. I thought
we should target the container market,
because the companies were smaller
and it’d be easier to get in the door.
Fabian thought we should focus on the
bulk market. When we looked into it
properly, the container market was super-
competitive and low-margin. There were
no real tech players in the bulk market
and the margins are larger on every deal,
so it was the right direction to go. Having
that insight was crucial. It wasn’t a case
of having an idea and just charging in
head first – we did our homework, sought
advice and kept talking things over until
everything made sense.
‘My parents thought I was crazy’
It was a market that none of our friends
knew anything about and our families
weren’t exactly happy about the idea of
us quitting good jobs to launch a startup.
Mine were like: ‘What are you doing?!’
‘Joining Y Combinator changed
everything’
We launched the company in 2016. We
were working out of our living rooms
and it was a case of: wake up, work, go
to bed. Not fun. Things changed for us
when we went over to the US to take part
in Y Combinator in early 2017. We almost
didn’t go though. I’d been to a conference
hosted by Y Combinator and filled in the
application form, but we weren’t sure the
program would be right for us. We wanted
to be UK-focused, and I was worried the
incubator would be too US-centric. But we
spoke to people who’d been through the
program and they were so overwhelmingly
positive about it, fanatical even, that we
changed our minds. It ended up being a
lot of fun.
3
STARTUP STORIESNotes from Founders: Shipamaxshipamax
small
giant
GAMES
CUSTOS
NAVYA
xain
‘Speak to people who’ve gone through
what you’re going through’
I definitely drank the Kool Aid at Y
Combinator. The best thing about it is
meeting people who’ve been through
what you’re going through. Their advice
is authentic. In business, you seem to
get a lot of advice from people who
haven’t started something from nothing
themselves. It’s very different running
sales and marketing at a company that
already has a great product. When you’re
starting from the bottom, sometimes
you need guidance from people who’ve
been there and come out the other side.
We came back to London so much more
energized.
‘We had to change our business model’
When we first started Shipamax,
we wanted to be a brokerage house
that helped firms book ships and
use technology to take care of the
transactions. It took a while to realize
some of the assumptions we had about
the market were wrong, and a lot of the
actions we thought could be automated,
couldn’t. It’s so important to understand
and question your assumptions.
That was a really difficult time. We’d
raised a bit of money, which kept the
lights on, but it wasn’t easy. We only had
enough money to keep going for another
five months or so – there wasn’t a lot of
runway left. We knew the business wasn’t
working and we needed to get a return for
our investors. You can either keep going
on the same path and run out of cash, or
you can make a change.
We ended up changing our business
model completely and moved from being
a broker to a pure software company. We
knew our new idea had a shot, so we went
full force into making the change. We
didn’t know if the new thing would work,
only that the old thing wasn’t going to.
‘It took us a year to get our first
paying client’
Shipamax was a slow burner. Our first
employee came onboard three months
after we launched, but it was almost
another year until we could hire anyone
else. And it seemed an age until our first
paying client arrived in mid-2017.
Even though we didn’t secure revenue
during the first year, there were people
using the product, so we had feedback
on what we needed to do to get people
to buy it. So those 12 months certainly
weren’t wasted. We could see we were
building something there was a genuine
need for.
‘Listen to your customers’
You have to adapt to your market. It’s
very easy when you have an idea, or when
things are going well, to just keep going
blindly in that direction. We learned from
customer feedback and have made a
fundamentally better product.
4
STARTUP STORIESNotes from Founders: Shipamaxshipamax
small
giant
GAMES
CUSTOS
NAVYA
xain
Shipamax was formed in 2016
by Jenna Brown and Fabian
Blaicher.
The company is based in
London and has 10 employees.
In 2017, Jenna and Fabian
raised $2.5 million in seed
funding.
The pair graduated from the
2017 Y Combinator accelerator
in Mountain View.
Shipamax uses Amazon
Redshift and AWS Lambda for
data warehousing and coding.
www.shipamax.com
At a glance
‘We were ignoring what became our core
selling point’
In 2018, we realized the main value people
were getting from our software was the
ability to extract and restructure the data
from their emails. Shipping companies get
up to 5,000 emails each day. We provide
an API that extracts the data from emails,
structures it and feeds it into whatever
system the company uses. It removes
the need for repetitive data entry tasks.
We’d pretty much been burying that
automation service, but realized we could
scale much faster if we put it at the center
of our proposition.
‘We had a lot of tech problems so
switched to AWS and never looked back’
AWS has been vital to our success. We
initially used another provider, but we
had so many problems, including a lot
of downtime. We also wanted to use a
database they didn’t support. We needed
to switch in order to scale rapidly, and
with AWS, suddenly everything we needed
was there.
Our clients are huge logistics companies.
They don’t really care what the technology
is – they just want it to work! For some
parts of the system, we use complex,
state-of-the-art machine learning
technology, but for other bits, the tech is
simpler. It’s all about picking the right tool
for the job.
‘If I could rewind the clock...’
If I was to start the company again, there
are a few things I would do differently.
First, I’d hire more experienced people
earlier on, as that experience really
comes through in the quality of the work.
Second, I’d speak to investors only when
we were definitely ready to raise money,
so we weren’t wasting our time. Finally, I’d
look really critically at the assumptions we
made. We could have improved our model
much earlier if we’d really examined how
close our assumptions were to the truth.
‘I’m always learning how to be a better
boss’
We’ve just entered a new market, freight
forwarding, and are increasing the size of
our data team. We started with two of us
in a living room and now there are 10 of
us in an actual office in London.
I’m still trying to navigate how to be a
manager and how to communicate exactly
what we’re doing so all this info sitting in
my head is understood by the team. It’s
important to be really clear about your
expectations, so your staff know where
they need to get to and how to get there.
We work very hard as a team, there are no
big egos and we’re enormously positive
about what the future will bring for us.
I don’t get much time off,
but when I do, I go climbing.
I don’t always know how
I’m going to get down,
but I know I’ll be OK. It
takes my mind off things.
Spotify account & internet connection required
CONCENTRATE
Falling
Haim
CHILL-OUT
22
Taylor Swift
Hello
Martin Solveig
& Dragonett
GET PUMPED
FOUNDER STORIES
PLAYLIST
Founder Stories
5
STARTUP STORIESNotes from Founders: Small Giant Gamesshipamax
small
giant
GAMES
CUSTOS
NAVYA
xain
By combining great playability with a solid acquisition
strategy, Small Giant Games has achieved a rare feat –
a mobile game that’s as profitable, as it is popular. The
company’s smash-hit success, ‘Empires and Puzzles’, has been
downloaded more than 10 million times.
Small Giant Games was founded in 2013 by Markus Halttunen,
Otto Nieminen, Timo Soininen, Tommi Vallisto, and Ilkka
Juopperi. The Finnish company was acquired by social
game developer Zynga in January 2019 for an implied total
valuation of approximately $700 million.
‘I knew at 10 years old that I wanted to
create computer games’
A long, long time ago, I played my first
game on my father’s work computer. He
had some top games of the 1980s, like
‘Alley Cat’ and ‘Paratrooper’. But it was
only when I got my hands on my own
Commodore 128, a gift from my parents,
that I became hooked. I was about 10
years old. It was then that I knew I wanted
to program games myself.
‘It was too good an opportunity to miss’
I worked at Sulake – the Finnish company
behind the social game ‘Habbo Hotel’. The
first few years were great, but towards
the end of my tenure, the company
experienced some very challenging times.
I was in the management team and had
to lay off a lot of people. Some of my
colleagues suggested founding our own
gaming company and I figured it was just
too good an opportunity to miss. Over
the years, we’ve brought over some of the
most talented people I’ve ever worked
with.
Creating m
obile game
s
that reach
millions
It was a case of third-time lucky for
CTO Markus Halttunen, co-founder of
Small Giant Games. After releasing two
underperforming games, Markus and
the team implemented past lessons
to create the incredibly successful
role-playing mobile game – ‘Empires
and Puzzles’. Markus lives in Helsinki,
Finland with his wife and two children.
Markus Halttunen
Co-founder of Small Giant Games
6
STARTUP STORIESNotes from Founders: Small Giant Gamesshipamax
small
giant
GAMES
CUSTOS
NAVYA
xain
‘Sometimes you have to change
direction’
Our studio was founded on the idea that
small, talented teams can accomplish
giant things. I wouldn’t call our first two
games a success though. ‘Oddwings
Escape’ was a beautiful flying game and
it got a lot of publicity, but the numbers
weren’t there. Looking back, it took us
far too long to get it out to market. We
developed it for almost two years. We
should have gone to market at least half
a year earlier and gotten feedback from
the players to see if it resonated. Basically,
we should have developed it with the
community rather than in a vacuum.
Our next game, ‘Rope Racers’, performed
better on all the metrics as it took on
our learnings, but I still wouldn’t call it a
runaway success.
‘It was a humbling experience’
One of the most challenging things in
my career has been the realization that
excellent technology is nothing without a
great concept. If you can’t acquire users
profitably, then it doesn’t matter how
beautiful your code is or how scalable your
architecture is. It was a pretty humbling
experience for me personally.
‘Cherry pick the stuff that works’
We realized we needed to change the
focus of the company and decided to think
big – we’d create games that players could
enjoy for years. So we built a completely
different game – the role-play smash-
hit ‘Empires and Puzzles’. We were able
to take all the technology that we’d
implemented for the previous games,
cherry pick the stuff that worked and get
rid of the things we weren’t happy with.
7
STARTUP STORIESNotes from Founders: Small Giant Gamesshipamax
small
giant
GAMES
CUSTOS
NAVYA
xain
‘He’s intuition-driven; I’m data-driven’
To create the best products, you need to
bring together different kinds of people.
I’m a great software developer, but not a
great game designer. Thankfully, we were
able to hire a new designer for ‘Empires
and Puzzles’. He’s a lot more intuitive than
I am and very creative, whereas I’m more
data-driven. With ‘Oddwings Escape’, it
was always a little bit unclear what kind
of game we were trying to make; with
‘Empires and Puzzles’, we had a much
clearer vision, and the designer knew what
we were building right from the start.
‘A great product is only half the story’
Having a great product really is only half
the story. You also need to be good at
user acquisition, analytics, and community
management. You can’t rely on Apple or
Google featuring your game and even if
they do, that moment in the spotlight
won’t last long. Therefore, you need a
strategy for acquiring users and the right
social gameplay to engage them. Analytics
are crucial; you need to know which
advertising channels will attract users
who will enjoy the game and be willing to
spend money on it.
8
STARTUP STORIESNotes from Founders: Small Giant Gamesshipamax
small
giant
GAMES
CUSTOS
NAVYA
xain
‘A cloud-based platform is a no-brainer’
A cloud-based platform is a no-brainer
for a startup. You have limited funds
in the beginning and you never know
if your game is going to work out or
not, so you don’t want to spend a lot of
money on hardware. Plus, if your product
actually succeeds as it did with ‘Empires
and Puzzles’, you’re going to have a real
problem if you can’t scale up quickly. A
rapid increase in user numbers could break
the game. With AWS, we’re able to scale
our games up at the press of a button.
‘I wanted to give up at times’
It’s hard being an entrepreneur. There
were moments when I thought about
giving up. When we did the first two
games, we poured our hearts into them.
You’ve got to believe in your products
because if you don’t believe, why are you
making them? But then you start seeing
from the metrics that they’re not going
to work and you’re losing money, so
you question yourself: ‘Do we still have
a chance to succeed?’ I’m glad I made
myself carry on. We took the learnings,
rolled up our sleeves and started to work
on the next game. I really appreciate how
everybody in the team moved on from
those two failures, looked to the future
and tried again.
‘I’m very persistent’
If I set myself to doing something, I
actually get it done – I’m very persistent!
As for my other strengths, I’ve been doing
this stuff for quite a long time, so I know
my technology. But at the same time, I’m
good with the softer stuff, like hiring and
leading teams.
9
STARTUP STORIESNotes from Founders: Small Giant Gamesshipamax
small
giant
GAMES
CUSTOS
NAVYA
xain
‘Our employees have power’
When it comes to hiring, I look for people
who can be their own managers. We have
almost zero hierarchy in the company.
It’s very flat and teams are the ones who
make the decisions – not the CEO and not
me. Our employees have great power and
great responsibility, so they need to have
initiative.
‘You’ve got to think long-term and focus
on what you do best’
We founded Small Giant Games because
we love games and we wanted to build
something of our own. But you’ve got
to think long-term – what is your end-
game? Realistically, it’s either going
public or selling to another company.
We’ve had four investment rounds, so
we’ve been raising money throughout
the lifetime of the company. We now
operate as a separate studio within our
parent company – Zynga. By leveraging
Zynga’s wider expertise and support, we
can amplify our reach and focus on what
we do best – making great games. We get
to keep our identity, culture and creative
independence, so from the perspective
of our employees, almost nothing has
changed.
‘Software can make the world a better
place’
It’s rare that I get spare time between
running Small Giant Games and spending
time with my wife and children. But when
I do, I like to work on other software
development projects. I like the idea of
using software to change the world and
ultimately, make it a better place.
Small Giant Games was
launched in 2013 by Markus
Halttunen, Otto Nieminen,
Timo Soininen, Tommi Vallisto,
and Ilkka Juopperi.
Its mobile game, ‘Empires and
Puzzles’, has been downloaded
more than 10 million times.
The company has 48
employees and is based in
Helsinki, Finland.
Small Giant Games was
acquired for an implied total
valuation of approximately
$700 million by social game
developer Zynga in January
2019.
Small Giant Games uses AWS
for scale and flexibility.
www.smallgiantgames.com
At a glance
Spotify account & internet connection required
CONCENTRATE
Let There Be
Light
Mike Oldfield
CHILL-OUT
Faded
Alan Walker
FOUNDER STORIES
PLAYLIST
Founder Stories
Don’t Stop Me
Now
Queen
GET PUMPED
10
STARTUP STORIESNotes from Founders: Xainshipamax
small
giant
GAMES
CUSTOS
NAVYA
xain
Founded in 2017, XAIN specializes in federated machine
learning that helps enterprises share knowledge while
preserving data privacy. Its offices in Berlin, Stuttgart, and
Oxford deliver services worldwide. The platform began as a
university research project to develop a privacy-preserving
network infrastructure for consolidating AI models, and still
maintains a strong focus on research. In its first year, XAIN
prevailed over 120 startups to win the Porsche Innovation
Contest, which led to opportunities with Daimler, Infineon,
Siemens and other global brands.
Helping firms
share knowledge
‘XAIN started as a university project’
In 2014, I was studying mathematics and
software engineering at Oxford University
and working on a research project focused
on decentralizing AI. With the help of my
PhD supervisor, Professor Michael Huth,
one of my co-founders who is now our
CTO at XAIN, I realized there was a lot of
potential in the idea and decided to start a
company.
Leif-Nissen Lundbæk, 27, was a student
at Oxford University when he realized
his research project had potential
beyond academia. Coming from a family

of entrepreneurs, he wasted no time
in teaming up with a co-founder, Felix
Hahmann, to launch XAIN. On his days
off, Leif enjoys painting and architecture
,
and is trying to recreate the essence of
Oxford in the home he’s building for
himself in Berlin.
Leif-Nissen Lundbaek
CEO & Co-founder of XAIN
11
STARTUP STORIESNotes from Founders: Xainshipamax
small
giant
GAMES
CUSTOS
NAVYA
xain
‘We help businesses save money, share
knowledge, and reduce risk’
Our network allows companies to
exchange knowledge without exchanging
private or sensitive information. In
essence, we keep the data where it is, but
consolidate the knowledge so multiple
companies can profit from it. Our key
product is an expandable AI network
that companies can use for specific
applications.
For our first industry vertical, we’re
automating the entire financial auditing
process, starting with accounts payable.
Traditional auditing is cumbersome and
extremely labor intensive. There’s also
room for human error. With our network,
all the internal financial transactions of
a company are checked ad-hoc, rather
than just once or a few times each year.
The cost is very low compared to manual
auditing and, of course, we can offer
greater reliability in terms of ensuring
compliance, reporting internal fraud, and
identifying false information.
‘Winning a major startup competition
was a game-changer’
We founded the company with a small
team of researchers and engineers in
2017. One of the first things we did was
enter the Porsche Innovation Contest.
We were competing against around 120
startups from all over the world, most
of which were already quite big. We
entered thinking: ‘If nothing else, it’s all
good experience,’ but were one of only
five startups invited to pitch at Porsche’s
headquarters. To our complete surprise,
we ended up winning the competition.
It was incredible and completely
unexpected – this huge, global company
understood our vision and believed we
could build this thing. It was a complete
game-changer and offered vital validation
for what we were doing. Since then,
we’ve developed a close relationship with
Porsche and continue to work together.
‘Staying focused is the most important
thing’
We made one big mistake in the early
days – we split our time and team to
build technology to solve two different
problems. In the end, we had to cut one
of the products and the people working
on it. Making that decision was a painful
experience. My main piece of advice to
small startups is to stay sharply focused
and put all your resources into one thing
at a time, as it makes it a lot easier to
succeed.
‘Business isn’t about what you think –
it’s about what your customer thinks’
As an entrepreneur, you always have to
be thinking about customers, even if you
don’t have them yet. Often, there’s a
huge difference between the problem a
customer has and the problem you think
they have, so it’s crucial to talk directly
to the people you’re aiming to help.
Otherwise, you risk creating something
to solve a problem that you don’t fully
understand, and your product might not
prove as helpful as you think. Build your
product with one or two customers to get
it right before you try scaling.
‘I love Porsche Oldtimer
and Mercedes-Benz SL
cars from the 1960s. We
work with Porsche now
and I keep a model of a
Porsche Oldtimer on my
desk for inspiration.’
12
STARTUP STORIESNotes from Founders: Xainshipamax
small
giant
GAMES
CUSTOS
NAVYA
xain
‘We play ‘good cop/bad cop’ when
raising funds’
My co-founder, Felix Hahmann, and I
both bring passion and dedication to the
company, but beyond that, we try to play
to our individual strengths. When we had
a seed round early last year, we pitched
to a famous German fund called Earlybird
Venture Capital. I talked about our story
and tried to get them excited about
investing in us, while Felix played more
of the ‘bad cop’ role and went through all
the nitty-gritty details. That’s something I
could never have done.
‘You can end up with zero investment if
one small detail isn’t right’
As the level of funding you’re looking
for increases, the rounds become more
challenging. You never truly know
whether you’re going to succeed at
getting a deal until the paperwork is
signed. You can go through so many
discussions and negotiations, but end up
at the finish line with zero investment
because just one detail doesn’t fit well
with what the investor is looking for. It’s
hugely disappointing to work so hard on
something for months and months, and
not have anything to show for all those
hours you’ve put in.
‘Running a company opens your mind to
new perspectives’
You take a lot of risks as a founder,
and you have to be prepared to back
the decisions you make, even when
other people don’t agree. I think it’s
critical to consider and understand the
implications of your decisions from as
many perspectives as possible. I’m much
better at doing that now than I was at the
beginning. You have to open your mind if
you want to lead a company successfully.
I’ve learned more over the past two years
than at any other time in my life.
‘We hire fearless, passionate people who
think for themselves’
To get a special product, you need a
special team that consists of distinct
individuals rather than carbon copies. We
look to hire highly intelligent people who
aren’t afraid to think for themselves and
share their opinions. They need to be able
to make decisions fast and act fast, so I
can be confident delegating tasks and
responsibilities. They also need to have
a passion for both the technology and
the business side. We want people who
truly love what they do and don’t see it
as ‘work’. Teamwork is one of our biggest
strength – except when it comes to a
round of Mario Kart after lunch!
‘I’m from a family of entrepreneurs’
I think it was inevitable that I would
start a company at some point, because
everyone in my family is an entrepreneur,
but it happened a little quicker than
planned. I grew up watching my parents
and grandparents build and run their
businesses, and saw the challenges they
had to overcome. I’m fortunate to have
people in my personal life who I can turn
to for support and guidance whenever
I need it. Believe me, you learn to
appreciate free advice quickly when you’re
running a startup!
13
STARTUP STORIESNotes from Founders: Xainshipamax
small
giant
GAMES
CUSTOS
NAVYA
xain
‘AWS was a natural choice for us’
AWS infrastructure is state-of-the-art. It’s
extremely secure, flexible, and reliable,
and the performance and customer service
is incredible. We chose AWS because it’s
one of the largest networks out there.
We’re working closely with Porsche and
Volkswagen, and they use AWS for a lot
of their IT, so it helps to be on the same
infrastructure.
The service that’s helped us most with
scaling quickly is Amazon Elastic Container
Service (Amazon ECS). We use it to deploy
containerized applications quickly and
reliably using the open-source system
Kubernetes. Reliability is so important,
whether we’re doing deployments for
customers or ourselves. A decade ago, we
just couldn’t have built the same company
as rapidly, partly because we wouldn’t
have had access to the AWS cloud.
‘I relax by spending time with my
grandmother’
Finding the time and space to relax
without thinking about work is really
important. My grandmother is a
professional painter with her own gallery,
so when I’m not working, I like painting
and chatting with her about completely
different things to technology. My time at
Oxford inspired my love of architecture.
I’m currently building a house that I
designed, trying to bring something
from the time I spent in the UK back to
Germany.
‘One day, I’ll move abroad and have a
vineyard’
I lived in New Zealand for a while and I
loved the hikes, the landscape, and the
vineyards – I dream about moving there
to start my own vineyard one day. I’m
afraid of flying though, which is quite
inconvenient when I live so far away from
my favorite country!
Leif-Nissen Lundbæk, Felix
Hahmann, and Michael Huth
incorporated XAIN in 2017.
XAIN utilizes federated
machine learning to help
enterprises share knowledge
while preserving data privacy.
The company has raised €6
million ($6.8 million) so far.
XAIN won the inaugural
Porsche Innovation Contest in
2017.
XAIN uses Amazon ECS and
Amazon RDS, amongst other
services.
www.xain.io
At a glance
Spotify account & internet connection required
CONCENTRATE
Howling
Around My
Happy Home
Daniel Norgren
CHILL-OUT
Trans Europe
Express (2009
Remastered
Version)
Kraftwerk
FOUNDER STORIES
PLAYLIST
Founder Stories
Leave A Trace
CVRCHES
GET PUMPED
14
STARTUP STORIESNotes from Founders: Custosshipamax
small
giant
GAMES
CUSTOS
NAVYA
xain
Launched in 2013, Custos uses cryptocurrency technology
to fight the piracy of movies, ebooks and confidential
documents. Custos embeds a bitcoin ‘bounty’ of around $5-10
directly into content, providing an incentive to discover leaked
media and report it. When the reward is claimed, content
owners are notified and given the identity of the person or
organization responsible for the leak. The 11-strong team
is based at LaunchLab – Stellenbosch University’s startup
incubator in South Africa.
Taking on the
pirates
‘My life in academia was pretty set, but
everything changed’
I was always an academic. I did an
electronic engineering degree at
Stellenbosch University, then a PhD and
finally ended up lecturing there. My
life was based around the university.
But one day, some colleagues and I
stumbled across a new invention that had
commercial value and I decided to hang up
my mortar board and go into business.
‘As we stood around drinking coffee,
throwing ideas out, inspiration struck’
That eureka moment came in October
2013. I was standing at the coffee machine
with the two guys who would become my
co-founders – Fred Lutz, a student in our
research lab, and Herman Engelbrecht,
another professor. We were musing on
how to combine our research with these
new hot topics everyone was buzzing
about – cryptocurrency and blockchain.
Suddenly, we realized cryptocurrency
and private keys could be used to protect
media, which is almost the opposite of
what they were intended for.
We wrote up a patent disclosure the same
day and sat down with the patent lawyers
a few days later. The next thing we knew,
we were in business.
Gert-Jan van Rooyen (G-J) was
entrenched in academic life as an
associate professor in South Africa’s
Stellenbosch University when inspiration

struck. He quit the classroom to launch
Custos with a research student and
a colleague. G-J now splits his time
between home in South Africa, where
he enjoys hiking the mountains of
Helderberg, and Los Angeles, where he’s

often found in The Last Bookstore.
Gert-Jan van Rooyen
Founder of Custos
shipamax
small
giant
GAMES
CUSTOS
NAVYA
xain
It’s an absolutely amazing environment
to work in – a brilliant hub for
entrepreneurial activity. You’re close to the
university and so close to talent. Potential
team members and other entrepreneurs
are right on your doorstep. We even met
our angel investor here.
‘The COO and I have different,
complementary skills’
I thrive in difficult or challenging
environments. I really enjoy motivating
people and solving problems. My co-
founder Fred, our COO, is operationally
much stronger than I am; he keeps
everything together day-to-day in the
company, and makes us a well-oiled
machine. These two complementary
approaches work well for Custos.
15
STARTUP STORIESNotes from Founders: Custos‘Universities are naturally
entrepreneurial breeding grounds’
The seeds of Custos were planted at the
university. Academia tends to be quite an
entrepreneurial environment – you have to
rally troops to get research groups going
and you’re always working towards a goal,
researching and refining until you find
something useful.
‘I said if we could get funding for a year,
I’d quit my job for the business’
We secured a government grant a month
or so after filing the patent. It allowed us
to get the first engineer on the payroll
– employee number one. It also allowed
Fred and I to attend an anti-piracy summit
in LA and get to know the film industry.
My deal was that I would go full-time if we
got enough funding to carry the company
for a year. I needed a bit of a safety net to
care for my family.
‘The university realized it could build
a tech hub’
Stellenbosch and the Western Cape
wanted to become an entrepreneurial
hub, but there was a missing link in the
pipeline that would enable companies to
use the research and ideas coming out
of the university. Luckily, the university
received a large donation from a South
African bank to build a startup incubator.
The government also pitched in and we
found ourselves one of the first resident
companies in a very nice, very large
accelerator on the university campus.
It’s an old part of the university that
was retrofitted into a co-working
space called LaunchLab, and we’re still
there today.

shipamax
small
giant
GAMES
CUSTOS
NAVYA
xain
16
STARTUP STORIESNotes from Founders: Custos‘It’s just a hypothesis until you test it’
Cryptocurrency and blockchain are
complex concepts that haven’t always
attracted positive press coverage. It was
vital that we tested our ideas first, because
we had such scant resources. Many failed
blockchain firms ignored this principle.
The flexibility that AWS gives us, means
we can easily hurdle technological barriers
and stay true to our core academic ethos
– we may think something is a good idea,
but until we can test it and confirm it
works, it’s just a hypothesis.
‘AWS has been there since day one’
Right from the outset, even from the
beginning of my academic career, AWS
infrastructure has been central to the
dream. It brings the cost of starting
a technology business right down. It
cost us practically nothing to get our
first watermarking service, blockchain
management service, and customer front-
end platform up on the cloud – meaning
we could test with clients anywhere in the
world.
‘If what you build works, you need to be
able to scale rapidly’
There was the nice risk that if our idea
actually worked, we’d need to be able to
scale quickly. AWS removed any worry
about scaling from day one. We were able
to keep costs down and handle the need
to scale in an elastic way with Amazon
Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) and
Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon
S3). Plus, when you switch on transfer
acceleration, S3 performs wonderfully as a
way to transmit high-quality content from
one part of the globe to another.
‘We needed to hide the bounty’
With fairly few headaches, we went from
an early prototype to seeing a customer
uploading a huge job. The hardest part
of our video protection service is the
watermarking aspect. Watermarking a
feature film requires a lot of processing
and you need to find a place to hide the
bounty – the bitcoin reward that will sniff
out the pirate.
‘Find a market segment and own it’
Another early decision was choosing the
right market segment. As a startup, we
needed to choose one particular niche
and own it. The music industry had its
‘Napster moment’ 18 years ago, so there
was no point in us trying to sell into
that sector. There was real angst around
movie security at the time – everything
was moving to digital and Ultra High-
Definition content was being leaked very
early on in the lifetime of a film, meaning
pirate copies of cinematic quality movies
were everywhere. Film studios actively
wanted new ways to protect their content.
We’d found our market.

shipamax
small
giant
GAMES
CUSTOS
NAVYA
xain
17
STARTUP STORIESNotes from Founders: Custos‘I met a Hollywood producer also into
crypto, who opened doors’
I went to a conference in Amsterdam in
2014, when the cryptocurrency scene
was still in the era of hackers and crypto-
anarchists, and met Brock Pierce, a
luminary in the Bitcoin ecosystem who’s
well known in Hollywood. He was a
former child actor, but is now involved in
production. Brock had the connections we
needed and introduced us to the major
studios.
‘I kept the Hollywood passes as
mementos’
We were fortunate that our government
grant meant we could get on a plane, go
to LA and speak to the market. We met
with all the major studios in Hollywood. As
you can imagine, there is such a rigmarole
around getting the badges that allow you
into a studio lot. Some studios have these
huge, colorful printed cards that say: ‘G-J
has been invited to meet with ‘X’ on the
lot. Please allow him to pass through the
gates.’ I kept all the passes; the memories
of those visits inspire me.
‘It’s a mistake to build first and hope
there is a market later’
While testing is crucial, it’s a mistake to
build things first and then try to sell them
without making sure people are going to
want to buy. My advice to new founders
is to get out of the door and speak to
people as early as possible. Make sure you
understand their problems, so you can
build your product around actual customer
needs.
‘We have a spreadsheet of things that
can kill the company’
From day one, we’ve maintained
something we call the ‘Risk Register’. It’s
a spreadsheet of things that could kill the
company, with risks in one column and
the potential effects those risks could
have in another. Would it be a minor
hiccup or an existential threat that could
send the company under? Issues around
cryptocurrency, especially in the early
days, were at the top of the risk register.
‘We’re still grounded and have a startup
mentality’
I now spend a lot of time in Los Angeles,
as it’s the hub for media technology. LA is
a world away from where we started, but
we’re still grounded. We now have clients
in various niches in entertainment and
education, and deal with films, ebooks
and confidential document protection. By
a certain definition of success – having a
product in the market and solving client
problems – we’re successful. In terms of
big commercial success though, we’re not
quite there yet.

‘In LA, my go-to
place is The Last
Bookstore. I spend
hours there. It’s a
beautifully curated
selection of books
from every genre
and every period in
history’
shipamax
small
giant
GAMES
CUSTOS
NAVYA
xain
18
STARTUP STORIESNotes from Founders: CustosCEO of Custos, G-J van
Rooyen, is a former university
lecturer from Durbanville,
South Africa.
G-J founded Custos in 2013
with a research student, Fred
Lotz, and colleague, Herman
Engelbrecht.
In 2018, Custos won the
Apps Africa award for Best
Blockchain Solution.
Custos uses Amazon EC2
and Amazon S3 to help fight
online piracy.
www.custostech.com
At a glance
‘Hindsight is easy, but you learn through
trial and error’
It’s a wicked thing that you really only
start to understand a problem once you
begin to solve it. It’s perhaps easy to say
in hindsight that we should have tried, for
example, confidential document security
before we tried film protection. But the
only reason we know and understand both
markets now, is because we’ve worked
with them, trying to solve their problems
and therefore winning clients.
‘We can change the media industry’
Long term, I see Custos as the top
company for understanding how bitcoin,
blockchain, and media intersect, beyond
just piracy tracking. We’ve identified an
opportunity to help media companies
run more efficiently and provide better
content. That arena is where we want to
succeed in the next decade. So watch this
space...
Spotify account & internet connection required
CONCENTRATE
Wish You
Were Here
Pink Floyd
CHILL-OUT
FOUNDER STORIES
PLAYLIST
Founder Stories
Get Pumped
Playlist
AWS
GET PUMPED
Free To Do
Whatever
They Say
Virginmarys

19
STARTUP STORIESNotes from Founders: Navyashipamax
small
giant
GAMES
CUSTOS
NAVYA
xain
My first
car was a
Peugeo
t
407. I sti
ll have it
.
Driverless cars were once seen as the preserve of science-
fiction – technology better suited to Hollywood blockbusters
than city streets. NAVYA is helping change that with an array
of smart, shared mobility solutions.
NAVYA develops, manufactures and sells autonomous electric
vehicles that combine cutting-edge robotic, digital, and
driving technologies. Founded in 2014 with a team of just four
developers, NAVYA now boasts 250 employees across offices
in Paris, Lyon and Saline, Michigan.
’Driverless cars offer an entirely new
experience’
NAVYA is disrupting transport services,
but hopefully in a way that people will
accept because we’re cutting pollution
and congestion, and reducing accidents.
Our autonomous shuttles can carry up to
15 passengers, and the cabs carry up to
six. They offer an entirely new experience
for travelers. There’s full connectivity for
example, so you can work on your way to
the office or have an interactive guided
tour of the city. I don’t think everyone is
going to just dump their own cars and
get into driverless ones, but the public is
slowly starting to come around to the idea
of how these vehicles fit into society.
‘Driverless cars are like Amazon Echo
– once people see how they work, the
scepticism vanishes’
We’re a generation that’s naturally
sceptical and used to dealing with fake
information, but we’re also willing to
change our minds quickly. It’s like with
voice technology and Amazon Echo;
people need to experience our vehicles
because when they do, their scepticism
vanishes. The novelty and fear factor
wears off quickly and within minutes of
getting in a driverless car, passengers are
using their phones and talking about the
weather.
As a child, Pascal Lecuyot wanted to
save the planet. Now aged 30, he’s
stayed true to his vision. In 2014, the
Parisian and three colleagues overcame
a series of struggles to launch NAVYA,
which manufactures and commercializes

autonomous electric vehicles in the US
and France. Pascal lives in Paris with his
family, who no longer think he’s crazy
for pursuing his dream.
Pascal Lecuyot
Chief Technology Officer of NAVYA
Driving the futu
re
of autonomous
vehicles
20
STARTUP STORIESNotes from Founders: Navyashipamax
small
giant
GAMES
CUSTOS
NAVYA
xain
‘My family thought I was insane’
When I first starting working on
autonomous technology, my family didn’t
really understand what I was doing; they
thought I was just having fun. After all,
this was 10 years ago and the idea of
driverless cars seemed completely crazy.
But it’s not science fiction, it’s reality
and it’s coming soon. My family and
friends can finally see the benefits of the
technology and they know I’m serious
about what I’m doing.
‘Our technology will change how people
move around cities’
In many French cities, transport systems
are really poor. It can be difficult to even
get to a train station if you don’t have a
car. The gilets jaunes (yellow vest) protests
in France started because of gasoline
prices; people were spending more money
to get to work than they were earning and
they were angry.
I absolutely believe we can solve transport
issues everywhere with what we’re doing
at NAVYA. We envision our shuttles
changing the way people move around
cities, as these vehicles are effective,
clean, and intelligent. They can ease road
congestion in urban centers, as you need
fewer cars on the road and autonomous
vehicles can move closer together.
‘Human error causes so many fatalities.
We want to end that’
Helping people and the planet has been
my vision for the entire 10 years I’ve
been working on autonomous vehicle
technology. I started as an engineering
student in Paris, but it goes back further
than that.
I wanted to work on renewable energy
projects originally, but when I saw the
potential of driverless cars, I knew this
was what I wanted to do with my life and
jumped in with both feet. Autonomous
electric cars have safety benefits as well
as environmental ones, because so many
fatalities on the road are due to human
error or behavior. Taking the driver out of
the equation makes getting from A to B
safer.
21
STARTUP STORIESNotes from Founders: Navyashipamax
small
giant
GAMES
CUSTOS
NAVYA
xain
‘My work has made me a better driver’
You have to put safety first when you’re
designing an autonomous vehicle. You
need to think about braking distances and
collision avoidance strategies. It’s actually
made me a safer driver, as I have a better
understanding of the risks of the road.
‘I was confident in the technology, even
when I thought the company would go
bust’
We worked on a similar project before
NAVYA. We had lots of interest from
prospective customers in the US, Europe,
Asia, and the Middle East, but we were
a small team and we struggled. I really
thought the technology and the project
were more important than the fact our
young business was suffering. Even when
we knew the company would probably
go bankrupt, we carried on working to
achieve something. It almost wasn’t
rational, but I was so confident the
technology would survive no matter what,
and thankfully it did.
In 2014, a new story began and NAVYA
was born. The five of us wanted to create
something entirely new, not just a new
product. We wanted to work with the
entire autonomous vehicle ecosystem in
France.
‘You grow up quickly in business’
It’s certainly not been easy for our team
over the years. We were a young team,
working on a very complex technical
project. We’ve had to grow up quickly.
Personally, I had to learn that adding value
to the business is more important than
just having fun working on one specific
technology. You have to think about the
bigger picture.
‘AWS helps us focus’
Early on, we knew we wanted to share
skills and began to look for partners.
One of the first was AWS. Amazon Elastic
Container Service for Kubernetes (Amazon
EKS) allows us to scale rapidly with
enormous flexibility, as it’s so easy to use.
We also use Amazon Elastic Container
Registry (ECR) for databases and our
application programming interface. AWS
really helps us focus our resources on our
core value proposition.
‘We’re watching every company in this
landscape, large or small’
The largest car manufacturers, such as GM
and Nissan, have the teams and funding
to accelerate, so we have to watch closely
when they make advances and learn from
that. We also talk to very small companies
attempting to achieve specific changes in
driverless vehicles; we share ideas and look
for partnerships in case their technology
could help us.
‘We survived
late nights with
coffee, tea, and
mountains of
sushi’
22
STARTUP STORIESNotes from Founders: Navyashipamax
small
giant
GAMES
CUSTOS
NAVYA
xain
‘Don’t be afraid to ask for outside help
early on’
From my earlier experiences - personally
and within the business, it became clear
that doing something alone or with four
others is very different to coordinating
15 teams of engineers. I think if I’d asked
for help earlier, I would have been able to
change things faster. My advice to the next
generation of innovators is to seek outside
help early on and try to connect with
people who have achieved what you want
to achieve.
‘My goal is to align business priorities
and technologies’
I’m now in charge of multiple teams
as Chief Technology Officer (CTO). My
goal is to align business priorities and
technologies. There are a lot of different
teams working on various aspects of the
technology, such as the battery, doors,
braking system, etc. Some of these teams
aren’t in-house so I have to pull everyone
together.
‘Get your MVP out to market’
You won’t get everything perfect at first,
but you need a minimum viable product
(MVP) – something with a limited set
of features and functions that can be
brought to market. It helps you grow and
quickly achieve milestones, which gives
customers confidence. Our strategy is
based on rapid evolution through external
feedback.
‘Our first design was a driverless shuttle
that moved 100 meters’
Our first prototype was a vehicle moving
with a 100-meter trajectory. It would pick
up passengers and move them to the
next stop. It was just a demo, but showed
us the technology could work and we
knew a breakthrough would change lives
by making our roads safer and our cities
more accessible. Fast forward to today
and we have more than 100 shuttles
around the world and meet a lot of people
who are passionate about autonomous
vehicles. We’re working hard to prove
that driverless vehicles are safe to use
within urban centers and developing new,
innovative designs.
‘Perceptions of success can change
rapidly’
What counts as success for us has quickly
evolved from working models to customer
satisfaction. It’s kind of like the difference
between passing an exam and hitting the
top grade for all your exams. It’s no longer
enough to just create something cool.
23
STARTUP STORIESNotes from Founders: Navyashipamax
small
giant
GAMES
CUSTOS
NAVYA
xain
‘The technology is so exciting’
There are some incredibly exciting things
happening in driverless technology right
now, especially around the capacity for
vehicles to predict accurately what will
happen. Guidance and detection systems,
sensors, cameras, GPS, and odometry (the
measurement of distance), all interact
and are interpreted by deep learning
programs.
There are so many technologies at play,
from artificial intelligence to LiDAR
sensors that fire rapid pulses of laser
light at a surface (some at up to 150,000
pulses per second), all to help guide
where a vehicle with no driver or steering
wheel, should turn. Our vehicles can make
decisions for themselves and that is hugely
exciting.
‘Passion is one of the top things we look
for in staff’
We live and breathe the technology, and
that passion drives us all; it’s definitely
what we look for when we’re hiring. We
want enthusiastic people who like to chat
about the technology during their coffee
break. The driverless industry is moving
so fast and we truly believe that shared,
electric, autonomous vehicles are the
answer to so many problems of modern
city life.
‘A 10-minute break is sometimes all it
takes to see differently’
I don’t get much time off, as my wife
knows and understands, but I take 10
minutes out to meditate when I can. It’s
not a huge amount, but when I’m faced
with a tough decision, I use these periods
to step back and think about things
from a wider perspective, clear my head
and stop letting my feelings cloud my
judgement. Through meditation, I can
think strategically.
NAVYA develops driverless
vehicles to transport goods
and people.
The company was founded in
2014.
It now has more than 250
employees in France and the
United States.
Prior to Navya, CTO Pascal
Lecuyot oversaw the mapping
and localization software
for autonomous shuttles at
European projects CATS and
CityMobil2.
www.navya.tech
At a glance
Spotify account & internet connection required
CONCENTRATE
Nocturnes
No. 13 in C
Minor
Chopin
CHILL-OUT
Glory Box
Portishead
FOUNDER STORIES
PLAYLIST
Founder Stories
Pump It
Black Eyed
Peas
GET PUMPED
STARTUP STORIESNotes from Founders: Follow the Alchemistsfollow the ALchemists
Gert-Jan
van Rooyen
Leif-Nissen
LundbAEk
Markus
Halttunen
Jenna Brown
Pascal
Lecuyot
CUSTOS
Custos was founded in 2013 to
apply emerging cryptocurrency
and blockchain technologies
to fight digital piracy. With
ties to Stellenbosch University,
associate professor turned co-
founder Gert-Jan van Rooyen
based Custos at the University’s
startup incubator, and uses
Amazon S3 and Amazon EC2
for cloud storage and scaling.
In 2018, Custos won the Apps
Africa award for Best Blockchain
Solution.
SHIPAMAX
Former commodities trader,
Jenna Brown co-founded
Shipamax in March 2016 as a
means to solving the complex
task of transforming the bulk
shipping industry through
smart technologies. Founded in
London, Shipamax uses services
such as Amazon Redshift and
AWS Lambda to automate
its clients’ administration
workloads.
SMALL GIANT GAMES
Co-founded by Markus
Halttunen in 2013, Small Giant
Games has achieved a rare
feat – a mobile game that’s
as profitable as it is popular.
The Helsinki-based startup
uses AWS to scale up hit game
‘Empires and Puzzles’ – a game
that’s been downloaded by
over 10 million players. Small
Giant Games was acquired by
social gaming behemoth Zynga
in 2019, for an implied value of
$700 million.
XAIN
While XAIN may trace its
beginnings to a university
project, it’s grown into a
successful startup, helping
customers automate their
financial auditing with the
help of Amazon ECS and
Amazon RDS. The Berlin-based
startup uses blockchain to help
organizations share information
with confidence. It was launched
by Leif-Nissen Lundbæk and his
co-founders in 2017, winning
the Porsche Innovation Contest
that same year.
NAVYA
NAVYA is at the cutting edge of
transit innovation, developing
autonomous electric vehicles
that combine next-generation
robotics, digital and driving
innovations. Since its 2014
launch in Paris, NAVYA has
expanded to the US and grown
its operations to over 250
employees. CTO Pascal Lecuyot
chose Amazon EKS to scale
at speed and Amazon ECR for
its application programming
interface.
STARTUP STORIESNotes from Founders: Next StepsLaunching a success
ful startup takes mo
re
than building on the
most flexible, reliab
le,
and scalable infrastr
ucture available tod
ay.
To help get you star
ted, we’ve put toget
her
some additional reso
urces:
STARTUPS ON AIR
AWS USER GROUP
S
WEBINARS ON-DE
MAND
AWS TWITCH TV
Interviews with sta
rtup founders, CEO
s,
CTOs, and lead eng
ineers are broadcas
t live
on Periscope. Partic
ipating startups sha
re
some of their organ
ization’s engineerin
g
accomplishments a
nd benefit from exp
osure
to a large technical
audience.
User groups offer sta
rtups the chance to
interact with each ot
her, answer question
s,
share ideas, learn ab
out new services, an
d
exchange best pract
ices. They’re just one

of the many ways ou
r tech enthusiasts an
d
practitioners connec
t members of the AW
S
community together
.
Our collection of vid
eos by AWS experts
cover
everything from tran
sactional SQL and N
oSQL
databases, data war
ehouses, and data la
kes
to best practices for
serverless architectu
res,
and building applica
tions using Amazon
AI and
machine learning.
Twitch offers live st
reaming event cont
ent,
live coding sessions
, technical discussio
ns,
and demos to direc
tly communicate w
ith
developers around
the world. Catch up
with all
our content on the
AWS channel.
Next steps
AWS Start
ups
s
In the next issue…
Meet founders who
are proving the road
less traveled can lead
to somewhere pretty
spectacular.
Sign-up to the AWS
mailing list to be notified
when each new issue
goes live.