Springleap

Springleap is an on-demand marketplace of over 180,000 advertising agency experts that enable brands and ad agencies to get actionable feedback and insights 10x-30x faster than traditional research providers.

These experts include Illustrators, Art Directors, Copywriters, Brand Strategists, and App Designers.

Springleap allows brands and agencies to access fresh eyes, diverse ideas, and local insights.

This is a $55 billion annual market it's going after. There are 6000 companies in the U.S. alone that provide "panels" of consumers for market research. Testing advertising creative ("copy testing") is a $4 billion annual market, and ad giant WPP's Kantar market research division brings in over $4 billion annually.

The entire world of brands relies on market research and data--but the current approach is broken:

On average, research takes 30-45 days, by which time the data is out-dated. And currently, market research is expensive--often in the tens of thousands of dollars. It's also sentiment-based, meaning there are no expert insights.

Leapspring's vision is to become the expert feedback network for brands and ad agencies.

It tests creative work before the launch of a campaign with localized and global agency experts. And it offers actionable expert feedback to understand markets & industries.

Currently, it offers two products:

1. RESEARCH
At a low price point, it offers market analysis, trend reports and competitive analysis. It provides instant feedback and insights on any market or trend.

2. COPY TESTING
Its product, "SENSE CHECK," is an advanced copy testing platform. It offers localized insights & feedback to increase ROI on any creative or marketing campaign.

Its business model is to leverage its experts at a 100% mark-up. So if an expert charges $100 per hour, Leapfrog bills $200 per hour and keeps half.

In the future, it plans to launch a self-service platform, where expected margins are 30%. This will allow it to open its copy testing platform to a high-velocity sales model driven by inbound marketing, starting with 30 experts. This opens its instant feedback tool to small-to-medium businesses as well as to agencies wanting to do quick copy testing. Beyond this, it is developing an API to allow agencies to build their own products, with Springleap's marketplace of experts built in.

The company launched in January 2015, and has $650,000 in booked revenue as of October 2015. It hit $100,000 in monthly revenue in October.

Its brand clients include Walmart, Nestle, Coke, Miller, Sony and Adidas.

It is currently in "white label" partnership talks with agencies like TBWA, WPP, and Publicis.

The company has earned several awards, including Fast Company's "World's Most Innovative Companies" award, and the United Nations' World Summit Award for most innovative ebusiness.

Competitors include Kantar, Ipsos, and Millward Brown. But these companies don't have Leapspring's expert network. As a result, Leapspring can add value to the offerings of these competitors even though it cannibalizes some of their work. All of them are starting to work with Leapspring.

As an example of a case study, Adidas wanted to enter 2 new markets and had no data on the ground, especially regarding competitive brand positioning, market perception and cultural trends. Other firms quoted 90 days for a report. Springleap turned around the project at a fraction of the cost in only 8 days, including insights from experts that have worked on similar brands in those markets. The client received structured data, saving them more time to turn the insights into rewarding campaigns.

The company has a patentable proprietary rating systems for copy testing, algorithms and matching engine.

Team Background

Divakar Rayapaty - Co-Founder & CTO

Divakar was the CTO of Priceline from 1999 until 2012. He is a full-stack engineer.

Eran Eyal - Co-Founder & CEO

Eran is a a seasoned start-up entrepreneur.

He was Founder/CEO of evly.com, a crowdsourcing platform which was acquired.

He was Founder/CEO of iDea, a mobile handset maker which was acquired.

He's been a Speaker at TEDx, and he's been named as one "Mail & Guardian"'s top 200 Entrepreneurs.

He earned his BA from the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa, and his Masters in Graphic Design from the Durban Institute of Technology.

Trevor Wolfe - Head of Commercialization

Trevor was formerly the Marketing Manager at Springleap competitor, Kantar Video & Media.

He was also the former Senior Marketing Manager at expert network GLG.

In addition, he was CMO and CRO at Moveline, a Techstars company.

Yossi Schwartz - Advisor

Yossi is the global chairman of ad agency Y&R. He formerly sold his agency to another ad giant, WPP.

Co-Investors

VentureCoLabs

Investment firm committed to creating measurable social value by investing in disruptive businesses.

Start Tech Ventures

Seed Fund, Incubator and Business Angel Network. Its investments include eFront, Psycholate, and Stackmasters.

Cross Border Angels

Investment network dedicated to cross border investments. Portfolio companies include Trusted Insight, Jay Robotix, and PlayCanvas.