Listen to this articleMashups is a startup based in Seoul, South Korea that builds products for the B2B market. Ensight is the first product from Mashups Co.,Ltd. and it aims to solve a big problem with Below The Line advertising. Sean Lee, the founder and CEO of Mashups, noticed that it was impossible to accurately measure engagement levels for offline events like trade shows and business conferences. That’s when the idea for Ensight was born.
Q: Tell us your story and something more about Mashups?
A: Before I started Mashups I was working for Cheil Worldwide which is South Korea’s largest advertising agency. I had a lot of ideas that could bridge digital with offline and I would talk to a few coworkers about it during our breaks and lunches. One day, I received a call from a client that just spent millions on a trade show. He wanted to know if the promotion was more successful compared to last years promotion. And if it was worth the marketing budget to do it again next year. I really didn’t have any accurate measurements for the offline event. The only thing I could give him was the generic attendee count, and photos of the booth, and estimates of people that visited the booth. That’s when the idea hit me. What if we could measure the traffic of these offline events just like a website? I named it Ensight as a play on the words “Event” and “Insight” and started brainstorming on ways to do this without changing the behavior of event attendees.
Q: Ensight is an offline event analytics platform that enables event organizers to measure the offline activity of attendees, how does it work?
A: Ensight gives event organizers and event sponsors the power to track the flow of visitors. It works like website analytics. You can measure unique visitors, visit duration, and return visits. We are working to add more features with our next update. The beauty of ensight is that it doesn’t require any changes to the regular habits of event attendees. Our solution doesn’t require any app installs, no scanning QR codes, or checking in. Ensight automatically measures visitor actions.
Q: Tell us something about technology behind Ensight?
A: The technology behind Ensight has 3 parts. The first part utilizes Bluetooth Low Energy modules that are attached to visitor badges that sends signals to receiver beacons. The second part is our cloud based analytics engine that crunches the data in real time. The third part is the native mobile app that receives real time data from the cloud. The app is an added benefit and is not required for the system to work. We don’t want to force the app on the user.
Q: How long did it take you to get a final product?
A: It took us 6 months to get our final product. It was tricky because we are working with both hardware and software. On the hardware side, the prices are dropping rapidly and we want to get to a certain price point. Right now it was around $5/piece, but it should drop to under $3/piece by summer of 2015. And the tech is constantly changing. We are already working on our next version to take advantages of the changes being made to Bluetooth 4.2.
Q: What are your plans for 2015?
A: We want to secure VC funding in 2015. We are currently bootstrapping and want to be able to move a bit quicker. In order to do that, we will need to hire some more developers and designers. We plan to work with more partners and try to secure a contract with a major event organizer.
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