80 START-UP ALLEY Zender
Words by Ann-Marie Corvin
In this month’s Start-up Alley, we take a look at a way to engage audiences with quizzes, tools for interactive video, and an innovative news aggregation company....
ZENDER
COUNTRY: BELGIUM STARTED: 2018
Hendrik Dacquin has always been interested in the interaction of broadcasting, interactive media and gaming – it’s a confluence he’s been circling for most of his career. Since the early nineties, the Ghent- based medicine and biotech graduate held positions in telecoms, e-learning and interactive television before setting up his own digital agency, Small Town Heroes, eight years ago. The company achieved success making bespoke interactive streaming applications for children’s TV shows, brands and events all over Belgium and the Netherlands. So, pulling the plug on this agency work recently and switching focus to developing Zender, the interactive mobile live streaming platform that powers these applications, has been a brave move. “Brave yes, but we got tired of working on short-term projects,” he says. “We saw more of a future in focussing on one thing, and doing that really well and then scaling this product throughout Europe.” The start-up now wants to target brands and broadcasters with a platform they can integrate into their own services. “Being able to integrate is crucial for us, so that our clients can be interactive within their own touch points. It’s what distinguishes us from the rest,” he says. Live quizzes make up half the content that Zender generates, but according to Dacquin there’s much more to the platform than that. “We’re not just a quiz clone of HQ Trivia. The platform is much bigger. It works for live children shows, prediction games, escape rooms, talk shows and links in with fantasy sports platforms.”
TEAM WORKS “There’s a physical limit to the amount of players we can have at any one time, but for now we’re able to serve all the users we need to”
THAT’S THE LONG-TERM VISION FOR OUR COMPANY, TO HELP BRANDS TAKE BACK CONTROL FROM THE FACEBOOKS AND THE TWITCHES OF THISWORLD
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