February 2021 | Startups To Keep An Eye On

This month we're featuring a few voice and design startups

Hi everyone

This is this month’s look at some of the most exciting startups I’ve ran into.

Remember, if you’re new, please subscribe (it’s free!) below as it helps me reach out to a broader audience. I publish marketing and startup content regularly and always open to suggestions 😊 Just say hi at me@richardfliu.com.

Pitch.com

I love keeping up with the TWIS (This week in startups) podcast and ran into a startup called Pitch.

They want to make creating powerpoints easy with their software and take out the tedious nature of perfecting presentations.

As someone who has created hundreds of powerpoints, it’s definitely a category that I know has been tackled before, but one of the first things that caught my attention with Pitch was how beautiful everything was.

From the founder who launched Wunderlist (which was sold to Microsoft), he is now looking to tackle the PowerPoint industry with big competitors like Powerpoint and Google Slides in his way.

In my opinion, it has been a long time coming due to the lack of innovation in this space, so I am excited to see what this startup comes up with.

Clubhouse

You’ve probably heard of this one, but I left it off last month’s submission as I wasn’t on it yet. I didn’t intend to hop on this app, but someone did save me an invite, so I couldn’t say no to at least check it out.

For those who don’t know, Clubhouse is a social networking voice-app where you can host and create rooms. The premise is people can come together to talk, listen and then learn from each other.

One of the biggest reasons why this application has gotten attention was due to the big names it has attracted. From Elon Musk to Mark Zuckerberg, it has caught the attention of major celebrities.

It’s also exclusive right now, so those who are on the application kind of feel like they’re in on a trend that not many others have access to right now.

Desygner

I get to include an Aussie startup this month. I briefly spoke to one of the founders, and he was super friendly!

Desygner is a tool to help users create graphic designs without the technical knowledge of complicated design software like Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.

It definitely is competing with Canva on this front, but the first thing I noticed was that it offers a much more robust set of templates and seems to be more suited to those with a bit more design experience than the average joe.

This is because it offers more features like vectors and proper design looking features vs. Canva. It also seems to be much more popular in the Portuguese market (probably due to the founder’s own background).

It seems like Australia seems to be the country working to create all these awesome design startups. Definitely keen to see where this one goes!

Sendchamp (Reader submitted startup)

This was one that was submitted by one of the readers of the newsletter! If you’d like to submit a startup (or your own), please go to this link.

I personally think startups in Africa will see massive growth in the next five years. With this in mind, I am always interested to see new developments, so I was excited to see this submission.

Sendchamp looks to make connecting with customers easier for developers and businesses. In short, they are looking to create a multi-channel communication platform with all the bells and whistles from messaging from SMS, emails, voice, and more.

What I think is really interesting is this is specifically tailored for the African market. With regulations and how communication laws work, a global communication solution might not work in a specific market like in Africa.

I am excited to see how Sendchamp tackles this in the next few years!

Final Note

I hope this month’s of startups are interesting!

Don’t forget to share this newsletter with the button below (you can mention me on Twitter at @richardfliu) and of course, if you’d like to put your own submission in for next month, please use this form.