Disruptive Brands in partnership with Victoria The App
An exciting lineup of Forbes 30 under 30 honoraries came together here at Home Grown for a sell-out event to explore businesses that are challenging current social standards and setting a new norm for future generations.
Disruptive brands are those that work to continuously develop their services whilst evolving their marketing methods. With disruptors at the forefront of innovation, existing brands in the market are given huge incentives to really listen, innovate and tailor to the customer.
This inspirational panel was moderated by Vicky Cheng, Founder of Victoria the app, recently she spoke with Reporter & Producer Lea Jakobiak (CNBC, Sky News Business & Reuters), to share her journey so far…
‘Like millions of people, Vicky Cheng knew dating apps saturated the market and disregarded the very thing they promised: connection. Taking matters into her own hands, she built Victoria, a private circle of like-minded people who connect through premium experiences.’
‘Not only am I a female entrepreneur, but I’m also not white and under 30, so I don’t fit the “stereotypical” CEO profile of white male.
Because of my appearance, people have often assumed that I work as part of the team. They find it so surprising that I am the actual founder & owner of the business. I feel like people should be more open-minded about what an entrepreneur should or shouldn’t look like, and I’m happy to break the mould.
We are still not seeing enough women, and in particular young women, launching their own start-ups. So, at times, my journey can feel lonely. I’d love to have a strong network of female entrepreneurs around me. That’s one of the goals of Victoria’.
Meet the panel:
Ella Greenwood – Broken Flames Productions:
Ella Greenwood is an award-winning filmmaker who at age 18, she wrote, directed and produced the short film ‘Faulty Roots’ which is about mental health awareness in teens.
Faulty Roots is now being developed into a feature film in partnership with Social Impact Agency TerraMedia. Other projects include ‘Why Wouldn’t I Be?‘ which stars Doolittle’s Harry Collett and The Nevers’ Elizabeth Berrington and is made in support of mental health charity HUMEN, ‘Smudged Smile‘ which stars Get Even’s Mia Mckenna-Bruce, ‘Self-Charm’ which stars BAFTA Winner Bukky Bakray and ‘Better Get Better‘ which stars Fate: The Winx Saga’s Elisha Applebaum.
Broken Flames has been featured by the likes of Forbes, Deadline, Variety, Huffington Post, Yahoo News and Thrive Global.
Having served roles at Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan and Bloomberg, Wilfrid also stood as Google Programmatic Account Strategist, seeing him provide Amazon, Intercontinental and Hilton with technical consulting on programmatic advertising campaigns. A talented coder and software engineer, Wilfrid has been honoured with a number of awards, including a Rare Rising Stars accolade. In his spare time, he enjoys public speaking, travelling and hip-hop.
Seeing loads of plastic washed up on a Thai beach in 2014 inspired friends Josh White, Ariel Booker and Perry Fielding to create CanO Water. The aluminium-canned drink is stocked in 10,000 stores including Tesco and Waitrose and has appeared at the Vanity Fair Oscars Party. They anticipate 2021 revenue of GBP 3 million.
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You can watch the panel live here.
This sold-out event unfolded as follows: guests arrived at 6:15 to network and grab a drink at our bar before the live event began at 6:30pm and ended just after 7:30pm
Here’s our favourite audience questions from the evening:
Directed to Josh from Cano water, an audience member asked:
“Is mixing friendship and business a bad choice?’
Josh White, Cano Water:
“To be honest with you, in the early days, my colleagues/friends and I would spend hours calling people to spread awareness about the brand, just to have the phone hung up or the call rejected.
There were times when this was really depressing, all our other friends would be busy making great money and our brand wasn’t, I don’t think I could’ve done that by myself.
We’ve had enormous disagreements over the years but at the end of it all, there’s three of us and three heads are stronger than 1”
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