David Ripert - Co-founder & CEO of Poplar

Former Head of

YouTube reinvents

AR

an interview with

co-founder
​
​David Ripert

Miron Bykov London - 14/10/2019

Today we spoke to David Ripert Co-founder & CEO of Poplar
 
Poplar (www.poplar.studio), founded in 2018, is a platform that empowers the world to easily create AR experiences. Poplar activates a new generation of global AR creators and provides collaborative tools that make AR production affordable and quick.
 
Tell me about the day the idea was born.
I was working at YouTube/Google for the previous 6 years, working with a global community of video creators and I've seen how they were born out of the democratisation of video content creation. I thought we could solve the challenge of AR being slow and expensive to produce, by supporting this community of AR creators and developers, providing them with tools and connecting them with brands and companies wanting AR. 

What was the biggest turning point in the life of Poplar?
So far it was our pre-seed round, which enabled us to hire great people in order to accelerate our revenue growth and product build.

Three top tips for aspiring entrepreneurs.

1. Don't think this is short term; it's at least a 4-5 year commitment. I had to cut my salary drastically after leaving a top job at Google, and I was ready for it.
2. Don't do it alone. I quickly found my co-founder Laurie, who complements me in every way- he brings the product and tech expertise, but also is from a different background than me, having worked in start-ups for a long time vs my corporate background. It can get very lonely otherwise and it's important to be able to bounce off ideas. Don't do it with a friend though ;)
3. Just do shit. I wasted a lot of time in the beginning showing my decks to so many people; when it was just so much more productive to go out to market with some simple slides, test and learn. This isn't Google or another big company with layers of approvals- just be confident and jump in. Only by doing over and over again will you learn and perfect your pitch.
   
   

What gets you out of bed every morning?
Learning about the new cool things in my industry: Augmented Reality; and how my start-up can help be a game-changer within it.

What did you want to be when you were little?
Video game tester.

Favourite Disney character.
Scrooge McDuck. Hm what does that say about me? I guess being thrifty is important when running a start-up ;)

What is Poplar planning for the world next?
We currently have an AR automated creative platform, and we are working on some very cool collaborative tools that will help make AR content creation even more simple, quick and affordable. We aim at being the Canva of AR.

For more from Poplar:

Others have also read​:

Artificial Intelligence and Customer Care

Disruption and Collaboration

Virtual Reality in Medicine?