Giulia Magnani London - 17/12/2018
We spoke to Amy Williams, Founder of Good-Loop.
Amy told us about how she is using advertising to do good in the world. Good-Loop was founded in 2016 and is now working with some of the biggest publishers and brands including Unilever, Nestle, and Canon. Here are our questions to Amy: Could you please tell us what Good Loop consists in? Good Loop is an ethical advertising platform: we distribute adverts all over the internet. Every time someone chooses to watch one of our adverts they can give half of the money to a charity of their choice. We basically partner advertisers with relevant charitable causes. It is a win win situation: advertisers get better engagement on their ads and viewers can do good for free. Where did the idea of Good Loop come from? I started the business just over two years ago. Before, I studied psychology at the University of Warwick and then spent some time working in advertising. I then decided to take some time off and went traveling. When I returned to the UK, I started the company together with my co-Founder Daniel, who is now the CTO of the business, and is in charge of the tech- part of the company. Having worked within the advertising industry, I realised that, as a field, it has so much money, so much potential and so many talented people working in it. However, I felt that too often all of these resources were not used to make our world a better place. Why do you think people would rather donate their time to charities, rather than money? Well, I definitely think that the way people are interacting with charities is changing. People’s way of engaging with causes is very different than it used to be. Fewer and fewer are willing to participate in monthly direct debit donations, for example. People don’t just want to throw money at a problem anymore, they want to feel as active players in changing things. I think there are many cases in which technology is changing philanthropy, and Good-Loop is just one example of this. What would you say is your biggest achievement as an entrepreneur? I’d say closing the first deal. Getting that first customer is always extremely tough: they need to be willing to take risks and they have no one to rely on. When I found the first customer willing to believe in our company and pay for it, it was a huge satisfaction. After that, we built our first case study, which made getting other customers a much easier process. What would you say is the biggest lesson you’ve learnt as an entrepreneur? Everything feels daunting when you look at the big picture, but the next step is normally fairly simple. Breaking things into small tangible steps can lead you to achieve much more than you previously thought. |
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