From Student to Startup: Captoria

September 1, 2016 by Natasha Jones

When stepping through the aqua coloured doorway of a quaint fisherman's cottage, the last thing you expect is the office of a British tech startup. Yet, for Tom Martin, the 23 year old founder of Captoria, this minimal white space, with the fresh sea air billowing through the open sash windows, is the office.

As a student of Real Estate Finance at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, Martin lives in two worlds which could not be more far apart.

“Sorry for the slight mess, I only got back from University yesterday”, Martin told me as he pulled me a stool. Captoria, the live app for images with sound, is the newest face of social media’s raw revolution - where content is grittier, raw and real. In the coming months, Captoria will be under the microscope as the plucky underdog goes against the big guns of Snapchat, Periscope and Meerkat for the raw media spotlight.

When not in his small office in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex, which is home to a small team of digital wizards, Martin is in the alternative wizarding world of Cambridge, walking the cobbled streets and climbing the curling, narrow stairwells. It seems unlikely that a student from a department titled ‘Land Economy’, would jump ship in an attempt to find light in an all much newer world. “I have never been hugely into technology” admitted Martin, “no more so than the usual millennial. Yet, when the idea for Captoria came to me, it was too hard to resist the temptation. Not just in creating the product and the brand, but in the adventure.” Martin has grown up with talk of property around the dinner table, with his father and now brother in the industry. Yet for this youngest member of the brood, a different, modern and bold adventure was yearning.

Tom Martin is in a new generation of digital creators, leading the change in social media for the next wave of users. Gone are the days of the, rather ironically, socially awkward Silicon Valley founders, and welcome the bright replacements who are marrying a brand and simple, elegant design with great products. “I’ve always admired craft, and to me as an outsider to the technology world, programmers are modern-day craftsmen” he told me. The idea for Captoria came from a place as unusual as the technology industry was for Martin. It was the 27th July 2012, while watching the opening ceremony of the London Olympic Games, that inspiration struck the then 19 year old. “Why can’t a photo have more energy? When filming a live event, you end up watching life through a screen, yet while photos are instant to capture, they lack spirit.”

Six months passed and Martin had surrounded himself with a team who knew how to build technology. “Surrounding yourself with the right people is vital, even more so when it wasn’t possible for me to be here all the time”, he tells me. “We’re a small bunch of guys who all believe in our ethos — it’s integral to why I created Captoria”. The Captoria philosophy is a fresh introduction to a new wave of social media, where a reflection of reality is trumped by image building. The raw revolution, as it’s becoming known, encourages raw, unpolished content, where the users are fulfilling the need to share, while limiting the time peering at their screen. “If you want to enjoy life, you can’t be looking down at your phone all the time, perfecting an imaginary world” he tells me. It was only a few years ago the established social platforms were home to the raw content others are now exploiting, yet as users grew, these networks became a theatre space for well rehearsed, time-consuming acting.

It feels contradictory: a social media business trying to limit the time we spend on our phones. “Our brand is simple” he says, “we want our users to attend great events, watch inspirational bands and explore the world, satisfy a need to share by capturing as much as possible in the shortest amount of time, leaving space and time to enjoy the rest of the occasion for the simple and sole purpose of enjoyment. If we can plant a small seed in changing people’s mind on how frequently they’re looking at their phones, then we have at least achieved something.”

The ambition is bold, yet too is the determination emanating from this small coastal powerhouse. “I haven’t moved very far”, Martin told me as he looked out of the window. Leigh-on-Sea is home to Captoria as much as it is to Martin, with its beaches which briskly revert from their golden, imported sands to the more truthful mud flats, to the slippery cobbled streets lined with wooden sheds still trading the specialities of the 1910 tourist: cockles, muscles and of course the East End delicacy, jellied eel. The serving presentation, just as the ingredients, have been subject to little evolution. Yet, for what these small, narrow streets lack in delicacy, the community surpasses with charm.

The walls of the Captoria office are adorned with art, with a large original John Lennon portrait by local artist Paul Karslake hanging in pride of place. In the corner is a small accumulation of vinyl records. “It’s a growing collection” he told me, catching my eye wandering to the corner. “We’ve got the classics of course: Lionel Richie, Kate Bush, Stevie Wonder.” Music is evidently big in the Captoria office, “we run a business where half of what we do is sound, you’ve got to love music to love Captoria”.

The Captoria team have recently returned from New Orleans, Louisiana, where they were exhibiting at Collision, the technology conference. However, the exhibition just so happened to be on at the same time as the world renowned Jazz Festival, which each year welcomes the likes of their record collection. “Collision was a fun week, we received some fantastic reactions to our product, plus we managed to squeeze in a bit of Stevie Wonder… although we couldn't actually hear him as the stage flooded and the power cut out” he laughed. “It’s these events which make our job amazing. We get to interact and meet with our users, at events we would have anyway attended. Now we just get to justify it as work!”

Four years on from the beginning, Captoria have crafted their product and refined their ambition, they’re hanging with their fellow millennials and are helping to fly the flag for British technology, in a country far from the Silicon Valley bubble. As the sun began to set over the Thames Estuary, silhouetting the cooling towers of the Isle of Grain Power Station beyond, it began to make sense. The brand, the product, the ethos. Working at Captoria seems to evaporate the shallow dimension of traditional social media, leaving in its wake the digital gem which originally made it all fun.

Martin swivels on his chair, closes his laptop and smiles at me. “So, are you a user?” he asked.

Captoria is available for free from the App Store.