Dear , 

Inkpath is the first comprehensive, data-driven software platform to help its users plan and track their career development in a smart format, with user mobility at its core. Their smartphone app and database, which has been called ‘Fitbit for your career’ and the ‘missing link for LinkedIn’, is to be the launch product, designed for graduate students and university staff.

The Technology

The platform is being developed with a global scale in mind, using 'future-proof' core technologies and APIs so that it can bolt-on to existing systems in place within institutions and corporates, enabling quick integrations with other performance software.

The founders anticipate that, as the database grows with more users of the app, the opportunity will arise to apply further algorithms and machine learning (both resulting in patentable, proprietary Intellectual Property for the company). This will, among other things, enable Inkpath to become a recruitment and training platform, and for it to:

• Provide automated coaching and career suggestions based on users’ training ‘ancestries’ tracked in the database, along with the facility to compare progress with ‘champion’ user profiles.
• Provide automatic indications of skills development for any activity undertaken by a user, based on other users’ experiences, negating the need for training providers to manually map their courses and provision with skills, and leading to a more ‘intelligent’ training landscape in which events and activities are always automatically defined in terms of the skills they will help a user to develop.

The Opportunity

Trials are taking place throughout 2017 with several leading UK universities, including the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge, and The Open University.

The initial market for Inkpath is university graduates in the UK and key English-speaking markets. Once adopted, there is a straightforward transition into the university undergraduate market and the ability to enter other sectors such as schools, the public sector, and small-to-medium businesses. 

The UK Higher Education market alone has 163 institutions with a total primary market size of 2.6m users; adding-in key English speaking countries increases market size is to 47.4m users. Additional schools, public sector and corporate markets in the UK increases total market size to 65.5m users.

The company estimates that the total market opportunity is between £12.9m and £324m per annum.  In addition, there are several avenues through which the data (held and shared by users, with their consent) can potentially be monetised.

The Team

Dr John Miles, CTO & Co-Founder, conceived and built the very first proof-of-concept prototype of Inkpath while at Oxford back in 2013 and has been developing the idea ever since. Before Inkpath, John was Training Officer for the Humanities Division at Oxford, where he led the programme of personal and professional development for DPhils and Early Career Researchers across the Division and its faculties and as part of Oxford’s AHRC Doctoral Training Partnership. And before that he taught Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature in the English Department at Royal Holloway, University of London, where he was Caroline Spurgeon Research Fellow. John is also a Research Associate at Wadham College

Jason Barlow, CEO & Co-Founder, first got involved with the company in 2015, and played a decisive role in propelling it on its path to spinning out of the University of Oxford. As CEO, he is the business mind driving the company and both he and John work closely on deciding Inkpath's future direction. Jason draws upon extensive business experience having worked in high level operational and customer facing roles in the media, technology, banking and professional services sectors both in the UK and overseas.

Initial software development and professional expertise is being outsourced. By mid-2018 the business is forecast to grow to 8 employees, at which point all key skills will have been brought in-house.

The Investment Case

The founders are a highly-backable team with strong complimentary skills in developing new businesses and with a comprehensive knowledge of the university graduate market.  The client proposition is intriguing and seems to have traction.  This could be a highly competitive arena, but the company seems well positioned to succeed, certainly in their launch market.

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