Welcome to Who Are These Startups?

podcast shorts featuring founder interviews of Canadian startups.

Hey, it's a startup coach here and I'm down at collision.

I'm talking to Thomas from WatchDNA.

How are you doing, Thomas?

I'm good, and you?

I'm doing fantastic.

Could you introduce yourself and tell us about WatchDNA?

Sure.

I've been in the watch industry for the last 15 years.

And basically, when COVID hit, I decided to go back to school and did a big survey in my watch industry.

And I wanted to see the different challenges in the industry.

And so I decided to launch a business that helped jewelers and brands develop their online presence.

But also last month, I launched a new platform called WatchDNA which educate people about watches and all the brands.

So every week, we're actually adding new brand and we actually don't charge anything for the brand.

It's really about educating the people about the watch industry.

What makes your technology unique compared to your competitors?

So basically what we do is that we have a platform.

We are not an e-commerce platform, so we don't sell any product.

One of the issues that we have is that there are so many platforms out there that actually write content about product.

But at the end of the day, most of the time, they have a buy now button.

And so the end consumers, they really, at the end of the day, decided, "Okay, is this editorial article great about the product?"

Or, "Are you trying to sell me a product?"

So what we try to do is that we want to be a platform that is kind of like an encyclopedia of watches that represent all the brands, the bigger and the smaller, give a chance to everybody.

And then we have a team of journalists as well that write articles.

But something that you will not see on our platform is basically something about, "Oh, it's the latest 42mm black dive, a blue diver."

What you will see is the lifestyle.

So what is the cool thing to know about watches when you go out with your friends?

Or what kind of watch you should wear in a wedding or things like that?

So something interesting.

And then we also have an RSS platform, so it takes content from other platforms.

The whole idea is to create a community.

So basically the idea is that we want to actually give a space to the watch lovers, watch aficionados, to put their videos, their pictures, their articles and share the love to everybody.

It's obviously you're targeting watch lovers, but is that an easy target audience to target as a company?

So this is the idea actually.

So obviously the main idea and the character of the product is watches, but for us it's really about time and about spreading.

So something that is very interesting for us is that, for example, recently we have a new contributor that will write articles, but more about the lifestyle.

The gentleman is a fashion designer.

He has a family.

He actually wrote a beautiful article about his time management between entrepreneurship and his family time, and he's a watch lover.

So that's kind of the middle part.

But something that is also very interesting for me as a father is I always wanted to be involved with non-profit and doing something a little bit better.

And so what I do is that for any activation on our platform, sign up for the newsletter, subscribe to the Instagram or things like that, we actually giving a part to some non-profits which we work with 1% for the planet and with B1G1 which is more on the humanity level.

So buying books for children and things like that.

That's something that was very deep and important for me.

And what brings you to collision this year?

So to be honest, it's brand awareness.

Since I'm an entrepreneur for the last three years, I've been trying to obviously do a lot of networking and I'm trying to really learn as much as I can.

I love to say that I'm a sponge.

I'm learning as much as I can and I love to spread the love as well.

And so when through the journey that I have and I'm lucky, I guess to, I waited for 40 years.

I'm very proud to say that I'm MBA graduate because it took me 40 years to do it.

But I'm the first one to actually talk and ask questions and answer questions.

So to answer your question, collision is really networking, brand awareness.

And also I'm kind of starting to be passionate about the tech industry.

I love to integrate some AI and some augmented reality and things like that to my platform and to platform of retailers that I work with.

So that's why I kind of want to end here.

Congratulations on your MBA.

Have you had any memorable experiences or met any interesting people here at collision?

Yeah, so I actually, I met a few very interesting people.

Yesterday I got lost about the quantum conversation for an hour, which I'm sure you can bring edX to some people, but I was very interesting.

But I did meet some very, very interesting entrepreneurs as well.

And like I was saying, I'm a sponsor.

I'm trying to learn from the people that, you know, did mistake before me and want to spread their information and their knowledge as I do myself.

And where can people go and find out more?

So watchdna.com.ca.

That's the first website.

And then LinkedIn as well, you can find me.

But everything online is WatchDNA.

It's very easy.

I really appreciate you taking the time out of collision to talk to us today.

Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

This has been Who Are These Startups?

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