Spotlight Series: contapp

Legacy Club SHINES A LIGHT ON SOME OF OUR COMMUNITY, to see what makes them and their businesses tick!

founder of innovative tech startup contapp, Giuseppe Milazzo

Please tell us a little bit about you the person (not you the business owner): My name's Giuseppe Milazzo, i'm 25 years old and live in Essex. I’m someone who's always been creative in everything i've done, whether it's been in school or work, which has helped me transform into an entrepreneur from an early age. As well as being creative, I have a real passion for new tech and innovation (not to mention, a massive football fan). Being from a Sicilian background, food is certainly at the top of that list too!
I’m very much a hand-on type of person when it comes to learning new things. Speaking to influential entrepreneurs really helps me explore different avenues in business and gives me the drive to pursue my dreams of running a successful business.

Describe your business in less than 30 words: Contapp is an exciting bootstrapped tech startup - it's the smarter and more convenient way of digitally managing & utilising business cards, whilst helping reduce paper waste globally.

What industry or sector does your business fall in to?: Tech

What did you do before you started your business?: My career has always been in marketing from the moment I left school, where I started as a Marketing Executive as an apprentice. During my career, I worked with global brands such as Xerox and Mercedes-Benz where I managed to gain a lot of knowledge about marketing in different industries. I worked my way up various companies and the last job I had before starting Contapp fulltime was a Marketing Manager's role at an e-commerce business.

I also run my marketing & graphic design agency (MILOGO) on the side, which I started at 17 years old and is still running. However, due to Contapp's growth and potential, Contapp takes up 95% of my time, however I still gain clients from referrals and word of mouth.

What have been the biggest struggles that you have encountered, and what did you do to overcome them?: As a bootstrapped tech startup, growth has been slow but expected. We have spent absolutely nothing on marketing and have no outside investment, growing completely organically since launching in the app stores. Although short term the growth is slow, I believe that in the long term, this will hugely benefit Contapp.

I'm a 'Solopreneur' which means I don't have a team around me to help with any questions or difficulties to share. I wear many hats at Contapp. I do all the marketing, graphic design, social media, app designs, admin and more. The only thing I don't do myself is the coding, which I have an outsourced team of devs for. Although this can be lonely at times, I have the full support of a great network of people on my LinkedIn. I also have friends and family which help on a more personal level, rather than a technical issue I may have.

Have you had any external investment to date?: No

What has been the impact of COVID-19 on your business and did you make any changes, or pivots?: We launched at the start of a pandemic, which was not planned. When we started market research and development, COVID didn't even exist in the UK. However, our quick thinking team have managed to turn a crisis into an opportunity. With a tweak of features and vision for Contapp, people now see Contapp as the hygenic and more convenient way of digital managing & sharing business cards remotely, without the need for face-to-face physical contact.

Thanks to this pivot, additional features to help remote networking and our very exciting roadmap, we have a clear vision of where Contapp will sit in an ever growing tech industry. Our users are a big addition to the development of Contapp during the pandemic, as we use their feedback to continuously improving our platform.

Do you have any business hero's, if so, who are they?: Elon Musk - He is the definition of innovation. An entrepreneur like Elon Musk is exactly what got me into the tech space in the first place. I love new, futuristic ideas that can change the world for the better. In fact, I wouldn't even call him an entrepreneur, he is a real life genius.

Financial Rewards or Business Awards?: Business Awards

What was the last book you read?: Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike (by Phil Knight)

Tell us something totally unique about your business: We see our users as a big part of our continuous development of Contapp and encourage them to share their ideas/feedback to improve our business tool to benefit them. We're on a journey to innovate the way we use business cards in today's digital world, to become the solution for improving convenience and help save the planet together. Our users and saving the planet are at the heart of everything we do at Contapp.

Finally, please tell us what we can look forward to with your business in 2021 and beyond: Contapp | Orca 3.0, our biggest & most innovative app update is just a couple of weeks away from launching, as well as our exclusive Innovators Programme & Early Adopters Programme.

We have a very exciting roadmap that will completely revolutionise our business tool. Rather than being your average business card scanner, we're pivoting towards becoming an all-in-one personal business hub, with plans to integrate powerful leading softwares within our app, as well as CRM platforms at a later date.

We're also looking to integrate more languages to our scanning feature (currently only British language) so that we can target more of an international audience. We have lots of other features in the pipeline which have been given to us by our community of users.

As a bootstrapped tech startup, we're also looking to partner/collab with many other innovative tech startups/businesses and eco charities that share our ethos, to save the planet through everyday business resources and reducing paper waste.