The future is bright: Stuff International advises UCL start-ups on innovative business positioning

Stuff International through UCL Innovation & Enterprise is working with some highly innovative start-up companies advising them on brand positioning and on becoming global players.

Handled effectively Artificial Intelligence (AI) and data analysis can improve products, increase margins and reducing staffing costs.  In the last two months at UCL a range of fascinating businesses using AI have sprung up, including:


  • Software that analyses a teacher’s photos of students’ work to indicate what learning issues students may have, opening up such reports to all students, not just an affluent few.
  • A teaching programme showing in 3D the artefacts in museums world-wide using mobile phones in a low-cost VR headset.
  • An app that with a tap transfers business cards instantly to another’s phone and stores it on-line, making business cards obsolete.

From seeing so many of these start-up companies within the London universities, it is clear that social enterprise increasingly will play an even greater role and in start-up businesses.  There were some very compelling companies, one is recycling coffee into soap, another is developing high energy drinks that use nature to beat the sugar rush and obesity.

So what does Stuff International bring to the party?

Having spent many years raising the profile of some well-known global companies, such as BNP Paribas, Virgin, Ford, O2, we at Stuff have developed a methodology to help differentiate companies, creating clear messages to their customers. This process is becoming more complex with new on-line platforms being launched every day.  When we meet a company we analyse these 5 areas and help them at each stage, including with investor presentations:

Learning from UCL Innovation & Enterprise “Hatchery”

Working with all these innovative companies there is clear patterns emerging:

  • AI will work on doing the drudge work, freeing experts to focus on the main product.
  • Virtual Reality makes for greater and better human engagement with 3D-moving subjects world-wide being “moved” directly into homes and offices, making them easier to understand and more interesting to relate to than those presented in 2D, printed or on video.
  • Social enterprise supported by government funding will play an important part of our future.
  • Analytics will enable more focused, targeted solutions, saving time and money.
  • Maths and algorithms are the commodity of the future.

The future is bright.