Entrupy Secured over $8M in Inventory for Louis Vuitton, Gucci and Others after Being a Finalist at the 2015 LDV Startup Competition

Vidyuth Srinivasan, Co-founder and CEO of Entrupy, Inc ©Robert Wright/LDV Vision Summit

Vidyuth Srinivasan, Co-founder and CEO of Entrupy, Inc was a finalist in the LDV Vision Summit 2015 Startup Competition. Entrupy’s goal is to enable trust in high-value goods transactions by providing on-demand authentication solutions to every business. They now support luxury brands such as Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Gucci, and many more. Vidyuth gave us an update on Entrupy since their stellar performance at the Startup Competition:

How have you and Entrupy advanced since the LDV Vision Summit?
We have since launched a product, acquired over 100 paid business customers, expanded our team to 10 (+4) and signed partnerships with large marketplaces.

What are the 2-3 key steps you have taken to achieve that advancement?
Focus on product, demonstrating value of the product to our customers, and building strategic partnerships to demonstrate value at scale.

What is your proudest accomplishment over the last year?
We helped secure over US$8M worth of inventory for our customers in 2016 by authenticating and assisting in the sale of high-end handbags with our on-demand device. In the process, we helped remove over US$1M worth of fake goods from the market. We also rapidly grew our customer base to over 100 paying business customers.

Vidyuth Srinivasan ©Robert Wright/LDV Vision Summit

What was a key challenge you had to overcome to accomplish that? How did you overcome it?
Scaling up our data collection and launching more product to customers was a challenge. We overcame it through focusing on the right data partners and being patient about our learning before launching more product support. It helped us avoid a ton of pitfalls in launching too early and helped us gauge product experience even when we deliberately added lag into the user experience.

What are you looking to achieve in 2017?
Scale our customer base, make the product experience so compelling that they think it's magic!

Did our LDV Vision Summit help you and Entrupy? If yes, how?
The Vision Summit helped us meet some good folks in the Vision field and also put in perspective the different ways to solve vision problems.

What was the most valuable aspect of competing in the Startup Competition?
We received very specific feedback on which parts of the business to focus on and which secondary details to leave out. This led to a lot of refinement of our ‘story’. Also, we were asked fairly specific questions which helped us realize where we needed to have stronger answers (which meant doing more homework).

We ended up having some abstract conversations on the technology and application with technical experts, which helped reinforce the importance of what we’re doing and where this could go.

What recommendation(s) would you make to teams submitting their companies to the LDV Vision Summit Startup Competition?
Be clear, concise and lead with the best thing about your startup. Your pitch isn't your entire company, it's your screenplay for a great movie. Leave things that are 2nd order details and be choosy about what adds clarity to help people understand/appreciate your company more.

What is your favorite Computer Vision blog/website to stay up-to-date on developments in the sector?
http://news.mit.edu/topic/computer-vision