What do you know about storytelling? Do you use tools for your startup’s storytelling activities, or is it all manual? This interview is based on a discussion we had with Péter Langmár, CEO and Co-Founder of Brickflow, which we conducted while having lunch in Budapest (Update – April 2023: The startup seems to be no longer in business under this website, and we therefore deactivated the original link).
So, can you tell us what your startup is all about?
Brickflow is a hashtag-based visual storytelling web application to turn social media noise into meaningful visual content. It’s actually the first tool for merging Instagram videos into a coherent story. Using it feels like playing with Lego; with it, we envision the revolution of social media and micro-blogs.
What’s your story? Where is the idea coming from?
Mihály Borbély is the innovator of the concept; he has a background in sociology, but turned into a photographer and video guy, while also doing software development as a hobby. He started thinking about doing a movie project the other day with a friend of his, Ernő Zoltán Rubik which transformed into a social media project. Mihály started looking for people to involve into the project, and that’s how he happened to meet Péter, through some common friends.
Péter Langmár was studying photography and media design, later media theory and computer science. From art, he shifted to social media, while realizing that management is the curriculum and problem solving is the actual activity he is most interested in. As a result, and besides conducting some social media research, he started to manage more and more projects. He moved to Paris and successfully applied to the American University of Paris to learn about global communications. After completing the MA degree, he successfully applied to Goldsmith College, University of London, to start his PhD studies. In the end, he never started his studies and joined the Artscience Labs as Operations Manager and R&D Assistant. He met Mihály while working there.
Tamás Kökény has always been crazy about music, which led him apply to Budapest University of Technology and Economics to learn about multimedia technologies as an electrical engineer. While doing his studies, he started coding and worked as a multi-platform developer at Prezi. After meeting with Péter and Mihály, he immediately fell in love with the concept of Brickflow, as he had the idea of a collaborative music editor in mind that was completely in line with the vision of the product. After resigning from Prezi, he joined the other guys as the technical co-founder.
How did you raise money?
The first step was on Indiegogo; we raised $10K with a crowdfunding campaign, which was enough to build a prototype and pitch all over Europe.
We managed to get into an accelerator in Estonia and to the Chilean governmental incubator programme. The Tallinn-based programme supported us with a really strong vertical network, having over 60 mentors mainly from the Baltics, with Santiago giving us a variety of horizontal connections, and being surrounded by over 200 startups from all around the world.
What’s the next step?
We are having discussions with angels and VCs internationally to close our first round. At this stage, we cannot share the details.
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