Magazine BEAST #16 2019

74
#Technology | Startup
KA: You mentioned «Stage». What is it exactly?
AG: Well, I forgot to mention that when we started our
journey, we launched over 5 celebrity apps back in South-
East Asia garnering over 7 million downloads. Quickly, we
realized that the model was not evolving and that it would
eventually die due to longer sales cycles. We therefore
scrapped the beta version to now launch Stage, a platform
for creators to monetize content and commerce. You will
see it soon in Luxembourg: we have some exciting worldcreators
signed up along with Hollywood biggies. We will
be launching a survey in the UK and Europe with over
25,000 creators.
KA: This sounds exciting and looks global…
AG: Yes, indeed, we are very excited. Media-Tech is
something which runs in our DNA as a company, and
personally, I am very passionate about it. With Stage, we
think we can solve a real world challenge of empowering
the next generation digital influencers globally and also do
it better than the competition by leveraging the power of
machine learning and betting on automation.
The team is working on it non-stop in the UK, Luxembourg
and India to get it up and ready. It is going to be a great
product built out of love, collaboration and partnerships.
KA: Is «Stage» going to be the focus for 2020?
AG: Definitely. It already takes about 50% of my time.
Imagine an artist selling his/her content, commerce
(ticketing, merchandise) and having his/her own digital
identity online. There is not a single platform in the world
today which allows an artist to decide how he/she should
price his/her content/commerce. Social platforms can give
you a million followers, yet, most of the time, you are
unable to monetize this popularity. We want to pioneer
the Direct to Consumer model by giving creators more
control and therefore a global reach on how their content
is distributed. The first version of web, mobile and TV apps
looks very exciting and we are already running betas in
small pockets with our users. It’s still 6 months away for
the consumers though… Stay tuned!
KA: One last question… when are you bringing
robots to Luxembourg?
AG: How do you even know about this? Well, we are
extremely excited to work on a robotics project for a
South East Asian company. It opens a whole new world of
possibilities of deep learning for us, as we are collaborating
with the world’s best technological minds. We have been
working on it for more than two years, with many setbacks,
but we are finally getting there. There are still miles to
go, but we are very confident when it comes to the
future success of this amazing project. Moreover, we are
contributing to the creation of its Autonomous Navigation
and object detection system. You have to interact with it
– which is really cool – and it actually speaks like a Human
being. We are training it to be adaptive for use cases for
the hospitality, defense and healthcare sector, among
others. Hopefully, it will be ready for ICT Spring 2020!
BEAST MAGAZINE #16