1) How did you come up with your idea? How did you start-up your business? Is it a partnership?
Ted thought that it would be great to be able to automatically connect all of his vendor accounts while stressing over the amount of bills that come in when he owned his landscaping company in 2004. The bills were plentiful; it was hard to track them and to budget on the go. Luke also felt the business pain of keeping track of physical receipts while working as a landscape foreman, “it’s difficult to keep the receipts clean and dry let alone in order”. Years later (November, 2014) Ted and Luke were having coffee and talking about taxes for business and the complication in properly recording receipt information; they formed an idea to automate the process of recording receipts based on the idea from previous years and by Luke also feeling the business pain of keeping track of physical receipts while working as a landscape foreman, “it’s difficult to keep the receipts clean and dry let alone in order”. The start of the concept was applied to strictly receipts at that moment; like magic, Luke and Ted formed a partnership as founders of this idea. Since then they incorporated as DTP Tech Solutions on May 15th, 2015 and continue to form and shape their business ideas into reality.
2) How did you get involved with the EPICentre?
The original founders approached WEtech with the idea to see if maybe they were on to something and had been received with much encouragement. While looking at how WEtech could support the venture during the consultations to help with idea forming and market research, they were referred to EPICentre and were accepted into EPICentre’s incubation program with a 6-months free facilities use at EPIC Innovation.
3) What stage is your business currently at?
Currently DTP Tech is almost complete in developing the pilot of their minimum viable product; DTP Tech is also structuring their key team members as well as the executive team while grounding the business plan.
4) What sets DTP Tech apart from other companies providing a similar service?
Most new and innovative technology seems to be focusing on making technology easier to use or improving efficiency by increasing the clutter but has lost sight of the purpose that technology was intended. An example is wearable fitness technology that is a great tech and helps people with specific wants like improving the efficiency of their workout and increasing health; although it does add big value to those lives that use them it does not make life easier (by eliminating tasks), and so technology has missed the intended mark. Interactions and transactions have been a victim of good ideas cluttering lives and business, DTP Tech is dedicated to automating and centralizing these areas to simplify life by removing clutter and tasks from daily lives and workdays. This is the intention of technology.
DTP Tech is developing a long term strategy of being a “secure universal IoT (internet of things) service” that integrates into society to assist with the automation of tasks. DTP Tech’s launch product is a receipts product that automates from the POS all the way to a customer’s bookkeeping and/or budgeting application; through linking the process once, they can forget about it later. This will virtually eliminate the task of gathering receipts and recording them while worrying about compliance. Users of this technology will then be able to build relationships based on these links and gain information from useful and frequent connections that will improve their lives.
5) What advice would you like to share with local tech entrepreneurs?
The actual technology is only worth a small part of the value that you are offering; build a great team and find the opportunity to work solely on your project. Take your time; by taking the time DTP Tech was able to do their research and find areas where they needed to adjust their product offering and/or might have failed. Most advisers will tell you to hurry up and start to roll out your product, and they are right, but not until after you have a solid grasp of the market, building the foundation of your business and of the product.
