Investment Backed by Transferable Expertise
YABA member Simon Smith used knowldge gained from an earlier investment to help develop the product for his latest venture.
Simon has made an £80,000 investment in Sensdata, a Sheffield-based company which has discovered a way to monitor slippage in belt-drive systems that are used widely in manufacturing and utility industries.
The SensSlip device developed by electronic engineer, Robert Brown (pictured left), automatically monitors the belt. This provides three significant benefits: less energy is wasted through belt slippage; the maintenance overhead of belt checking is reduced; and incidences of costly unplanned downtime due to belt breakage can be prevented.
When Robert presented at the YABA investment forum in July 2009, Simon immediately saw the potential of the product and where he could provide added value from his earlier investment. , 17 South Yorkshire based companies have benefited from investment through YABA – to the
“Robert’s prototype displayed data on an LED screen next to the machine being monitored,” he says. “But I realised that if the data could be viewed remotely, so one person could easily monitor multiple sites from one location, it would be a very marketable product.
“I invested in a company about five years ago – again through YABA – that uses cameras to monitor car parks and presents the data on a web application. So I knew it would be possible to use a similar system with SensSlip.”
Simon and Robert began discussions and, realising they worked well together and had compatible expectations for the company, Simon brought in technical expertise to develop the web application. Following the investment deal, they are now recruiting sales staff and plan to start marketing SensSlip in early 2010.
