Dr Andrew MacLaren, who graduated with a PhD from the Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship in November, has been developing his social media business Vuzii since September 2015 with two co-founders.
Vuzii is a social media platform for interior design, with the tagline 'Give Your Home a Profile', aimed at giving interior design enthusiasts a dedicated platform where they can share ideas and shop, as well as allowing people to share best practice on the sale of a house. The business attracted initial 'pre-seed' investment of £100,000 and is now in the midst of closing its second round of investment.
Andrew said, "It has been wonderful to be able to develop this business with the support of the Hunter Centre, the University at large and schemes like Enterprise Campus. The idea came about when I was buying a house and realised there was a social media site for everything but there didn’t seem to be a platform for developing a profile for your property."
Vuzii is also giving Strathclyde students real life experience with four students from computer science degrees this summer doing paid internships with Vuzii, based at the Strathclyde University Incubator in the Graham Hills building.
Looking to the future, Andrew said, "It is early days for us and we are learning a lot as we progress but so far so good, with our next round of investment we will be hiring five new full time team members and I hope that means I can create more jobs for Strathclyde graduates. Our recent trip to Silicon Valley means a Vuzii office over there is something we’ll be working on over the next year."
In the meantime, Andrew has collaborated with the Scottish Home Show in September on a competition which is entered through Vuzii.