The UK company will now be supported by Norwich-based Akcela Ventures, signaling its intent to pursue discrete development and production hubs ahead of rumored global funding spree
Origin Hope Media Group has partnered with Akcela Ventures ahead of its brand relaunch amid rumors that it is preparing to seek its first-ever round of funding after a successful bootstrapping period from its founding.
Origin Hope, whose new website remains under construction at the time of writing, provides content production to clients that range from Youtube creators to newspapers, marketing departments, and digital publishers. It offers competitive monthly rates along with newsroom-level capacity and efficiencies. Draft versions of the new website, shown to Monok News for the purposes of this report, say the firm employs “a set of unique mindsets, methods, training, and associated technologies to form the ideal content machine for a digital age.”
In a release posted on their website, Akcela says it “will support Origin Hope as they scale their already profitable operations and develop new software tools to automate parts of the content production process.”
James Adams, founding Managing Director of Akcela, has spent the past 12 months helping to put this deal together.
“Origin Hope’s advances through its early stage phase to profitability, expansion and founder investment offer Akcela a unique opportunity to partner with an established disruptor as it seeks to develop its technologies and prepare to rapidly scale,” says Adams. “A deal like this just does not come up every day, and we are very pleased the work of the past year has brought us to this point.”
Origin Hope was founded in March 2019 and turned its first profit in April 2020, after starting test sales the prior October. Its client roster now stretches from North America to the UK, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, (South, East and Southeast) Asia and Australia.
The sole founder is Blaise Hope, a British former journalist with a career including spells in the United States along with an extended period in Southeast Asia as a prominent business and political editor and television news anchor in Indonesia, hosting economic forums and engaging in high-level media conglomerate operations at a division of Lippo Group. Later, as Editorial Adviser to some of the largest digital media companies in the region, with major online portals including Brilio.net, KapanLagi, Merdeka.com, he would institute major changes in training, processes, workflow and content production integration that contributed to market-leading jumps in profitability and efficiency.
This deal lays the groundwork for Origin Hope’s plan to continue scaling
Blaise Hope, CEO
“This deal lays the groundwork for Origin Hope’s plan to continue scaling and seek funding when the time is right, with partners as invested in the long-term future as we are,” says Hope. “Akcela is an ideal base partner from whom we can seek support to corporatize our internal functions – getting departments out of start-up mode and working smoothly through the experience and advice they can bring to the table.”
Origin Hope has remained tight-lipped about its proprietary technologies, but they are believed to focus on Natural Language Generation as well as efficiency tools for graduates of its internal training program to employ in the course of daily work. The company is believed to have reciprocal arrangements with other content technology firms.
“Everything we do, from recruitment to promoting from within and [tech] development, is centered on perfecting the use of existing tools to the maximization of human capacity to create,” says Hope. “We want our people to think in the best way possible for them to be as impactful as possible, and all the tech we use, current and future, is about furthering the same principle.
“That is the golden thread leading from how we screen applicants for character traits, all the way through to the intended benefits for our clients, which separate us from competitors.”
Those with knowledge of the discussions have said Origin Hope has started reaching out to potential investors for discussions in 2023.
“My position [on investment] has always been that until we have proven ourselves, there is no point seeking it out – ideas are cheap,” says Hope, “and I was certain we could do this, but I would need to show that, to have the relationship with investors that I want. Respectfully, I am not someone who sat in a combinator and pulled the words ‘content’, ‘AI’, ‘service’, and then got funding to either quit or exit in five years as the company turns into something else.
“This is who I am and what I do, and a representation of the market change I plan to be an agent of. It’s all a nice idea until the business case is proven beyond doubt and tech elements are clearly ok to slot into existing operations. Then, it’s real. I feel like, before that, I was not worth wasting an investor’s time on – it’s all just talk, and I have serious misgivings about that element of startup culture. Now, though, Origin Hope is well past that point. We are very much ready, but in no rush, which is what we hoped for.
A unique company coming to a regional city
“Origin Hope stands virtually alone in the still-nascent universe of digital content,” says Adams, who started his career at manufacturing multinational ITW, working in China, USA and throughout Europe whilst completing his MBA at the University of East Anglia. “There is astonishing depth to its potential and following its work since founding, it is now clear that it has the competencies to convert that potential into reality.”
Adams is part of a group of ex-UEA MBA students who got together to found Akcela, along with coding bootcamp Tech Educators. He also supports a number of businesses throughout the East of England.
Akcela focuses on EdTech, Education, GreenTech and AI/ML-based businesses, with a critical focus on businesses that can scale effectively, have a strong management team and a unique value proposition to their target customer.
“Origin Hope’s innovative practices, client-centric approach, IP, development plans, global outlook and solid fundamentals mark it out as part of a new wave of profitable and market-making startups,” says Adams. “Its choice to set up in Norwich is also an endorsement of the city’s credentials and qualities as a hub for companies. Akcela looks forward to generating huge value for the city through this partnership as we start the progression to the next stage … The prospects for cash inflows in the medium-term for Akcela give this partnership the potential to have direct benefits to Akcela’s commitment to foster tech development in the city and region.”
“Covid-19 and recent spikes in protectionism represent an acceleration of trends in work and globalization,” says Hope. “Norwich is well-connected, with train links to London, an international airport, high quality of life, access to the benefits of both city and countryside, a large student population and a great blend of creative and technical talent and expertise. Offices and presence in major global cities are an inevitability, but the selection of regional cities over major ones is a bit of a no-brainer in a hybrid work world.
“It doesn’t close off any options, any doors. We are a global company anyway, and the new working world is a combination of the central and the regional or peripheral. That was in our DNA before Covid, now we just don’t need to do so much convincing.”
A foundational firm for the new content age
Akcela’s Lead Consultant for Origin Hope will be Tom Wood. Wood is the founder of global user experience design group Foolproof and was announced as a Partner at Akcela earlier this year after departing the company he helped start. Foolproof was founded in Norwich and sold to Zensar Technologies in 2016. It has offices in Norwich, London, Singapore and Cape Town.
“The world is always planning to create a lot more content than it ever seems to get around to writing,” says Wood. “It’s mostly because digital publishers struggle with efficiencies in the news production cycle. Origin Hope puts together talented people and digital tools to help their clients stay in front of their content creation plans. They make it a lot easier to create engaging, well-structured content at scale.”
Origin Hope’s ambition is to become a “foundational” firm for its market, in the same way AWS and Azure are for cloud services. “The amount of business productivity, cost and creative capacity that is lost in how content production currently works seriously bothers me” says Hope. “It bothered me enough that I felt I had a duty to put my money where my mouth is and found Origin. I want us to be a facilitator for all the ideas, quality and viability that people and companies – and by extension, the world – are missing out on.”
A founder of a content AI firm who requested to not be named told Monok that “Origin Hope has rapidly positioned itself as the cornerstone service that bridges clients and technologies in a way no other agency or format has. It has a unique DNA that is invaluable to AI partners like ourselves and impossible to find elsewhere.
“From our perspective, their work makes our technology better, and no other alternatives out there, whether top-end agencies or outsourcers, even come close to what Origin Hope can provide. To us, the trajectory they are on is obvious, and it will stand to benefit the entire content ecosystem.”
