A B2B platform created by two experts for Innovators and Early Adopters to connect and buy innovative products and services: EarlyBirds

In the highly competitive world we live in, innovation is a critical ingredient for businesses to promote sustainability. When a new product is rolled out, many companies make the mistake of assuming that consumers will see their technology and simply feel like buying it. Generally, the catch is that technology is not easy to use, and it is difficult for potential consumers to understand the value of what is being offered. This is where early adopters come in; they are risk-takers who are always looking for new technologies that can solve existing challenges. Moreover, they are not afraid of failing.

Globally there are various providers delivering disparate services for early adopters and innovators, but EarlyBirds is the first mover to accelerate actionable innovations. EarlyBirds is a Business to Business (B2B) platform for Innovators (Startups/Scaleups/Mature) and Early Adopters (Organisations looking for innovations) to exchange value early on. EarlyBirds is well on the way to creating a global open innovation ecosystem by bringing together Subject Matter Expert (SME) Consultants, Innovators, and Early Adopters organizations. The Idea of EarlyBirds came from a challenge Kris Poria faced while working on a large transformation project that needed a disruptive solution. The other co-founder, Jeff Penrose, was working with a startup that had a suitable proven solution, but the systems integrator declined this and instead created an extended project to create a new product from scratch. These incidents gave rise to one of the top B2B platforms for innovators and early adopters.  

In conversation with Kris Poria, Co-Founder and CEO of EarlyBirds

Q. Explain your services in brief.

EarlyBirds is transforming organisations into self-learning organisation by continuous learning across all business functions, solving business and tech challenge quickly, exploring disruptions including new technology, process, and models, and solving ‘Wicked Problems.’

This is delivered with the help of EarlyBirds Ecosystem (Innovators, Subject Matter Experts (SMEs), and Early Adopters) using its global platform and innovation programs Challenger and Explorer. The Challenger program is designed to solve one business or technical challenge at a time, and the Explorer program provides ongoing innovation as a service to the whole organization. EarlyBirds platform scouts over 1M global Innovators, has over 100 SMEs, and now over 500 organizations registered on the platform. EarlyBirds offers two options to the market – Self Service platform subscription that customers can search Innovators to identify solutions or innovations to solve their challenges or use the SME assisted programs to deliver a solution to any business or technical challenges or ongoing innovation as a service.

Q. What are critical issues addressed by your Business to Business platform for tech Innovators?

We help Innovators to identify early adopters through the platform. It is critical for Innovators, emerging or mature, to find early success when they are launching new products.

Q. Developing specialized service for B2B segment needs support of high-level talent and dedication. How did you manage to form your dream team?

Due to the shared challenge faced by the cofounders, we were dedicated to finding a solution. Both the cofounders have global experience working with teams across multiple locations. We have specialist technical teams supporting from multiple locations, and we coordinate the overall outcomes based on our roadmap. We identified that you cannot get a team from just one location; therefore, you need to see the best source of these teams for the skills required.

Q. What are the security measures implemented by you to secure your platform?

We have built our platform using proven COTS products instead of building something from scratch, and a key reason was the assumption of underlying security, scalability, and availability. Our core platform and payment system are highly secure, scalable, with high availability, and compliant with international security requirements. The platform uses Multiple Factor Authentication and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) to secure the connection and safeguard sensitive data. Platform modules are PCI compliant along with Escrow functionality to add further trust for the users. It also meets data privacy and EU GDPR law, policy, and practice.

Q. Do you have any new services ready to be launched?

Yes, we are working on launching our new product line - Innovation Maps for different industry themes. We are starting with the Cybersecurity where we will provide access to global cybersecurity innovators showcasing the cybersecurity industry capability dynamically.

Q. What does the future hold for your company and its customers? Are exciting things on the way?

EarlyBirds is on a journey to deliver to its purpose of “Engaging Society in Actionable Innovation!”. We have coined a framework called Edzlity by combining the terms Edge and Agility that helps organizations to become Self-Learning organizations. The idea is we help all types of organizations to achieve a commercial or technical edge and considerably assist with them becoming more agile to meet the business competitors and take advantage of disruptive technology. We will continue building products and aligning our services to deliver these outcomes with our platform, products, and programs. Slowly, our society will automate most of the key human necessities, so we have a lot of work to do keeping up with these opportunities and challenges whilst effectively helping our customers.

Meet the leader behind the success of EarlyBirds

Kris Poria, Co-Founder and CEO, believes that all individual and businesses are ultimately providing services to our society. Our society is going through a journey to become a machine enabled society in the coming decades and therefore EarlyBirds purpose is “Engaging Society in Actionable Innovation!”. Everything we do at EarlyBirds is enabling this vision with our Open Innovation Ecosystem that includes Innovators (Startups, Scaleups and Mature Organisations), Early Adopter (Organisations private and public looking to solve their business and technical challenges) and Subject Matter Experts - SMEs (Domain and Industry experts). Through the platform, we connect these three parties where our SMEs deliver our specific programs (the Challenger and the Explorer) to deliver outcomes to our customers. 

Jeff Penrose the other Co-Founder believes EarlyBirds is the necessary glue that creates the link between Innovators, Early Adopters and SME to ensure there is mutual benefits and shared outcomes to achieve our vision of ‘Engaging society in actionable innovation’. The holistic, collaborative, and proactive approach provided by EarlyBirds is an exciting and compelling way achieve this vision.

“In the EarlyBirds Platform, you can discover, interact with and explore and learn about actionable innovations and challenges.”