Growing 3 Startups In 3 Months: Interview With Adil Abrar

With a passion to find new ways to solve for age-old problems, Adil Abrar started Sidekick Studios by “accident”. Our interview with him reveals that being innovative might have more to do with having a healthy approach to playful thinking, rather than being so calculating and planning-oriented.

Their recent endeavor is titled SS3, where they will support 3 entrepreneurs to develop 3 public service start-ups in 3 months.

How do you define social innovation?

I’ve got a pretty broad definition of social innovation. Essentially, it’s about new ways to deliver some kind of benefit to society. Amnesty International was a social innovation when it was first conceived. Open University too, when it helped broaden access to university education. Ebay, in the sense that it has done more for small traders and micro-businesses than any number of government initiatives, is in my book of social innovation.

For me, it should be about scale. It should be sustainable. And more often than not, it should be serving a need or supporting people marginalized by the mainstream. So if Groupon could be used as a bulk-buying platform, let’s say for independent retailers, then that would qualify. As opposed to helping bored housewives get discounts on Botox treatments (which obviously doesn’t).

What will drive its growth in the coming years?

From the demand side, the continued pressures on resources in a time of aging populations in the West and exploding population growth in emerging countries. Increasingly, the traditional tools of the State are going to be less well-suited to the kinds of problems our children will inherit, and there will be a need to re-think our approach to supporting communities, to democracy, to well-being and most other facets of society.

On the supply side, the internet offers so much (mostly unmet) potential. Services like Kiva and The Khan Academy are only just beginning to hint at these radical new possibilities and we’re going to see much more as we get more adept at using the tool.

How did Sidekick Studios come to fruition?

It was an accident to be brutally honest. I was working as a consultant, I started working on a bigger project, which ended up with us putting a robot in parliament and before I knew it, we were a company. There was no great plan. We just followed our nose and we are where we are at today. The company we created two years ago, is different to the one that we run today, and I expect will be different again in two years time, and every two years from there on.

Today we see ourselves as an incubator for new types of social ventures. We do that for ourselves – through our own ventures through processes like SS3, and we help others to do the same, of which there’ll be more news later in the year.

Tell us about SS3? What inspired its creation?

SS3 is a coming together of the different things that I’ve picked up working in different places. With a focus on creativity married to strategy, there’s a lot of what I learnt in advertising. The process – based on agile and sprints – borrows heavily from the world of lean startups and software development. The mix of people – adding researchers and service designers to more traditional skill sets such as UX and code – is something we’ve learnt from creating public services over the last few years.

The element which is most new and most exciting about SS3 is adding entrepreneurs into the mix right from the outset. Whilst the team will be focused on the product, it’ll be the role of the entrepreneur to turn the product into a business. What’s interesting for us about that is they’ll have some ownership of the product solution, but also the commercial viability of the product will be in-built as opposed to something tacked on at the other end, once the designers and developers have finished doing their thing.

Putting it all together, we see SS3 as a new way to create public services. Our values are ones that are based on multi-disciplinary working, rapid iteration, prioritising customers, blending design with technology with business, and thinking day one about users and business. You wouldn’t associate many of these values with how public services are designed currently (they’re rarely even designed, they just tend to come into being). In that context, SS3 is insanely at odds with the rest of the sector, which we can live with.

How will you assess applicants? Highlight the most important factors?

Two things. Skills. And character. The price of entry is whether they have proper, useful skills to become the Managing Director of these startups. This is not necessarily design and development skills, but more can they sell, can they lead a team, can they write a business plan etc?

Secondly, and the hardest part of any hiring process, do they have the right temperament to succeed? Are they committed? Have they showed they can bounce back from adversity? Do they have an appetite for risk? Finding both elements is rare. It’s like when great artists bring together craft and vision. We’re looking for the same in our entrepreneurs – craft and character.

What makes London a great city for you to be in right now? Tell us about the innovation/start-up culture there.

It’s hard to say because I’ve only ever known London as a city to work in. I’m sure there’s plenty of interesting stuff happening elsewhere too. Bristol is pretty interesting in the UK, and I hear good things about the scene in Berlin. Still, what is interesting about London is the concentration of talent from different creative industries. We don’t do military hardware so well, but whereas would you get a wheelie bin turned into an urinal?

Sidekick Studio

SS3