Blackbird (LSE:BIRD) — Annual General Meeting

0:01 Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the BLACKBIRD PLC Annual General Meeting. I would now like to hand you over to the board from BLACKBIRD PLC. Ian, good morning, sir. Good morning. And ladies and gentlemen, it's now 11AM. As quorum required by the company's articles of association is now present, I would like to welcome you to the BLACKBIRD twenty twenty six AGM. May I begin by introducing myself and the other member of the board to you? I am Ian McDonough, the executive chair, and Steven Streeter, who is r and d development director. May I also introduce our company secretary, Martin Kay, Vady Marks representing our auditors, walking to Smith and Nick Naylor, Harry Newman, David Asquith, and Amrit Nachal representing our Nomad and broker, L and B Capital.

0:46 I'm also joined on stage by Vanessa Rostom, who's our fractional CMO, and by Sumit Rai, who is our chief product officer. Before proceeding with the formal part of the AGM, I should like to take the opportunity of commenting on the company's progress since we last met as announced to the market earlier this morning. The past year was significant for for both Blackbird and elevate.io. In 2025, the Blackbird division delivered a net profit of £380,000 and a positive cash flow. The platform continues to be used in some of the world's most high profile content, including the global winter games held in Italy earlier this year. Elevate.io has been enhanced dramatically over the last twelve months with the inclusion of live review and instant comments, the integration of services such as subtitles, image generation, music and video stock libraries through epidemic sounds and Pexels, the start of digital asset management functionality, and the addition of enhanced features and effects such as boundary boxing and color grading.

1:49 All of this is available in a browser using Blackbird's core technology, which delivers reliable, smooth performance whilst making it easily accessible and portable for all of elevate.io's users. In addition, elevate.io's architecture now allows the integration of relevant third party AI features, and several AI features have now been incorporated. We've been experimenting during elevate.io's product market fit stage as we continue to add expected features and functionality to the platform. During this phase, we have spent modest sums of money on marketing. We've been following a disciplined data driven approach where improved results will lead to increased marketing spend and activity. Key learnings during this product market fit phase have included validating that business and marketing teams currently have convoluted inefficient workflows, which frustrate them, thus leading to a big market opportunity for elevate.io.

2:45 Learning that these teams are generally not finding their tools via search, but from trusted sources such as communities, forums, and referrals. Understanding that as well as working with in house colleagues, these teams often work with external parties such as agencies, freelancers, which create a possible multiplier effect for elevate.io. And discovering that for content creators at the lower end of the market, there is they are cost conscious and often looking for free tools, meaning that features and functionality are important purchasing and retention drivers for this community who are generally not team based. Consequently, we're focusing our ideal customer profile, our ICP, on business and marketing teams to build on elevate.io's competitive advantages.

3:34 Resources will be allocated to attract these customers accordingly, and early testing with this audience has indicated that they resonate with the workflow focused messaging. Our next steps include iterating on the initial messaging text on meta, allowing us to double down on successes and quickly discontinue those that are unsuccessful. Marketing communities will also be explored as a route to market, and content strategy will be refocused at this group. Monthly research cycles will provide regular feedback on elevate.io's progress within the marketing community, and a marketing update followed by a q and a session will be provided at the AGM today after the formal part of the meeting. The company's board feel there is a huge market opportunity out there for elevate.io that is well positioned to elevate is well positioned to target.

4:23 On behalf of the board, I would like to thank the team for their hard work over the last year and and our shareholders for your continued support. Thank you very much. I'm now going to turn now to the formal business of the AGM. The circular to shareholders include notice of AGM. The circular to shareholders, including the notice of AGM, together with a copy of the company's 2025 report and accounts, was published on the 05/15/2026. And accordingly, notice of the AGM has been duly given in accordance with the statutory requirements and the company's articles of association. The reports and accounts together with the notice of the AGM are available on the company's website. With your permission, I will take the notice as read. The first resolution is to receive the reports and accounts of the company for its year ended 12/31/2025.

5:17 The reports of the directors and auditors are set out on pages 13 to nineteen and twenty two to 26 of the accounts. With your permission, I will take these reports as read. Before the resolution is proposed, I invite any questions. I now propose that the resolution is put to the meeting. May I call upon a show of hands first of those in favor of the in support of the resolution and those against the resolution? I now declare the resolution carried. I'd have mentioned that over 99.8% of the proxy votes that have been locked with the company in respect to the resolution totaling a hundred and twenty three million two hundred and seven and eighty four votes, including chairman and third party discretionary votes were in favor, and 247,644 were against.

6:09 Resolution number two. The second resolution is to approve the remuneration report and directors' remuneration and benefits for the year ended 12/31/2025. Details of such are disclosed on pages twenty and twenty one of the 2025 financial statements and at note three on page 39. It is worth noting that this resolution is being put to an advisory vote in line with the recommendations of the QCA corporate governance code 2023 and in accordance with the provisions of the Companies Act 2006. Direct directors' entitlement to such remuneration and benefits is not conditional on the resolution being passed. Before the resolution is proposed, I invite any questions. And I propose that the resolution is put to the meeting. May I call on you by show of hands, first of those in support of the resolution and those against the resolution.

7:07 I now declare the resolution carried. I would mention that over 93.98% of the proxy votes that have been lodged with the company in respect to this resolution, totaling a 121,000,553 and a 142 votes, including chairman and third party discretionary votes were in favor of the resolution, and seven million seven hundred and ninety two and seventy nine were against. Third resolution is for the reappointment of Ian McDonough as director who is standing for an annual reelection in accordance with good corporate governance practice and the recommendations of the QCA corporate code twenty twenty three. Before the resolution is proposed, I invite any questions. And I propose that the resolution is put to the meeting. May I call on you by a show of hands to indicate first those in support of the resolution and those against the resolution?

8:00 I now declare the resolution carried. I've mentioned that over 92.66% of the proxy votes that have been lodged with the company in respect of this resolution, totaling a 119,831,586 votes, including chairman of third party discretionary votes, were in favor of the resolution, and nine million four hundred and ninety seven six hundred and sixty eight were against. The fourth resolution is for the reappointment of Stephen White as director, who is standing for annual reelection in accordance with good corporate governance practice and the recommendations of the QCA corporate governance code twenty twenty three. Before the resolution is proposed, I invite any questions. I now propose that the resolution is put to the meeting. May I call on you by show of hands to indicate first those in support of the resolution and those against the resolution?

8:52 I now declare the resolution carried. I would mention that over 94.17 of the proxy votes that have been lodged with the company in respect to this resolution, totaling a 121,000,500 sorry, seven hundred and sixty eight four hundred and sixty votes, including chairman of third party discretionary votes, were in favor of the resolution, and 7,536,143 were against. The fifth resolution is for the reappointment of Steven Streeter as a director, who is standing for annual reelection in accordance with the good government corporate governance practice and the recommendations of the QCA corporate governance code '20 23. Before the resolution is proposed, I invite any questions. I now propose that the resolution is put to the meeting. May I call on you by a show of hands to indicate first of those in support of the resolution?

9:42 And those against the resolution, I now declare the resolution carried. I'd mention that over 98% 98.83% of the proxy votes that have been lodged with the company in respect of this resolution, totaling a $127,000,841,132 votes, including chairman and third party discretionary votes, were in favor of the resolution and one million five hundred and eighteen one hundred and twenty two were against. The sixth resolution proposes the election of Yuri Hasanoff as a director who is standing for annual reelection in accordance with good corporate governance practice and the recommendations of the QCA corporate governance code twenty twenty three. Before the resolution is proposed, I invite any questions. I now propose that the resolution is put to the meeting. May I call on you by a show of hands to indicate first of those in support of the resolution?

10:35 Those against the resolution? I now declare the resolution carried. I would mention that over 93.72% of the proxy votes that have been lodged with the company in respect of this resolution, totaling a hundred and twenty one million one hundred and ninety nine and twenty five votes, including chairman and third party discretionary votes were in favor of the resolution, and eight million one hundred and twenty two eight hundred and fifty three were against. The seventh resolution proposes the election of Nicholas Lisher as a director who is standing for annual reelection in accordance with good corporate governance practice and the recommendations of the QCA corporate governance code twenty twenty three. Before the resolution is proposed, I invite any questions. I now propose that the resolution is put to the meeting. May I call on you by a show of hands, push those in support of the resolution and those against the resolution?

11:28 I now declare the resolution carried. I'd mentioned that over 94% 9094.16% of the proxy votes that have been lodged with the company in respect of this resolution totaling a 121,000,778. And two votes, including chairman of third party discretionary votes, were in favor of the resolution, and seven million five hundred and fifty one two hundred and fifty two were against. The eighth resolution is to renew the authority of the directors to issue shares set as a limit equal to one quarter of the issued share capital of the company at the date of the notice. I should make it clear that, say, for the grant of options under the company's share option scheme and the allotment of shares pursuant to the outstanding share options to satisfy the vested wards under the company's long term incentive plan, the directors have no plan current plans to issue further shares pursuant to this authority if renewed.

12:19 Before the resolution is proposed, I invite any questions. I now propose that the resolution is put to the meeting. May I call on you by show of hands to indicate first of those in support of the resolution and those against the resolution? I now declare the resolution carried. I've mentioned that over 99.09% of the proxy votes that have been lodged with the company in respect of the resolution, totaling a hundred and twenty eight million five hundred and twenty two and two hundred and ninety seven votes, including chairman and third party discretionary votes, were in favor of the resolution. And one million one hundred and eighty four and five hundred and forty two were against. The ninth resolution is to renew the authority of the directors to issue shares for cash in certain limited circumstances without first offering those shares to existing shareholders.

13:11 Before the resolution is proposed, I invite any questions. I now propose that the resolutions put to the meeting as a special resolution. May I call upon you by show of hands to indicate first of those who support the resolution and those against the resolution. I now declare the resolution carried as a special resolution. I've mentioned that over 98.62% of the proxy votes that have been lodged with the company in respect to the resolution, totaling a hundred and twenty seven million five hundred ninety nine and six hundred seventy four votes, including chairman and third party discretionary votes, were in favor of the resolution, and one million seven hundred eighty three and five hundred and sixty eight were against. That concludes the full voting on the resolutions at the at the GHM. If thank you much. Right.

14:01 Thank no. No. We're not gonna go to the nonformal part of the the the meeting, And we're gonna have a presentation from Ness in a few minutes, Ness being our factual CMO. But first of all, we're gonna have a product update from Summit. Thank you, Ian. So about a year ago, we sort of was quite early days for us in terms of how our product was perceived to the market and how much was, you know, already out there. We didn't have, as Ian mentioned, we didn't have things like subtitles. We didn't have boundary boxes. We didn't have waveforms. We didn't have a lot of media management. But now we're in a completely different place. We have a product that or that is already in a state where people are using it day in, day out, and it is ready for market. And that's a lot of what we're obviously gonna be talking about today, the go to market of this.

14:50 There are some things that have gone in recently, which are really important, and there's a few things which are coming. And remember, the product never ends. It never finishes. We've got a continual development process. So as time goes on and as we build our customer base, we will, of course, be listening to them and adding things as they go along. One of the things which has been really important that we've added recently is is is our color correction. So this is something that, again, has been requested to us from users. And I'll give you a small example of of how it can be used. This is a typical file that comes out of a camera. Now, of course, this is more for visual stuff, but a lot of people use cameras in interview situations or even within our ICP and marketing where they're filming them on professional cameras. And what we want to be able to do is to interpret those. So what you can see is where that comes out of the camera pretty bland, we're able to interpret it, and then we're able to actually provide adjustments for people to make sure that they can make all of the content that they're creating look absolutely fantastic.

15:46 Another thing which has recently gone in is fonts, and I'll play this through. This little animation. We now support over 1,200 fonts, and we have 5,000 variations of those fonts. Something else which is coming to the platform fairly soon, and if I click on the fonts here, you'll see there's an upload font. Unfortunately, I don't have the, the the account for that yet because it will be reserved for our our pro and business accounts, but it will mean that brands are able to upload their own custom fonts, which takes them one stage closer to this being a platform that, like, helps them keep on brand and stuff like that. Now some of the eagle eyed amongst you will have noticed that we actually have some animations across our titles, and that's one of the most exciting things which is gonna be coming to the platform.

16:31 This has been heavily requested by users. They want all of the animation features with the higher end tools, but without the complexity. And the way we've solved that is coming to the platform fairly soon. There's an animate tab. And what that means is that users can pick any clip that they've got on their timeline, and they can very simply have animations that they just pick by going through this simple list here, and they will be applied to the beginning. And then if they want, the out of the the, exit of the video. And if they want, there's also animations that can sort of loop through continually during the video if it was like a little logo in the top right corner. When you play them back, they simply come into the video and leave accordingly. Now this will really help people who are making marketing videos, and they just require some animations to help not only with their titles, but also maybe with some of their graphics that they're using within the product.

17:24 Another important feature that we've talked about is our audio tools, and we're working really hard to improve the audio capabilities of the product. But vice voice isolation is a real must. People tend to film often in noisy environments, or they're filming on an iPhone in an office without using proper microphones. So this is a tool where if I play back a classic recording of something in a order to you know, in a in a busy trade show, you can hear the problem with audio. I wish I wish someone someone could actually just take a look at my timeline, or I can look at theirs and make the changes and then make the process up and stuff. And what we're doing is we're adding voice isolation into the product, which means that after a bit of processing, it goes through. This is with one of our AI partners. So this is more than just topping and tailing, a voice. This is actually going through and processing the voice, properly online.

18:16 And what that will do is give us something that sounds like this. I wish that someone someone could actually just take a look at my timeline or I can look at theirs and make the changes and then make the process so much faster. You can tell there's none of that background noise. Everything's being removed. So that's a really powerful feature. We expect that to be used a lot by our ICP. Another really important thing for our ICP is motion graphics. Whilst a lot of the video world is chasing high end visual, Hollywood visual effects, that doesn't necessarily help people who are creating marketing content. And one of the things that, again, is coming to the platform soon is emotion graphics capability. And that means users will have the ability to create things like animated titles by being able to take presets, and we could turn to this to BLACKBIRD PLC like that. And then they automatically have things like an animated sequence. Now we'll be providing a lot of these for users.

19:08 There'll be things like lower thirds. So they'll be able to put these over a a recording of somebody. They can very easily go in and change the name. So I'll put myself in there like that. And that means that they can have added to their catalog of info or catalog of content just the ability to really quickly pull in people that they've got in their videos and then have nice little animated, intros. There's another example of one. The other thing that can be done, it doesn't have to just be quite static titles. Here's an example of one which is actually based on the most commonly downloaded, visual or title effect in Premiere, and we just sort of saw whether we could recreate it. And, again, we could change some of this and say it's BLACKBIRD.

20:00 Something like that. And immediately, without any rendering, without any processing, and that's one of the biggest advantages we have in elevate.io, is we're able to just play that straight out. The user can see it happening live. Now a lot of even the higher end non l e non or NLE, video editors aren't able to do that kind of real time performance that we've been able to do. If I show you something slightly more complex so if you could imagine as we target sort of more professional ICPs, the desire for them to be able to create motion graphics without having to go to the expense of freelancers. Here's an example of something that we created. It's a leaderboard, and you can imagine this could be, you know, anything anything in the whole world. It could be the price of gold versus silver versus other things. It could be stocks. It could be a presentation.

20:47 But, again, it means that you could very, very easily change names. So I'll put the esteemed Steven in here. Oh, just gonna spell his name right. That would help. Bundle harnessing. Oh, there. Oh, there we are. Okay. I have this my whole life. No one's gonna stop my name. And, you know, you if you change the name, it would automatically go up to the top. Now the reason why this is, you know, is impressive is that all of these graphics that I've shown you today, including this one, which was a bit of fun we had trying to recreate a fairly well known, visual effect used in films, Every single one of these pieces of graphics was created with AI. We didn't have to sit there and program them. All of them were described in plain English, and then they were built into the product.

21:34 Now to start off with, we're going to be providing them more off the shelf. But in due course, we will allow users to go in and actually describe. For those who wanted to see a live demo, maybe after the a presentation, I can show you that actually running live. I'm too nervous to do it in in totally live, but I I can show you some of the inner workings of how that works. We think this is gonna be crazy important. The cost to us is a few cents to generate the, the leaderboard behind the retail value or what we are able to mark up is obviously significantly more than that, but it's absolutely nothing for our ICP compared to, for example, the cost of AI visual effects. We think this is gonna be really important. One of the foundations that that that Steven and the team and the development team have been building into the product over the last few years is the capability for us to do all of this in the browser, match it on the back end, and that comes with a lot of visual effects as well. So the ability for us, for example, to be able to, go into our effects window and be able to pick and choose different effects that we can overlay onto our products, that we can rack them up so that we've got multiple effects happening at once.

22:43 That's something that even the higher end tools can't do. And this has really been possible because of the work that we've been doing with the GPU on the devices and then matching that in the back end to create the final video. It's allowed us to produce some fun visual effects, things which will be useful. But, of course, a lot of them are also relevant for things like stylization. So if you look on this here, you can add add in things. We can obviously pull in things like the log profiles, etcetera. There's more fun we can have elsewhere. Yeah. We'll shove that up there. But you get the idea. There's a lot of things that can happen stylistically. And another thing which will be quite important is being able to do video processing.

23:30 So, you know, even just being able to do things like color replaces, we could take a nice London bus. Let's turn that one on. That should give us there we go. We can turn that to blue now. All of the these aren't necessarily the most useful effects, but when you combine them all together, we'll be able to produce, especially paired with AI, some really exciting ways for our customers to create content without having to spend a lot of time and effort in creating it. So they'll get professional results without the effort. Now the last exciting point that we're just about to release, so it'll be coming out very shortly, is recovery points. One of the things for anyone who's ever worked in video, they know is that the pain of losing something, and it happens frequently. It gets multiplied when you put that into a multiplayer environment where you've got lots of people contributing to the product.

24:19 And one of the best things that we've built in that I think is gonna be in huge support of our users is this recovery points. Because what it means is if I move this around or I go ahead and destroy, you know, our our our our project, it doesn't stop me going now into the project, into the recovery points, actually saying yesterday or last night when I saved this final AGM setup. I just have to press one button, go there. I can preview instantly everything exactly as it was yesterday. And if I'm happy, I can go restore. It'll restore it, and now it's exactly at the point that I wanted it to be. So this is a really important feature. No high even the higher end video editors don't do it like this. But because we've actually built something where other people from other groups and other teams can all work on it together to alleviate some of the fear that you may lose something if somebody changes something or something goes wrong, we have this infinite history for our higher end accounts and a reasonable and generous history for some of the entry level accounts as well.

25:22 So I hope you've enjoyed seeing some of the sneak preview of the future. We will be around afterwards. But there's this one last thing, which I know Steven is keen to show to people afterwards, And it's the first preview that we've ever done of BLACKBIRD 10 running in in fact, just give it justice. I'll make it full screen because we can finally do that now. So these images are all running at ten eighty with inside the product, not on the separate environment that you may have seen previously. They they don't look as good as they do on screens. Please come along afterwards, and and you'll you'll be able to see it in wonderful technicolor, as they say. But, yeah, Steven's very proud of it, and we're looking forward to adding this into the product and giving our users something which is even closer towards the experience that they may have with an NLE. Great. Thank you. Thank you, Samit. I have to say we're all very proud of where we got to so far.

26:15 And before we go into the next part of the presentation, I'd like to Ness just introduce yourself and explain a bit of background. Yeah. Hi, everyone. Really nice to to meet you and to be here today. I'm I'm Ness, fractional CMO. I work as part of the Scale Up Collective. We're a fractional growth partner. We work with tech and tech enabled businesses, both across b to b and b to c. And our model is about combining our collective experience. We're a small team of specialists, combining senior leadership and specialist execution skills across marketing mix. We've all come from in house roles where we've solved some of these challenges before in terms of finding product market fit, scaling businesses, and we bring that collective experience together to bring Fractional team to businesses that don't yet have fully fledged in house teams and don't yet know exactly where they need the skills in house to hire to based on what exactly is gonna work for them.

27:09 We use a research customer insight led approach to all of our work and use that to identify the right focus for the business in terms of the audience, the positioning, and the right growth levers to find opportunity. Great. Thank you very much. This one. Okay. So you'll be familiar well, many of you, I think. Most of you will be familiar with this chart that I've shown a few times. This shows the various phases of the life cycle that we are taking Elevate through. We're embarking on with Elevate. And we have been in product market fit stage for for quite some time as as you're you're aware, and we've we've given indication that by the end of quarter two, I e around now, we will be coming out of product market fit stage. And I have to say, I think that that's that is actually coming to to to fruition.

27:57 What is product market fit? Well, you can tell product market fit because the market is pulling the product. It's gotta be a killer product, and then you start doing the marketing. This is Marc Andreessen saying this. And with with zero marketing in terms of spend and pretty much in terms of spend, in terms of Google AdWords, etcetera right now, we can feel that the market is really we are take turning the corner and things are starting to pick up, and that the the numbers are holding their own and growing just purely organically, which is which is great news. If the product this is the Sean Ellis test. If the product went away, would you be disappointed? We're starting to test this now with with our data driven approach from from Ness. We'll keep you posted how that goes, but it's we're starting to test out whether disappointment would be there from the the people who are using this on a regular basis.

28:43 And when you have product market fit, you won't need to ask. That's what Mark let Matt Lerner says, and I I think that's also what now what we're feeling is that we do feel that there's there's a market. We do feel that there's a fit, and and the the product has come an awful long way since you've started watching it. And I and I think we're we're very, very proud of it. So I'm gonna guess talk to to, I suppose, to Nes now who's gonna explain a little bit about the approach and and the experimental approach we're taking. Yeah. Thank you. So we've been working with the Elevate. Io team for a couple of months now. And, really, when we started working with the team, the focus on kind of the next steps on this journey to finding product market fit and really cementing that. We're really looking at how we close the gap that we currently have between interest in the product and conversion to paying subscribers.

29:32 As you'll know from the numbers that have been shared previously, we have very strong top of funnel. And even currently without any paid activity or marketing spend going in, we still have strong top of funnel. But we're looking really closely at what the problems that what the what's causing the conversion to paying subscriber gap and how we can close that gap over time. And and a big part of that is really about us understanding who the product is right for and where we have a really clear value proposition that we can lean into and become the right product for a specific group of users. And that group of users needs to be one that we believe can really experience the core value of Elevate. IO as it stands today and as it's moving in the future as well. And that having a single focus ICP, which is kind of a shift from where we have been in terms of looking at testing different ICPs and understanding where we have that fit. Focusing on a single ICP now will allow us to really concentrate our efforts in a against a single audience and make sure that all of the work that we do across marketing and across products compounds each other towards creating and delivering that value for users.

30:42 So in terms of our go to market strategy, the the the work that we've been doing so far with the Elevate. Team is we started this process with with research. So, of course, we spoke with all of the key members of the Elevate team to understand the history, the journey they've been on so far, the hypotheses that exist within the business around the different audiences that we could potentially speak to. And then we ran a research process of 16 initially 16 qualitative interviews with potential customers. That included Elevate users, churned Elevate users, and users hypothesized ICP fit that have never heard of Elevate before. To really understand how video production's done, what their problems are, and what tool sets they're using, and where they break, and what that workflow looks like.

31:27 So we can really start to understand where Elevate best fits and where we can position ourselves in that. And that's what brought us to this focus on in house business and marketing teams as a primary ICP for us to work against. The reason being that these teams are under enormous pressure to scale video content. They are producing video in lots of different ways within and around the business, not just for marketing and promotional purposes, but for internal training, for social content, for product marketing, for product tutorials. It's it's everywhere within the business in lots of different shapes and sizes from short form and to long form. And they're under pressure to continue to produce that content without being professional video editors. So they need tools that allow them to move quickly and become produced professional quality video without necessarily having heavy tool kits and software available to them.

32:21 And they're currently using a very cobbled together workflow, which I've I'll come on to show you a little bit later. That involves many different tools, chopping and changing between different tool sets, grabbing content from one place, moving it into another, uploading and downloading files all over the place, which as you can imagine is time consuming. It's also costly because they're having several subscriptions and that they're having to to pull together. And they have an enormous, challenge with multi stakeholder, review and approval processes, which plays really well into the collaborative components of of Elevate. And also, these teams tend to share work within them. So some of the collaborative components of Elevate where you may have multiple people working within project or sharing access to projects and working alongside each other is is well placed for these these teams where they are perhaps geographically dispersed, need to pick up projects from one another, take a core asset and and turn it into other formats for different purposes.

33:21 And all of that that exists today is exactly what that audience is looking for and struggling to find with their current toolset. They also have budget available. And as I said, they're spending money on lots of different tools today. The other interesting thing about this audience is that they have natural loops into other ICPs that will become relevant for us. They work with content creators. They work with video editors. They work with agencies, be that social media agencies or video production agencies, all of which there will be sharing processes with and gives us a natural extension into those groups as well. So when we think about that ICP, that really encourages us to make a shift from where we are or have been in terms of positioning Elevate as a browser based video editor to actually how teams scale video with a complete video work play workflow in one place, with a specific focus on the fact that you have the edit and the review and approval components in a single place, which is a huge bottleneck for for those teams and a huge part of the value that Elevate can provide today over and above other products on the market.

34:33 From a distribution perspective, Ian touched on it very briefly before, but this group rely heavily on referrals and recommendations when they're looking at tooling to to use and to upscale themselves in their roles. And so we'll be looking from a distribution point of view to really focus in on those channels where we can find those high trust ICP dense communities to to start to to to push Elevate through those channels. But beyond distribution and and positioning, which obviously two kind of big tracks for us to focus on, we're also going to be looking at how when we bring people into the product, how we actually activate them as teams once they come in. It's a really important part of getting them to experience that value that we believe Elevate can create is actually encouraging that behavior from the minute they join they they come into the product.

35:22 And then also with a big focus as well on looking at our product led growth opportunities. So how do we encourage some of that cross usage between those different ICPs or different networks that they're working within? And how do we also encourage people to use and share the products in a way that will also allow others to discover it naturally themselves? So just to touch a little bit on this kind of fragmented workflow that I that I've spoken about just to give you an illustration of this. We have recently done another round of qualitative interviews where we've gone into this process in with more depth of this ICP to look at actually what is their video production workflow today. And as you can see, there are several stages to it. An an edit is only one of those.

36:10 And actually, you've got from the very beginning of kind of capturing content, creating assets to work with right through to the actual publication of of that piece of content, be that on a social channel or be that on an internal channel, wherever it's going to exist. And every every part of that process breaks today. They have to switch between a different tool. They have different kind of tech stacks that sit across all of them. And actually, today, elevate.io as it stands brings three of those core components together right now. So from the storage of content through to the editing and through to the in context review and approval process, we're able to serve that proposition today. And moving forwards, we are looking at quite quickly moving into cover the entire process.

37:00 So as Summit spoke about earlier, we've got elements coming in to serve the branded components so that teams can add branded elements consistently across their work. We'll also be looking at how we go from editor to publisher on platform and also how we actually facilitate the capturing of content within the platform so they can move straight through into the edit process as quickly as possible. And so this is what allows us to really land that proposition with this audience of a complete video workplace within one platform and one user experience. In terms of that ICP and the opportunity we have ahead of us, there's from a total market perspective, we've there's also six and a half million marketers worldwide.

37:46 Within that, we then have that broadens out to 15,000,000 marketing adjacent roles. So as I was talking about earlier, when you start to think about creators, agencies, editors that those teams work with, allows us to broaden out that market even further. In terms of where we are focusing right now today to prove and validate this route to market, we have no point 2,000,000 marketing teams within The UK specifically that we will be focusing on to show traction with this go to market so that we can then broaden that out and and move into some of those other ICPs in time. And I just wanted to share with you, as, again, Ian alluded to earlier, we've started doing some very initial testing around this proposition actually in market. So off the back of the qualitative insights that we initially ran is created this hypothesis.

38:36 We've now put that back into qual and quant testing to verify that we have interpreted that correctly and that there is indeed a market for this proposition. And we tested a variety of different propositions. I think there are about 12 in total that kind of ranged across a different spectrum of full workflow down to kind of editing specific capabilities. And the messaging that was anchored around this complete workflow proposition and performed twice as high as the overall campaign average versus the editing capability messaging, which performs the least so far. So that's just very early round of testing. We've got a lot more to do here, but this just gives us the kind of green light to keep pushing on this and to keep digging further into how we really cement this proposition and and how we place it with this ICP.

39:27 In terms of next steps for our for our focus, as I mentioned, we'll be continuing to pressure test this language market fit. We've currently been doing that on LinkedIn. We're going to be moving over to Meta, which is both a place where these individuals spend time professionally and personally. It's also more cost effective for us to test and learn quickly. The testing we do then feeds all of our other channels. So we we pressure test messaging in that environment, gives us confidence to roll it out to a broader market across big brand services and also push it into paid campaigns where we have some data to prove that that language is going to resonate with the market we're trying to reach. We've also now set up products and proposition research cycles every month. So we're being customer led in terms of understanding who we're talking to, whether the right people coming in off the back of this messaging, and have we correctly understood their needs and how we can solve them and keeping a continuous pulse on that so that we can adapt to say these needs change.

40:23 We're now moving through off that first round of testing to updating some of our kind of core brand surfaces. You'll see this workflow messaging starts to filter out into where you see Elevate being spoken about. And our first big wave of distribution work is going to be focused on marketing communities as a channel. So we're building those lists of all of the marketing communities in The UK where these teams go for peer to peer learning and peer to peer guidance and looking at the opportunities for us to communicate through those groups. And also this shift in ICP and positioning is starting to filter through now into our organic content focus as well. You'll see more of that coming through. Good. Thank you both, Ness. Thank you. Great. I will now open the room up to q and a. Questions for the team?

41:14 Yes, sir. Oh, thank you. Sorry. Thank you, Sumit. You mentioned about the the fear of losing your workload, which is which is anybody who uses computers, always a fear. Will that require a lot more because it as it's not in person people's computers, it's in the cloud, so to speak. Will that require additional cost of having storage space? That is very cheap. Is it? Really? Okay. It's negligible cost Right. Compared to video. Excellent. So it makes it easy for us to provide that service. Right. It's not my feels. I thought I'd ask you. Yeah. No. No. Honestly, it's a negligible cost, and it's again, it's not because of the fault of computers that things often get lost. It's often just things that happen in workflow. Yeah. One of the reasons that people end up in that ridiculous cycle with final, very, very final, final, final, final is really also often because things change and people actually just genuinely want to go back. Yep.

42:10 And, for example, the demo I set up earlier, there's a prime example. I can use it, show people, mess it about. Yeah. And I can just click one button and go back to where I was. So it has many uses, and, yeah, it's it's free for us to do. Excellent. One other question quickly, if I'm if I may. Have you contacted relevant associations? My background is tax. I've gone and done presentations for them for big in particular, graphic designers. Now I don't know any relevant associations that you know about. I can see this product going down very well, especially via a medium like an association or professional body. Yeah. That's a a marketing channel, I would say. Thank you. Yeah. And that that definitely falls into the category of some of these kind of communities where we have kind of large populations or groundswells of this group and where they're going for advice or guidance.

43:01 So certainly, that will be an avenue we'll be exploring specifically for the marketing teams initially before we branch out into other groups. Thank you. Any other questions? I just have one question. I've got loud voice anyway. Don't worry about the mic. It's actually for the online audience. Yeah. There we go. No problem. Yeah. The question for Sonic. Just some of the new features looked really great. I love the voice isolation. I can see that. But you said that you've been able to put them in and build them quickly with AI. What keeps Elevate unique and what keeps us ahead of the rest of the competition if things can be built that easily? Can't competitors do the same thing? So to be clear, the templates and the visual look of the templates were built with AI. They were the ones that and, again, we're gonna make that available to other people. So they'll be able to style the way things look. The underpinning technology behind it in making that happen is still ours, and we've had to build that ourselves.

43:53 And and this might be a marketing question. I'm not sure. But how and how well do we sorry. I would I'd say that the what makes it unique, though, is the point is the question you're asking. Right? What makes I look yeah. Yeah. So from our point of view, we still had to build everything that is able to make that possible to the end user. So just because AI is being used to visually style templates and people as they come along and want new ones, the ones that we don't offer, they still would have to get that from our platform. You still couldn't just go to a ChatGPT or a record and ask for that on its own. And what is still unique about Elevate apart from the stack, which we talked about, that's great. You can go and do things in one place, but that that this can do that others others can't do. I mean, I'm not I want this, you know, a big shout. I want this company to do well, so I wanna be able to go and talk about it elsewhere. What is it that is It's the end to end. It's the fact that we are dealing with everything from the capture of the video, the organization of those assets, building the timeline. We will be adding more AI features that mean that, you know, you will be able to do more things with your own content either by hand or because AI is gonna help you, and then you automate it, publish, and storage, and being able to roll back. So it's not that there aren't other tools that people are building where they do one piece along along the way, but it's the fact that we pulled the whole thing together that makes us valuable. And the value in that when people use it, it's very hard to walk away and say, okay. I'd like to use every all these things completely piecemeal.

45:14 It's another reason, for example, why Google Suite does so well because it's Gmail, it's it's Slides, it's it's Docs, it's everything all collaboratively, collectively together rather than saying, oh, I'll go over there to buy this, there to buy that. That's why none of that talks to each other, whereas we're all part of one platform. Yeah. So I think platform is the important word. AI can do a little bit of the, you know, slice of the pie, but, actually, you need, you know, the whole experience. And for that, you need a platform. And most of the people doing editing systems are just doing editing, and that is not the the whole whole platform. And this is what Ness was saying about you actually want to go from start to end in the same system. K. Thanks. I just wanted to just add as well. How to what extent are we monetizing all the new features? I've I I'm not a big video editor, but I have been on the user product myself. I did find it quite tricky, but I think it's getting easier and and that's coming in, and I'm I'm definitely not someone who has experience in it.

46:12 I was interested when you were talking about earlier who was the, you know, who is the audience, who is this for, and I'm coming into that perhaps it's not me. But I mean, but what I didn't have to do is pay for anything when I was doing it. And I'm interested in to what extent we're kind of monetizing and where that paywall starts for for these new features. So, I mean, quite some a lot of the new features are some are perhaps your best base to talk specifics are going into some of these paywalls where they will need to be in professional business accounts to access them. So there is a we through the free account, we will allow some ex initial exploration. But as soon as you start going to get into some of the more sophisticated aspects, that you that will be moved up to paid accounts. The usual gating that we do for paid accounts is usage. So, obviously, we want people to try the product. The fact that you are able to try it is a benefit to us. And we obviously have had, you know, significant numbers of users who have tried the product out, and they they will then go on, use it potentially for a short period of time, and then they may hit some of the limits. For example, we have the three export limit per month. So we have users who say, no. This is a great tool. I'm using it. Now I've hit that limit. It's time to upgrade. We have limits on storage.

47:18 We have limits on the export resolution, and we have limits on how many of the AI features you can use. So when you're a free user, you get a 100 free tokens to use on anything from the isolation to text to speech or anything else, but then you can't buy anymore. So you are you you know, you'll stop there. When you take up a paid plan, you get yourself your monthly, you know, allowance as well as obviously being able to buy above and beyond that. There's no question at the moment, the parity between what you can do for free and what our highest account is needs to grow. So as we add more and more features like, an example was the rollback. The rollback, you'll you'll get like, it's a day for the free accounts. It's a week for creator. It's a month for business, and then it's sorry, for pro, and then it's unlimited for business. So the value as you go up the chain and the the different pay tiers that we have, we want businesses who are completely willing to pay the price that we're asking a business, and they will want to for those features because it's peace of mind. It's more storage.

48:13 It's more users. It makes sense for them. But we don't wanna also get the small team who's maybe a a very small marketing team of one or two people. We don't wanna put them off by them having to buy in at the high end. So we want to scale it nicely. There's a key there's a key point there about the ICP where we're focusing is because the ICP that we're really trained on is much more inclined to to pay for their tools. I'm much more inclined to make lots of video. I'm much more inclined to just collaboration. So it's a big win win win for us in terms of in terms of applying the right tool to the to the audience that's actually gonna pay for the tools. In fact, Sumit gave another example in his demo of custom fonts. So if you're a marketing team and you've got to use your corporate font, you're not gonna use a free account because it's not included.

48:58 And the cost to a business of upgrading to get that custom font, it's it's peanuts for them. So that that will separate the people trying it out. It's great you're trying it out, and you can tell your marketing friends about it, but they won't be using a free account. They'll be paying for the custom fonts. Thank you. Great. Timbo. Most of this focus of this meeting has been on Elevate quite rightly too because it's all new stuff. And not much mention of the BIRD PLC division, but I know in your in your statement, you you you said it made a very useful 380 k profit. Good. Good. Is. Which might save another fundraising in the future, which would be jolly good.

49:45 Is there anything going on there in terms of further product development, or is it is it has it reached its sort of final form now, and it's just being used as a cash cow? Or have you got plans for for growth for for BLACKBIRD as well? It's a it's a very sticky product, Tim. It's it's it's it's it's in there deep in the, you know, deep in the architecture of the world's largest financial news organization and the games that go on every year. But it's a tricky market to to to with very long sales cycles and very competitive to try and to try and move that product forward. And we decided back in 2021, 2022 that that that Elevate was gonna be the core the core focus. So it will benefit from BLACKBIRD 10 and and, you know, we have we have an ongoing relationship with EVS, of course. But there's a yeah. The the main focus is on is on elevate.io.

50:36 It's just worth mentioning. Lots of the technology upgrades we're doing for Elevate will also be applicable in the original BLACKBIRD product. That was my next question. So there is a synergy between the two. Yeah. They use the same call library. And So And and the clients have not only used the editor, but have licensed the technology, also benefit from the development we're doing. Yeah. I mean, have there been any conversations about perhaps selling BLACKBIRD or spinning it off? Quite frankly, it's it's a tricky thing to do because the back end is so deeply shared, and and and I I I always compare it to having a Formula One team and and a and a and a road car division. It's like the the fact that that that Blackbird is being used at the very pinnacle of world sport and and news really road tests that that that technology at the kind of at the most difficult place it could be. And then, you know, we are we're building our our road car as well, still have AI.

51:37 Great. Thank you. Just following on. First of all, thank you very much. That was probably the slickest and best presentation you've done in the many years I've been attending. So thank you very much for all. Ladies and gentlemen, please do just bear with us while we reconnect the team. Thank you.

52:59 So it's it will follow. Do you see it, Jake? Hi, guys. We have you back. Okay. Good. Hi. Can I is there an enterprise to to elevate product? I I think you mentioned Summit in a a video video that a school had started using it. How would you how would you sell into that level of organization where students don't individually pay themselves, but they get full access to the to the product? Well, we have a couple of experiences with a couple of organizations. Obviously, we have a main ICP, but it's not like we're not supporting other people. And we do have a education discount. It's like a 50% thereabouts or and, obviously, we can negotiate individually.

53:45 But we do have education partners who use the product at a little bit of a discount, and then they buy a wholesale, and then they manage the users accordingly. But enterprise is definitely on the road map. It's not there yet in terms of in terms of having an enterprise solution for for for very big corporates, but there's no reason why we we can't be you know, build a bridgehead without that, and people bring it bring us in. It's only what happened to Figma in the early days. Thank you. Colin? Hi. Thanks. Leading on from that question. It strikes me that the ICP now goes over the threshold from being a a b to c sale to being a b to b sale with all of the things that that entails.

54:36 I know that you've put a lot of effort and successfully so, I think, to making the the system easy to use and understand and learn, etcetera. But I suspect that when you go to organizations that fundamentally have to have this technology really work, that you're gonna need to have some kind of more directed sales pitch with people actually talking to them directly and them feeling that they're being supported by an organization that isn't gonna let down a key function of the business. So it's gonna end up being b to b to b, not b to c. I think to a certain extent, yes. I think this audience particularly often behave in quite a b to c way in terms of how they explore and, you know, the the tooling is often selected by the individual who is using it as opposed to kind of more of a senior director, but bringing their product in in that kind of traditional b to b way of here's a new system. Everybody must learn to use it. It's more bottom up, typically.

55:42 And we we believe that there is a strong enough kind of loop within that kind of edit review in one place. It's a big enough pain across the business for the other stakeholders within it as well that have to be part of that review process to overcome some of those kind of kind of, you know, niggles around anything else they might be using. And in terms of support, I mean, that's something that we're gonna have to look at and see kind of how that plays out in reality of how much support people require. There's been a quite big investment so far in terms of a huge library of learn content and videos that sits on the platform for people to access that enables them to use all different aspects of the product. And we'll we'll keep an eye on what those kind of other inbound inquiries are around active live support that people need for the product and how that kind of changes what what how we need to support them. Thank you. So do you think that you may actually end up needing quite a sort of a weighty support desk and one to one assistance for organizations that are gonna rely on this as a core part of their business?

56:46 I don't believe I don't believe we have anything to suggest at the moment that that's going to be a huge requirement. I think things that Summit has already shown in terms of the ability to to roll back and things like that, they will be some of the big concerns I think that people have around using it for core kind of business services, the ability to recover things to not make mistakes. And a big part of the proposition is actually the fact that lots of people can be involved and we're not chopping and changing between different system actually actually solves to eliminate some of those mistakes that tend to happen in this process typically. So I don't believe we have anything at the moment to indicate that that will require a huge amount of investment in that sort of business. Mhmm. And I think one of the key things, Colin, is that with what Steven's built over the years and what we're now rolling out is it just works.

57:31 You know? And I think that a lot of people said that in terms of our customers that are using it at the very highest level of sport. No sport tickets over the winter games this year. Zero. So it's it's it's it's phenomenal. So we're we're in a very fortunate place with that. To your earlier point about about whether this is a b to b tool or a b to c tool, we had a mantra at the very start of this development, which is there is a consumerization of professional tools, and and and that's, you know, that continues. We want to make a consumer grade tool for a professional environment and vice versa. So it's it's it kinda works on on both levels. If I can just jump in there as well. Sorry. I don't know if you can hear me. This is my pleasure. Hi, everyone. If you can hear me, just to double down on what Ness said there, because I just very much agree with that. Think, like, look, some of this most successful b to b software of the last decade, Slack, Figma, Notion, Canva, for Teams, it's sole product led with little to no direct sales contact. And Teams adopt it from the bottom up. It spreads colleague to colleague, and companies convert from paid plans through the product itself.

58:33 And that's the exactly the motion, the ease of use that Sumit talked through enables. So selling to marketing teams doesn't necessarily mean that we need a big enterprise Salesforce if the product becomes the sales engine as we hope it will. The direct high touch setting only really becomes necessary at the very top end. And to me, that's that's a, you know, luxury problem. If we get there, that's great news. And so that's that's how I'd see it, and that's how I've pretty much always seen it being a being a nonexec. If you look at what you would need to do to be able to buy something that exists already in the higher end that's like, works across multiple locations, connects together, is centralized, is the ability for people to work on projects, not necessarily simultaneously because we're quite unique in that.

59:22 But if you look at what you would have to buy, there would be so much hardware involved. And there are other people who do that. This is how other, you know, high end broadcasters work. But that does require a massive sales effort because it's a massive undertaking. We don't have that. You know, any marketing team could sign up from around the world all of add their user accounts together and be working, you know, within within few minutes. So we don't anticipate wanting to have be able to hold hand sorry, hold people's hands during this process. And if we do require high touch, then we've then we've built the wrong thing, or we've not built it like we wanted to build it. So I was mentioning that as Nick mentioned about product led growth, we've added seven features in to the editor, which would not naturally be a fast growth thing.

1:00:09 But we've added seven features in that encourage the spread of users and for users to invite new users. And one of those is a review option, for example, where you can be editing with your timeline, but your your stakeholder who's you know, might want to could be anything from a lawyer. It's been a lawyer here. It has to check the details of it, or it could be, you know, the marketing director who has to check the content. You just push one button, and they get the the video for review, which they can shuttle through but without the complexity of the timeline. And they can add comments straight away, which the editor sees live. So the editor can actually edit the response to the comments while it's happening remotely, and then the the the reviewer sees the content. So it's not like you you have to get all these people in yourself because the reviewer will be brought in by the editor or vice versa.

1:01:03 The the reviewer will be saying, you've got to have something that I can just see. Don't want this backwards and forwards by email. You just gotta have something I can just come at any point and look at it, and you can fix it straight away. So there's quite a few features that encourage the existing users to bring in other users. And that's why we have teams as our core unit rather than individuals. And this is why marketing teams is one of our what's our key ICP, where everyone can contribute their part to the production and the review and the approval. Steve, do you have any questions on the POC? There are some questions, actually. I think you're the one that's gonna have to read them out. Okay. I'll read them out, and you can I'll read one at a time. But these are few pre submitted ones.

1:01:49 How many organizations are signing up to use Elevate? How would an organization be weighted when publishing subscriber numbers? Well, there are many organizations that sign up to use Elevate. We're not disclosing metrics at this at this juncture because we are we're doing that at the at the interims and at the full year. But I would say there are many organizations, individuals, teams, yeah, schools, education, lots lots of different wide variety. As you heard now, we're now focusing on a particular ICP. Thank you. Next question, product market fit stage. This is over, has been for a while. Please explain precisely what your sales and marketing strategy actually is. You've turned your back on enterprise and the IP, two of the three pillars, to entirely focus on b to c, a crowded market with a low price point.

1:02:39 We all understand the differentiators, but how are you going to sell and fight for air? I'm gonna say that's that's being covered in the meeting. Yeah. Yeah. I think we have can answer to that. I would very much like to meet Nick, Lisha, with the impending We've had Nick. Yeah. Yeah. The next year. Yep. You can ask him questions too directly. Next one. Question for Ian McDonough. You started as CEO nine years ago with a share price of 6.4 p. Recently, it sits at 1.4 p, an 80% erosion. At what point will you consider stepping down? I'll step down when we're successful. We're we're we're we're on the way, so we're in a good place. And I'm I'm I'm to the gentleman's point earlier, I think we're we've got a great team around right now. We've got an excellent strategy of an amazing product, and, yeah, I'm very happy.

1:03:27 Alright. Next one. Please comment in detail on the elephant in the room, the casino funding of the group. How is this left out of the statement? It's beyond belief. We have no plans at this stage to do a fundraising. We have money in the bank for until end of first quarter next year, and we are looking forward to to seeing traction in the product, whereby we will then take a story to the market. I've been a okay. I've been a fan of Steven Streeter and loyal investors since the forbidden days. The BLACKBIRD team has some incredibly accomplished and talented people with experience building video products and growing SaaS companies, particularly Steven and Summit. Yet after so many broken promises, it's painfully obvious that Ian lacks that expertise, his bent toward credibility.

1:04:15 They're always a bit punchier online, aren't they? Hiding behind the the laptop. They do they do put names down, which I haven't read. Mark, Gerald, John. What's his phone number? They don't they don't put their surnames down. Okay. Yeah. I think I've answered the question earlier. Yes. Paul, we have another marketing leader leaving Blackbird. This follows a concerning trend involving Adrian Lambert, no violence, Nick Lisher, although Nick is here, not quite sure he can then. And now, Kjell, does this revolving door in the marketing function represent a deeper issue with BLACKBIRD's leadership and a fundamental lack of strategy from the top? I I I I think to that point, and you've all heard us speak today, we really were looking for someone and a team together with with that person to bring a strategic benefit to the company. And I think that we did an excellent job through product market fit stage with with with Cal and Caroline. I think right now, we're looking for a more strategic view of how we move forward to get to market.

1:05:15 And just a correction there. I haven't left BLACKBIRD. Still here. I I I started as a nonexec. I briefly joined to help out the team for a three month engagement, and I'm still in head. Yeah. Good. Alright. William. Hi, Ian. Could you please describe what your normal working days and weeks look like from Monday through Sunday? How do you balance the enormous workload, Ricardo, being a tech startup CEO with life in general? Very busy. Lots of meetings, pulling things together, just focusing on the customer, looking at looking forward to how we're we're we're gonna spend our millions when we're all very well. Alright. Right. So question for me, but it may not be actually for me to answer this. Question for students treater. Following under departure as chair, mister McDonough assumed assumed an interim role before cementing his position as Chairman permanently, compounded by his family's ownership stake. Can you offer any reassurance to shareholders that the Board retains the capacity to hold the CEO accountable after all these years? Please reassure shareholders.

1:06:22 Yes. We give to Ian a very hard time. We we have quite robust debates as we decide our strategy. There is a long term, as the nomad will tell you, a long term expectation that the chairman will be nonexec. But Ian is not charged extra for that role, and that money is being spent on the government and marketing. I'm not permanent chair. I'm interim chair. Yes. And everyone is held to account. So we're yeah. Okay. Paul, the fact that the company is still attempting to understand the ICP three years into development of Elevate, just senior leadership are confused regarding both the product and the market. Sumit Ryan and Steven Streeter are undoubtedly industry veterans. What's actually going wrong here?

1:07:10 That's okay. Wasn't particularly for me. But I think the the product I think that is is an evolution of the of of the development of the of the ICP, and we've the marketing teams have always been part of the ICP. Yeah. So we had several options. Down on that. Yeah. We had several options that could be, and we've been focusing. So just to give you an example, the creator economy was was something that we can support in the product. But now we've had paying users for a while. What we realized was that most of the creators, first of they don't want to pay very much, if at all. And secondly, that they they don't like to subscribe for long term from our experience. And the idea of the the idea of having the marketing people is that they are part of a group where it becomes very embedded. They're quite conservative compared with the creators.

1:08:06 So the product gets embedded into their workflows and their companies. So we'll get long term revenue from those people, although it's obviously available for creators to come in. One thing we've found is some people use it just for individual projects. So they're very happy with the product, and they sign up, and then they hand sign up because because they've made their project. But with marketing people, there's a constant need for new content. And that might also apply to creators, but not all creators are creators of video, you know, full time video creators. So there are actually some creators in this room. I happen to know who use Elevate, but they might make a video for a show and wouldn't necessarily want to subscribe full time and be churning out content as their main business. Their creator might be to make products, and then this would be an extra thing.

1:08:55 So I think it has developed. We're not excluding any markets, but it's much easier when you get concentration in a market where people can talk to each other, talk to their colleagues, and maybe even in different businesses with the same needs and be able to say, we've satisfied this need. So, yes, we've had early adopters, you know, who are great. We could sell by anything and try and give you feedback. But this is our first attempt at long term sustained users, which of course an enterprise is again, says very sticky customers. And that is that's quite valuable to have a sticky customer. And, obviously, that's more valuable seen by investors because you get repeat revenue, which is very valuable.

1:09:41 I think one other important thing I'd like to add to this is that, you know, we talk about the three years in development. And, obviously, historically, we've been very clear that we're still in development. As I said earlier, we'd always be in development. We'll always be evolving the product. But we are at a point where it's very, very usable by the ICP. So there's no reason from here onwards we don't go to market. You know, we don't put our effort behind that. As Ian said, we are in a position where the tool is usable. And, sure, we will add we will be continually adding. We will be continually making it more compelling a lot based on the feedback from those groups. I think the other thing to to to point out there is that and I've I've mentioned this at a at a number of meetings before, is that this is normally done behind closed doors in a in a Silicon Valley VC and, you know, did not yet generally done in the open in The UK public company.

1:10:32 I think that the fact that we've done this in three years, that no one else has done it, not Adobe, you know, Apple, no one else has has has created this this tool, is is commendable. And, you know, it's we've we've spoke last year about us coming to the end of product market fit at the end of q two. Here we are. You know? We we've literally we're starting our scale up. I think that, you know, we do come here and we do we are very open with you guys, very open with the guys on the behind the screens there as well, is that, you know, we'll take a hard time. We'll we'll we'll we'll, you know, we'll we'll take the the the criticism. But I think we're all very lucky to be part of this. I really do think that. I mean, it's it's it's an it's amazing opportunity that we've got this this this this company, this product to invest in publicly. And, yeah, I'm really proud of the team, what they've done.

1:11:18 I'm really proud of what we're gonna do next. I feel few minutes because I know you're having a couple of. I'm just building on the idea of the beachhead we talked about several years ago that that you gave the timeline and the idea of the development of the product to find that beachhead. And, obviously, it's a selection of marketing teams. It's monetization, which all the shareholders were basically waiting for because that's where we get take off. Can I get the marketing team's opinion? Because we're actually asking them to market a product which they're gonna be part of and use supposedly themselves within their own organization. And, if the idea of concentrating on The UK 200,000, the idea is that's a market you know, that's a market you're inside out, in touch with, and talk to commonly yourself.

1:12:04 And so therefore, you feel free that you can actually work with that group rather than going to The US where there's been huge amounts of focus where we've always said before, that's where we need to break. And I suppose the idea is you hit The UK, establish that, and then the idea is word-of-mouth. These are global companies. People in The UK will talk to American partners, then we grow from there. But that's why the concentration on The UK 200,000, which initially seems very small within a total of 500 1,500,000,015, sorry, people. Yeah. Sorry. And you're right. And there's a point there as well to say that these teams, marketing teams in The UK, will often will have international counterparts that that they're working. They will have offices in in other countries around the world, whether it be that The US, European, etcetera. And a big value of Elevate is that ability to have a central hub for all video projects. Their teams geographically dispersed, whether they're working from home, working from a different country can still work in the same way together. And that's a really valuable part of the product and proposition for that audience.

1:13:04 So whilst that UK based number, as you say, is quite conservative in terms of 200,000, That's that's literally just the entry point. And as I said before, those 200,000 teams will have international counterparts in some cases. They will also be working with content creators, video editors, agencies in in The UK and outside of The UK. So and this is kind of also an extension of the question that was asked before about the ICP, which is there are lots of ICPs that we could go after. The reason marketing teams or business teams are interesting to us is because of those threads of connections that they have into other ICP areas. So we can concentrate our effort on one individual ICP, but in the at the same time From perspective, you've been a market firm and actually being a company in that situation. Yeah. Suppose it is that's something that is a happen to a situation between Yeah. ICP and your organization. Yeah. Well, we are as I, you know, as I talked about marketing communities and some of those peer leds, we are in and amongst those groups. We exist in them.

1:14:06 We behave in the same way as we're talking about some of these teams do. So we've seen this behavior play out and just need to look at how we put Elevate into those conversations. And quite rightly, we are we are in those in those conversations part of that community, which definitely is a They're deeply embedded in in our customers. Part of your do you use Elevate yourself? Yeah. We do now. Yeah. Because you've never heard of it before. Now you've seen it. Now it's like, wow. Yes. Exactly. Gonna be far. And this and this declare that you've got an interest in working. I don't no. I don't think so because, like, we we use a lot of the products that we that we work with. Lots of lots of people do. I don't I don't think that's a conflict of interest in any in any sense. And this is one of the hypotheses that we spoke about at the very beginning, which is all you know, there's a hypothesis that we're simply just not positioning well enough for this group. Therefore, we if we change our positioning, we'll we'll we'll bring them in. But equally, there's another argument to say we're just not showing up in their world yet, and that's the other kind of efforts that we need to to explore, which is how do we make sure we are showing up in their world so that they can discover the value of the product.

1:15:21 Yes, sir. Thank you. Yes, I'm shareholder. I'd first of all like to congratulate you on what you've built so far, a small team of very dedicated people. So I want to try and get a bit more clarity about this funding question. So I'm trying to find a way of I'm not trying to be adversarial. And it was a very useful discussion today on the different routes to market and the different marketing strategies. But, you know, you have raised little little bits of capital over the past few years, and the statement that you've funded for the next year sounds a little bit like a holding position. So is it inevitable that to scale this up, you will need significant more funding? Or is the board still looking at pathways where this flywheel turns on its own?

1:16:13 And that there are indeed, it sounds to me, there are possible routes to market that are not hugely capital intensive in terms of marketing investment. There there are there are indeed. I mean So I know you have to keep looking at these options, but but right now, are you are you being driven by your limited resources, or are you or are you exploring the best routes to market? I I think that directly, that's there's a mixture of the two there. I mean, if if we if we had unlimited resources, we'd probably be trying other things as well, but we think this is the most direct route to market. This is the they the communities that we're talking about do buy through referrals, and they buy from trusted sources. They don't generally buy from a Google AdWords online video editor app. You know? So that that that's that's a it it's a it's fortunate, but, you know, the but, you know, the we have a win win win, as I said before, in terms of maybe it's a four wins, you know, that we we have here.

1:17:06 I don't have my CFO here today, so I would normally pass this question directly to him. He'd I know I know what he'd say is that we have no plans at this stage to to to raise further funds. So, yeah, that's that. That would that would be the the the the straight answer back. But we are approaching the market from a intelligent and scientific way that is fairly inexpensive to reach high profile or high quality ICP. So yeah. So if if we if we put it on a five year time frame, is it inevitable that the business needs further investment? I I think that depends on our ambitions. I mean, if if, you know, if we have ambitions up here, then then absolutely, if we have ambitions down here, then I think we, you know, we could continue and and and muddle on. But I think we all have big ambitions. I mean, that that that would be that would be my position that we, you know, would we would hope to see this being a industry leader and being an in in this industry, you know, the the the one that fills that gap for marketing teams and and and have their competitors. For that, of course, you need more funding.

1:18:17 Thanks. Can I talk a little bit about basic numbers? I know you don't like giving out numbers, but here here I'm gonna go. If you've got 200,000 Before you start, will just say that that Steve's not here today, so that that we we may be in a position to ask No. No. But this this is marketing. This is marketing. 200,000 in The UK. Right? 1% of that is is 2,000. 2,000 subscribers at a £100 a month generates 2,400,000 a year. I mean, do you have some real concrete marketing targets like that that you can actually, regularly update your shareholders on so that we know that you're actually achieving your numbers?

1:19:03 Because what shareholders want is confidence. And the share price is not going to move until shareholders see confidence that you're really going to grow, and that means that you've got to become a sales and marketing driven organization culturally from rock bottom to the heights. You've got to stop just being an r and d company, and you've got to become and I think with our friend on on the left here, I mean, I've learned so much vocabulary from what you were talking about I've never heard of before in marketing. But you've I really believe that this is this is your turning point now. But we need shareholders.

1:19:48 I mean, I am absolutely gobsmacked at how the share price has fallen. You know? My breakeven, if I were to recover the money I put into the shares, the share your share price would need to be 40 p, and we are on less than 2 p. It's gut wrenching for small investors like myself. You know? And and what so what I need to see or we need to see investor confidence, buying shares, putting the share price up, but they're gonna get that when they see you delivering numbers that really mean something in revenue terms. Sorry Sorry for the rant. No. No. It's it's it's it's it's absolutely justified, and we we you know, my family and I are very large shareholders in this business. And, you know, I I can tell you there's there's there's two ladies in this room who feel pain, And I hear all the time.

1:20:43 I absolutely I absolutely agree with you. Yeah. Absolutely agree with you. We need to we need to put that in place, and we will do. I think, as you said, we've had a very impressive presentation today from Ness, and and, you know, we are with your presentation. Yeah. No. Thanks. So it's it's it's it's it's it's delivering the confidence and need for people to start to buy shares and push the share price up. That's the only thing that matters to me Yeah. Is getting that share price up over a relatively short period. And in answer to the targets question, 200,000, do have anything in mind about that? We're working through that at the moment. So now that we've aligned around this ICP and this focus, we're starting to do some initial testing to give us some benchmarks to anchor that around so that we're we're putting numbers in place that we have kind of confidence around rather than just something hypothetical. So that's something as we go through the next few weeks of early testing, we'll be able to Is it 200,000 teams or 200,000 Teams. Okay. So a £100 per seat is actually less than it would be if you sell for a team. Right? Well, it's a £100 a team with for a number of seats.

1:21:51 But proper pricing is something as well that, you know, we'll be we'll be looking at as we go through this process to make sure that that is is optimized for this as well and set at the right levels. But that is, yeah, Teams specifically. Yeah. That's a good point. I mean, we will definitely be looking at that. Yes. I'm going to buck the trend. I'm not a graphic designer. I don't know much about other than using a product made by a well known computer firm. I'm personally confident in what you're doing, and it's always a balancing act between going out and spending lots of money advertising, having a product that doesn't work or has pitfalls.

1:22:40 There's a number of of patients, and personally speaking, I think you've done a great job. Yes. I would like the share price to be £10. I'd love it, and I think all of us would. But there has to be an element of balance. And I, personally, you know, I'm very happy with you, actually. I've had all of you. Just to let you know, thank you very much for what you've done. So long long may you continue. It's very fine. Thank you very much. On the tokenization. Obviously, it's something that was interesting. Obviously, the tokenization product was put in there for people to buy tokens and expand their uses, etcetera. I don't know if they've you've had issues, problems. I don't know how successful it is. Can you give us a feedback on that? How many people are getting involved? And I I know you initially want to do it to get people using so you can do your testing and and and seeing how it works. But how successful has it been with regard to users so far? It's a chicken and egg. So we had to have tokens in place to build AI services and other services that people can use. So we have very little expectation of its success at the moment because it's not it's it's more that you need it there so that we can obviously bill people today for it.

1:23:48 But, you know, until we have serious volumes of users, it's not going to be that generative. But it is a tricky thing. You you you gotta build the plane before you can put passengers on it. And there are some things that cost more. So if you're doing your speech to text, for example, and you put in two hours of video, that's obviously gonna cost you more than just doing, you know, one little bit of something. So Any other questions from the room? Yep. You mentioned that the free product, not many people sign up to it. No. A lot of people. No. That's that's huge. No. I was going to How many? How many? We're doing metrics at the at the half year, but there's a lot more than we did. No. Lot a lot can mean many things.

1:24:34 So sorry. Yeah. I'm sure we have we've already given them over. Yeah. Yeah. I I was thinking more not so much the free product. People have used the free product and then end up converting. Thank you. Now if they're only going to be on for a short time, do you think it might be worth your while changing the structure rather than monthly to a fixed payment? That might make more sense, don't you think? So for example, they've got products from last year that they're trying to design using your product rather than the monthly figure. It could be, I don't know, £500 for the year. It's just a suggestion. We do we do have yearly pricing. And remember, people can, on the monthly, come out of it. So they they can use it for a period of time and then come out. What is very hard for us to do is to give you a forever price because we are a service. So we can't give you a forever price, but what we can do is continue to allow people, which is, I believe, the right thing in SaaS to buy it for a period of time. That doesn't make them a bad user. That that that you know, it doesn't matter that they only use it here and then they come back later. That's the the one day they'll they'll graduate. You know?

1:25:40 Right. Next question? Yes. Are there any other There's a few more. We've done most of them, but there are a few more. Solar, this one. Hi. Since you say that there is a huge market for Elevate out there, did you come about this by survey research for a hunch to this? Think everybody answered this. What demography is this market? And it seems that creators have been excluded. And what are you doing to connect to the huge market? I reckon you may have been targeting content creators and come how come you're looking away from that market and tagging them? I think I think that's a great theme, actually. We're maybe just pick on that because, obviously, we've narrowed and and focused the ICP more more onto onto to to marketing teams and business teams. Wanna pick up on partners?

1:26:28 Versus creators. Yeah. Yeah. So when we were exploring the different potential ICPs, creators are an interesting group, but they tend to fall into I mean, there's there's there's quite a lot of segmentation within the creator space, and you've got the kind of top end creators who are using the kind of more da Vinci level software, quite difficult to move them away from from that at the moment. And then at the bottom end, you've got the kind of more social media using the cap cap kind of bottom end of the market. They've been they're more frivolous with their tool choices, etcetera. But regardless of that, the the value that we believe exist within Elevate today that will give us the greatest opportunity to grow with is the team based system of working. The fact that you can bring other people into your projects, that you can you have this system online that people can, you know, work together on projects remotely from different places, and this review functionality. That need is less is less present within the creative audience. Yes. They will occasionally work with other creators or with brands or with other teams, but it's less so or less prevalent than the marketing teams. You have a much more acute pain within that space and within that fragmented workplace space, which is where we believe we have the greatest opportunity right now to get traction in the market.

1:27:48 Thank you. Okay. One which we will answer in the interim, which is what's the cash burn and the current cash position, cash burn rate per month. We just do that and then we publish the financial results for the interims. Then there's one I'm just summarizing these a bit. Is we've got a new marketing strategy. Is this gonna be the is this gonna be the last one? I mean, are we gonna is this gonna be, like, washed away that didn't work out, or is it gonna be, you know, the one that worked? Part of the reason that we've taken a research led approach and the fact that we're building in monthly research cycles is that we can continuously refine that approach. I don't believe anybody can set any strategy upfront and with a crystal ball believe that it's going to be exactly perfect from the get go. We have to be responsive to the market. We have to look at the data and follow the opportunities that we see in front of us.

1:28:47 We just have to be disciplined in how we what data we look at, what we use to inform our decisions, and how we move in an agile way rather than committing fully to a plan with it and ignoring that. That would be a much riskier plan to follow. The plan we're putting in place is a set of hypotheses based on research that we have done already. We will test and prove out those hypotheses. If they don't prove to be true, we will continue to iterate and refine those as we go so that we stand a greater chance of finding ways that work more quickly. I think the fantastic thing about that is we, on a very regular basis, through these loops, we're seeing people come in and use Elevate for the first time or for the second time. We're finding out what other tools they use, what other technology they're using, what the replacement potential tools might be. So we are very well aware of the the market moves.

1:29:32 So another one is we've got unique and desirable product. How are we going to sell it and make a profit eventually? I think we've done I think that's it. So so it seems to get a fantastic reception when shown to people in podcasts and events. So why is there no promotional advertising? I think we we also covered that. I think we've covered the rest of that one. Congratulations for getting the product to go for market. Seems to be a good time to give a shout out to all the engineers for all the tremendous work done. Yes. Very good call. That Sumit appears to be a key member of the leadership team. Has the board considered him appointing as a director?

1:30:20 And if not, could you explain the rationale? This could enhance investor confidence and reinforce the strength of the company's management team. Noted. So what are the user numbers, paid users? We'll get those out at some point, but not in this meeting. Is there a date for BLACKBIRD tend to be incorporated in Elevate for users? Well, it's sort of slightly back because it is incorporated because there's a massive integration task. So we did that early, and now we're just improving it. And it will get to the top of some of its list, you you know, know, at some point of the next big feature. But at the moment, we're getting feedback from the users we have and fixing things, improving the quality, things like that. Can you expand your go to market when you expect to see some traction? The current marketing strategy appears to heavily index on meta platforms, where user intent for overhauling corporate workflows is practically zero.

1:31:14 I think that that that's just to ask that question, the testing is on meta platforms. The marketing is on Yeah. Marketing, we're facing, as I said, on this kind of more ICP dense, paired, high trust channels, such as marketing communities. Matter is a very useful testing mechanism for us So we can be be confident when we take messages to markets that they will resonate. Can we expect some aggressive marketing through established b to b ecosystems? So then they mentioned some HubSpot, Salesforce, or Slack. So I think you've mentioned some of those in our discussions as places where marketing people can Great. Yeah. Yeah. If Unless that you're a marketing person that you might not see it as aggressive because they'll be in the the where the community is at the marketing.

1:32:03 Is there an update regarding Bill Roberts? No update. Uh-huh. Well done with excellent presentation, which had made the initial way forward much clearer. Will the board discuss the 8% vote against Ian's reappointment? Has that ever happened before? Don't know. What was the question for you? Will the board discuss the 8% vote against Ian's reappointment? Has that ever happened before? I don't know. I think we have had votes against people before. It's never happened to me before. No. With us being browser based and very collaborative, can we expect an integration in time to the likes of Microsoft Teams? This would be instrumental in landing a juggernaut like Lloyd's, all those big boys are massively focused on cost savings and saying that this would be a route to market.

1:32:55 So we will be expanding the notifications. I think if it's part of Teams, that's not under us. That's up to Microsoft. But if it's the idea that it's notifications and then collect basically, a collaboration or connection through to things like Slack and Teams, then that is definitely in our pipeline. And, actually, the AI is very useful at doing those integrations because they've read the thousands of pages of documentation for the APIs. So that is one of the things that API's been helpful in development is that sort of integration. So is it still tens of billions of pounds? Yes. There is a product called PIPE, private investment in public equity. Have you tried to get this type of investment? If not, why not?

1:33:42 Of course not. I'm not aware of it, so no. Not Do have something to say on that, Nick? I was just saying when when you do get to that elevated status, you gotta still talk to Yeah. Absolutely. You talk to me. You're a shareholder. Right? Right. Okay. Right. Okay. Just over an hour and half in. I think unless there are no more any more questions, we'll bring this to a close. Thank you very much for your attendance, guys. We appreciate it. And your continued support.