Exceptional

“If you could just have
one password that only
you knew, and that no one
else even saw, the problem
would disappear.”
Leslie says. “If they’re using the service,
it means we’ve managed to solve your
frustration and their problem of having to
pay an agent to talk to you for 40 seconds.”
Since the inception of this new concept,
Leslie and his team have been working on
applying it to a range of scenarios.
“Anybody who’s got some kind of
authentication or identity verification
challenge is someone we want to talk to,” he
says. Despite the company’s youth, Leslie
has already secured interest from a number
of potential customers in financial services
and other sectors.
A good introduction
Sedicii’s success so far has been partly
fueled by EY. As the inaugural winners of
the EY Startup Challenge in December
2014, Leslie and his team were given the
opportunity to work with EY partners and
experts as well as other start-ups.
Rob Leslie wants to solve
the problem of managing
online passwords.
“What I really thought was
great was all the mentoring
we had from the partners,”
he says. “They gave up their
time to guide us through a
lot of stuff — understanding
what we did, how we did it,
what was good, what was
bad and what we needed to
fix. Then EY introduced us to
some of their clients, and we
had conversations with them
about issues they were facing
that we could potentially
solve. That was enormously
valuable — and some of those
conversations are ongoing
and may ultimately turn into
commercial engagements.”
With the win under his belt, the future
looks bright. There are now two big
challenges to meet: securing funding and
finding the next big customer. As for future
technology trends, Leslie believes offering
customers more control over their data and
identity will be central to everything.
“I think individuals will wake up to the fact
that, under the new EU Privacy Directive,
their data is theirs and they should have the
right to control and manage it,” he says. “It
doesn’t belong to Google, it doesn’t belong
to Facebook, it doesn’t belong to Twitter, and
just because you use those services doesn’t
entitle them to turn you into a commodity,
which is what’s happened.
“There has to be a bit of respect in that
relationship. If you’re making millions out of
me, I’d like a piece of that, thanks — because
I am critical to your success. It has to be a
two-way street.”
The EY Startup
Challenge
The mission of the EY Startup
Challenge (EYSC) is to bring clients
and high-growth start-ups together to
address a particular business problem.
In this collaboration, the clients
are keen to explore solutions to the
problem, small businesses and startups
potentially hold the technology
solutions, and EY provides subject
specialist support and facilitation.
Each iteration focuses on a different
business problem. The first program
(which Sedicii won) looked at data
privacy, while the second will explore
two topics: supply chain visibility and
intelligent customer experience.
The EYSC is also an intensive
business development and proofing
environment. Growth businesses are
mentored by senior EY professionals
who have extensive subject
specialism/experience, and they receive
continuous business development
and technology validation from the
clients, who provide the customer’s
perspective. The program also includes
a series of workshops delivered by
EY professionals, investors and other
external professionals.
To find out more, go to
ey.com/startupchallenge.
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