Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
Ex-college pupil’s video app excites Apple boss Steve
A Canterbury entrepreneur has won plaudits from the co-founder of Apple for his innovative app – and now he’s set on emulating his idol’s success. Chris Price reports
David de Min is on the edge of global success after creating an app which has got the world’s biggest tech gurus talking.
The former Kent College pupil can even count Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak among the fans of Velapp – which allows users to edit videos as they shoot.
At 26, David has already attracted £100,000 of investment in the technology and has moved back into his parents’ home in Canterbury as he looks to secure more funding.
But it appears he’ll have few struggles after winning praise from multi-millionaire Mr Wozniak, who launched tech giant Apple with Steve Jobs in 1976.
David went to great lengths to orchestrate a meeting with his idol, who had been booked as the headline speaker at the Business Rocks conference in Manchester last year.
He persuaded a Rolls-royce dealership in Mayfair to lend him a car to take Mr Wozniak from his hotel to the conference.
“I arrived with Steve and everyone was saying ‘who is this guy who’s rocked up with Steve Wozniak?’,” he said.
“It was a joke among the Business Rocks staff that everyone was asking who I was.”
Before he went on stage, Mr Wozniak spent half-an-hour with David talking about the app, which allows users to select points of interest in videos when filming long clips.
David said: “I didn’t realise there was a queue of people outside the room – all these journalists wanting time with him.
“I thought ‘I’ve got to demo my app to him’ so showed him the technology.
“When he realised how simple it was he said ‘wow!’. I have a voice clip of him saying it and I could listen to it on repeat.
“He is such a humble guy. I really admire him because he took the time to speak with me.”
Mr Wozniak described Velapp as “an amazing application” and said he admired its simplicity.
It was launched on the App Store in the last few weeks, with the idea emerging when David took a two-week trip to India with his brother, Michael, in 2014.
He filmed their journey from New Dehli to Kashmi on a pair of classic Royal Enfield motorcycles, passing through the Himalayas where they “caught trout in the glacial rivers and traded the fish for cashmere jumpers”.
He came back with 325 hours of footage, which took him three weeks to edit.
“The whole frustrating process of editing over two or three weeks made me think there must be a quicker way of doing this,” he said.
“It was not about improving the editing process but removing it altogether. When I’m filming, I know what the best moments are. With the app, if you like something you just press harder on the screen and you update the device to say where are the best bits.
“It is so simple to use and understand. I thought ‘if my mum can use this technology, then I’m onto a winner’.”
David has been developing the app for the last year, receiving a £25,000 interest-free loan from Kent County Council as part of his investment to date.
He has also filed for an international patent.
The next aim is to attract more money to develop the product further.
“We are focusing on building a user base,” he said.
“It is important to get people using it. In the future I would like to develop different features. We need to add enough value to make it worthwhile for the user to pay.”
Born in Holland in 1990 to a Dutch father and English mother, David’s upbringing was anything but ordinary and also struck by tragedy.
He moved to Oman when he was four and arrived in the UK in 1999, where he was diagnosed with dyslexia.
His brother Jamie was diagnosed with leukaemia and lymph node cancer when David was 12. Despite giving his brother a bone marrow transplant, Jamie died aged 17, when David was 14.
“He is the missing part of my team,” he said.
“He was such a technical person. He used to break things apart and fix them again. He would have been perfect working in our company.”
David later studied at Kent College, where he took A-levels in design and technology and business studies.
After six years living in London, he has recently returned to Canterbury to live with his parents and went back to his old school last week to showcase the app.
His mother has been given a 1% share of the firm as CNO – chief name officer – for coming up with its brand, which stands for Video Editing Live Application.
He said: “There is no point wasting money on expensive rent, especially when you are a start-up and trying to get investment.
“Why use the investment for living costs when you could put it towards the company?” Former Kent College pupil David de Min, who has developed Velapp, persuaded a Rolls-royce dealership to lend him a car to pick up Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak
‘I thought “if my mum can use this technology, then I’m onto a winner”.’