App start- up Pogo plans worldwide bounce with £ 500,000 cash injection

Edinburgh firm’s product allows users to track where their photos and videos are shared across the globe

Asocial media app outfit has set its sights on raising up to £ 500,000 to increase its team and fund further development after launching its first product.

Edinburgh- based Pogo App is behind Bounceit, which lets people share photos and videos with friends and uses GPS to track how far around the world their content travels. Users can collect the flags of the countries that their images visit and compete in “league tables” of the most widely- shared media.

Chief executive Jack Francis said the firm had overhauled the app to make it more user- friendly following feedback gathered from a ‘ soft launch’ that saw the furthest- travelled piece of content go 100,000 kilometres around the world as it was shared among users.

He said: “The app is complete - ly free, and there are a few ways in which we’re going to generate money. We’re building some tools to allow companies to dig a bit deeper into the data, so they’ll be able to find out who the most influential people are. If they send out a photo with a link in the description, we can track who buys from that link.”

Pogo App, based at the Entrepre - neurial Spark business accelerator in Edinburgh, is also working on what it describes as a “takeover tool”, letting companies have their branding replace Bounceit’s on the app in specific locations during events such as festivals.

Francis added: “We’re also starting to embed our code into other businesses, to allow customised image uploading for their apps.”

Pogo App, which recently raised £ 100,000 from venture capital outfit Northstar, currently has a team of five staff and is planning more to continue developing the app, which is available for Apple and Android.

Francis said: “We’re looking to raise about £ 200,000 with backing from Northstar, but there are very early discussions for a £ 500,000 investment from another firm.”

The entrepreneur graduated from the University of Glasgow last year with a degree in zoology and said the inspiration for Bounceit came from watching Youtube videos about the “six degrees of separation”, the concept that everyone is just six steps away from each other.

Pogo App is chaired by Francis’ father, Neil, who co- founded software firm Company Net in 1996.