Launch International is a new digital platform for accelerating business, driving innovation and turbo-charging productivity for organisations at the touch of a button.
We have been working with Launch International for the last three years to create a new digital platform which helps businesses to identify funding, resources and expertise.
Launch Funding from Launch International
The first module to be available is Launch Funding. It helps organisations to find funding opportunities by matching information about their company with open data from government and commercial sources.
“I’ve never seen a search engine that tells you what you should search for!”
Launch Funding does 3 things
- Matches open company data from Companies House with currently available local, national and international funds
- Scans company websites to automatically generate keywords to help refine your searches to only the most relevant funding opportunities.
- Presents search results in a standardised, easy to read format along with a ranking score to help you decide at a glance whether funding is appropriate.
Background
Launch International’s CEO, Sally Thompson was previously the CEO of Business South. Business South is a non-profit organisation which promotes the South of England as a region to attract talent, investment and business.
The aim of starting Launch International was to create a digital service that could replicate the way Sally linked businesses. The key target was to recreate the moments of serendipity when the right people or resources are introduced!
Technology
Launch International uses some leading-edge artificial intelligence technology. Mostly this was developed in-house at KnowNow Information by data guru David Ralph. David is currently studying for his PhD at the University of Southampton.
It does however also use elements of IBM’s Watson to help discern the key data from the large corpus of funding data available from the likes of InnovateUK and the EPSRC.
Customers
Launch is viable for large or small – medium enterprises who want to find funding or expertise that can help them develop new products. It is also relevant for organisations that want to find funds for their customers. Accountancy firms have been amongst the early adopters.
How to use it.
You can see more of Launch at their website. The tool itself is currently available only to subscribers – you can talk to Sally directly at sally.thompson@launchinternational.co.uk
There is still an opportunity to join a trial of launch as well. Read more at https://www.kn-i.com/blog/launch-trial-transform-maritime-business/
We’d also be more than happy to talk further if you want to give us a shout. You can ask me at david.patterson@kn-i.com or use the contact form below!