SampleBoard.com is a design-focused website which has been selected as one of four start-ups in the first ever Google Umbono programme, consisting of seed funding and mentorship for online entrepreneurs, as officially announced on 1 November 2011 in Cape Town.
SampleBoard went through an intense six-month Umbono pitching process to reach the top four from hundreds of applicants. ‘Umbono’, meaning idea or vision in Zulu, is a Google Africa initiative to support and invest in technology development in South Africa.
The Google Umbono involvement is a huge honour and affirms that SampleBoard’s strategy is on target. SampleBoard offers a cloud-based image editor for creative professionals to quickly and easily output inspiring designs and digital mood boards.
Moodboards are an essential element of the creative process to ensure that client brief and concepts and are on track throughout a project. Traditional mood boards are time-consuming and tedious to create, requiring physical samples and pictures of products to be sourced, collated and compiled into life-size concept boards. These sample boards have to be presented in person, which incurs time and travel costs, plus they need to be adjusted or re-created following client amends, as well as storage of bulky boards.
SampleBoard.com, which launched its current site in 2010, digitized the process by providing an eco-friendly, time efficient web-based solution which can be accessed from the comfort of your own creative space,. It also has an extensive image library and a creative community for users to interact and share visual ideas.
SampleBoard’s founder, Rosslyn Tebbutt, studied and worked in interior design, making SampleBoard a product ‘by designers, for designers’.
“I realised there was a gap in the market for a professional web-based creative tool combined with an extensive image library that would amalgamate the most-commonly used functions of image editing software, but without the immense expense.”
SampleBoard is actively used by interior designers, fashion designers, wedding planners, landscape architects and more and has had immense growth globally, with its biggest user base in the US, followed by the UK, Australia and then South Africa.
SampleBoard is immensely proud to have been chosen for Google Umbono, particularly at this exciting and important time of Cape Town being selected as World Design Capital 2014.
SampleBoard is based in the trendy Umbono shared office space that has been designed and fitted by local Cape Town designers Haldane Martin and Cosmesis and forms part of The Hub Cape Town.
Says Rosslyn, “We believe in the importance of a well-supported and collaborative creative community, both in SA and abroad. SampleBoard is a universal product which is locally inspired and globally used, contributing to our desire to help power the world’s creativity!”
The Umbono programme, a Google first worldwide, is being tested in Cape Town, South Africa which was chosen because Google believes the city is in “the process of positioning itself as a hub for innovation and technology”.
The winners will enjoy free office space and bandwidth for six months, in addition to US$25 000 to US$50 000 in funding.
In addition to SampleBoard the other three winners are:
- Starburst Games is a mobile games development startup. The company claims it has “the most addictive mobile games on the market”.
- Localsort is an online concierge service aimed at hotels to help them recommend better locations and activities for their guests. The company hopes to “help businesses connect with each other and create an open and easy to use network and marketplace”.
- TaxTim is a web-based service that helps individuals manage their tax returns. “Tim simplifies your returns in an question and answer format, making filing your returns easier,” says the company.
