Changing the World, one gift at a time

An interview with David Parr & Omid Moellemi, Co-Founders of Prsnt.

Omid Moallemi and David Parr have revolutionised gifting with a viral app and business platform. They are co-founders of instant gifting tech startup Prsnt and have recently appeared in Forbes magazine. Their brand was named finalist in the FSB Awards for Best Startup. They are on a mission to change the world, one gift at a time – through smartphones, through harnessing emotions and through tech. This is their story. 

You have both had long careers in design, tell us a bit about your business journeys and how you came together?

Omid: I went into the accountant route – the glamorous side of the world – purely because I started young and my father and brother have a local firm. I had been working there since I was a kid, going through that progression, but I just didn’t enjoy it. It took me a while to realise that I am actually quite good at creative thinking as opposed to VAT returns and things like that. 

David: I started off as a designer and studied at art college. I studied photography and 3D and then went back to branding and graphics, but I always had a passion for music in parallel with that. Weirdly, those two worlds merged. I moved down to Brighton and the opportunity of becoming a designer with the output being in the music industry was the way that I went. So we curated clubs, did bookings, had a record label. All of that stuff needed graphics in the early stages and we started building websites for the club brands. Everything digitalised in the web space and the music industry at the same time, so I went through that whole digital transition. As it went through, I got more excited and interested in it. It just grew and, eventually, I started a small agency here in Brighton, which was boutique but serviced some fairly big brands. Along that journey, I needed a decent accountant and I met Omid at a photocopier looking fairly dejected. They were brilliant accountants. They really took me under their wing. I didn’t know anything about the mechanics of business. I got into a project and needed a product designer for a project, thought of Omid and we have now been working together for 8 or 9 years. 

Omid: I left the accountancy world and went into product design. I thought ‘Let’s get a degree in that’ and then did work in London for a couple of years, trying to understand how the design world worked and how a consultancy could make money. Then, after two or three years, started up my own consultancy in Brighton. As David said, they came to me and said they needed someone to design a product.  

Did you both always envisage from a young age that you would one day run your own businesses?

Omid:
My dad, my granddad – they always got their bread and butter money but they have always been doing other business on the side. I was working on my mum and dad’s side hustle since I was about 10, doing whatever I can. So, that’s ingrained in my DNA. I am not argumentative, but I’d always question the logic. ‘Why are we doing things like that? We could do that better.’ I couldn’t work for someone with that kind of thinking. For me, personally, I have always had this urge to do my own thing. I felt I had a lot to give to the world through design and wanted my design voice to be heard. I can make money. I learned: you do this, you get that. Since my playground days up to my early 20s, I had different businesses. Some worked, some didn’t. I think it’s part of the DNA of an entrepreneur and I think David faced the same.

David:
Mine was the other way around and, quite frankly, I couldn’t believe we were getting away with it. We moved down to Brighton and were doing some big parties. Some were free, in a warehouse, parties out in The Downs and all of that. You think you are doing it because that is what we wanted to do. That fact that it grew and that, out of that, commercial opportunities came… I didn’t see the commercial opportunities and it was like ‘What? We can do that as well? We can start our own label?’ My mind just kept being blown. Through following what seemed like another obvious cool thing to do, I then realised that we needed a business to underpin that work. I had to work quite hard to understand that stuff, which is why my relationship with Omid’s family has been so strong because they really did help me out with the transition. For somebody that’s got pure passion for that whole thing – creativity, events and on the music side. To underpin that, to enable that to succeed, we created platforms. I could see how you create a platform but the mechanics of the business was a steep learning curve. It wasn’t just luck. I met people in Cambridge who shared a passion for music. I moved from the little village I grew up in to the nearest town as soon as I could. I met some folk and we all wanted to make stuff happen, doing our own parties. They were moving to Brighton and I followed them about a year-and-a-half later. By then, they had established themselves here. Brighton is just one of those places – it’s so free-spirited and entrepreneurial. People really get behind you, rather than put you down. There was also this Acid House movement that was so full of love and making things happen for that reason. You could motivate 800 people before mobile phones to go and do something together because they really wanted to. I keep coming back to that. Highly organised, really motivated and it changed a lot of things for the better. 

Omid:
We’ve met a lot of people who have been helping us on this journey, running agencies and companies, and  lot of them come from a similar background to David – the clubbing scene or ran a club. They’ve all grown up now and have an adult job.

Tell us about some of the challenges you faced and how Prsnt came about?

Omid:
This is an idea that we have had for nearly 10 years. We had it on the backburner and the timing wasn’t quite right for it, through technology and a few other things. We were also on our other projects. With covid, it was the perfect time. 

David: This is the gifting solution for when you can’t be there face-to-face to give someone a gift. How about this for an opportunity? Covid turns up and instead of it being something that affects people occasionally, it’s everyone, everywhere. We’ve got to move on this, right now. I think it made people realise quite how big what we were suggesting could be. 

Omid:
The challenge around that was starting a new company right as the pandemic started and then asking people ‘Can we have some money to see us through?’ It was creating a robust business plan around that. And then convincing people. It wasn’t easy. If you fear it, you will never try. We have identified pain points for the consumer, the brand and businesses and have created solutions around those three cohorts. They are disconnected, they are working from home… How do you keep those motivational touchpoints with staff who you are seeing once every week? It’s through those little touches or gestures through gifting. It works brilliantly. 

David: Another thing we are solving is ‘What do you want?’ Through likes on products and also through profiling, we can create, over time, a really, really good gift list without you having to define it. It would be a suggestion but works in quite a clever way. You can be told who a person is, what the special occasion is and what they like. 

With Prsnt you are looking to create a modern way of gifting. Tell us why.

Omid: We’ve got the consumer app to send friends gifts and we’ve also got the business platform which is for corporate gifting. We started with the consumer platform – the app – mainly because it came down to necessity. How many times is it someones birthday? You find out on Facebook – that’s how we find out when it’s people’s birthdays nowadays mainly. You think, ‘Oh, go on Google.’ You go on Google, find H&M and a gift. Now I’ve got to get it sent to me or I can have it sent to them but I don’t know their address. I’ve got to get a card and wrapping paper, then I’ve got to take it to the Post Office. It’s about six steps and different companies just to send somebody a gift. And people just think, I’ll write ‘Happy birthday, mate’ or just send them a text message. It’s just not good enough. I don’t think gifting has been looked at properly around the consumer focus. 97 per cent of people have smartphones, so why hasn’t gifting moved on? I can go on Amazon but they charge £3.95 for gift wrapping, which nobody ever pays, and the gift is going to arrive tomorrow at the earliest. Nobody wants to get a gift after the event. We thought it was ridiculous. Why isn’t there an app on your phone that does all your gifting requirements? When is their birthday? What do they want? The app has got curated gifts for them. Whatever you want is there. They can unwrap it on their phone through a text message.A lot of our bestsellers are immediates under a fiver but we wrap that up in an emotional way with a video message. People love it. 

What does success looks like to you?

Omid: If you’d asked me that 10 years ago, it would be Lamborghini and all that kind of stuff but, for me now, it’s seeing our product change the fabric of gifting and seeing our product lead that race.

David:
I think company-building. I have had some experience of building companies and it’s quite a crazy thing to control. I think there is an opportunity here to start a company where the output is so obvious and good that the culture you build around it is amazing. We could build a great company that people would really, really love to work for. I would just love to have one of those brands that makes people think ‘That’s a good one.’

As a tech start up, you have had £300,000 pre seed investment and are currently in the next funding round. Tell us about the investment journey.

Omid:
We’ve got previous fundraising experience. Getting SIES status is key so, to anyone reading this, that’s one of your first ports of call. Get your financials bulletproof. Really know your numbers so there’s no ambiguity. As long as you’ve got a passion and you know how you are going to do it, keep sticking with it. Somebody will buy into that. You have got to give yourself at least six months. Don’t rely on that one lead because at the eleventh hour they can pull out. Make sure you know what the money is going to be used for because you don’t want to under-fund yourself and run out of money again. 

David: Storytelling is something we have been really focussing on but we’ve been been criticised at every single pitch. People will always throw all kinds of stuff back at you. So, when you are going through that pitching process, keep both ears open. 

How do you achieve a work life balance?

Omid: When your eyes open in the morning, you are thinking about ideas and, when you close them at night, you are dreaming about them. For me, creatively, my brain automatically cuts. My brain just does it. I do try to make time for the family. 

David: If it wasn’t this it would be something else. My brain moves too fast. If I have to put in a 16-hour day, I do. If I pick my son up from nursery, I may have to put in some time later on. 

What does the future hold for Prsnt?

Omid:
Our ultimate goal is to be one of the main ways that we gift as a society. That’s the mission. From a business perspective, we are lining up our next round of funding. We’ve got a nice roadmap of features that you will have to wait to see. 

David:
What we are focussing on now is hard commercial truths, rather than connections or how viral the app could be. 

What one piece of advice would you give to your 18-year-old self?

David:
You are enough. 

Omid: Be more confident. 

If you could give one gift to someone, what would it be?

Omid: I don’t think it would be a physical gift but an emotional one. I would gift someone time – like a meal for two. 

Website/App download

www.prsnt.co.uk