Dear Blippar Team,

This public newsletter is dedicated to you.

Everyone else – please forgive us this little indulgence….   But for this special occasion, we wanted to share this open letter to the team with you.

Happy First Birthday Blippar!  Here’s to us – the very special group of individuals who have built a market leading technology, global brand and a consumer audience of over 1 million direct app user in less than a year – a truly phenomenal achievement.

Who are we? A motley crew of diverse backgrounds, nationalities (and senses of humour) who each, individually believed in our vision and were prepared to take a risk with us.  Some –notably Stephen Shaw, Dave Black and Peter Boyles – joined when blippar was little more than a glint in Rish’s eye, a line of code in Omar’s head, and a scribble on Steve’s sketch pad.   And the rest, not long after – thrown into a chaotic, fast-paced environment of too few processes, desks or minutes in the day.

What did we do? We worked hard.  Harder than we’ve known any team to work. Long hours of excitable brainstorming, testing, story-boarding and social networking.  Always ‘on’ – by trusty iPad or smartphone – always sharing, testing, tweaking, playing and contributing great new blipp ideas into the marketing and product melting pots.

We built a world-leading technology platform- one that pushes the boundaries of what this technology can do with every release, but sensitively with the simplicity and fun of the consumer experience at its heart; We built a brand- a multi award winning brand and a growing new consumer behaviour and verb, to ‘blipp’; We built strong client relationships with global superbrands and industry stalwarts from scratch– and with them, our reputation as the likeable and consultative industry player;  We curated and consulted with clients on interactive content experiences that have attracted over 1 million devotees to our single-app platform.   And we did it the hard way… sheer grind – occasionally making mistakes, sometimes working around the clock on blipps that yielded fewer than 100 interactions – but learning each and every day and improving our product and the conversion rate of each successive blipp for our clients.  And all in just one calendar year.

But of course we’re far from complacent.  This is just the preface and opening chapter of a story we hope to be proud of for the rest of our lives.

We sincerely hope you will all continue with us through the chapters to come and above all – enjoy the ride,

To you, Team Blippar,

Ambarish Mitra, Omar Tayeb, Steve Spencer & Jessica Butcher