Marcus Richards
Ango is a browser-extension that recommends truly sustainable products as people shop online. Our mission is to make sustainable attainable, for everyone.
Tell us about yourself?
I started my career by founding a small marketing agency in October 2015, after Covid hit the UK I had less projects to work on an thus had some free time to work on some other ideas.
So myself and three others (Samuel Holder, Dominic Spencer and Alexander Burgess), applied to Innovate UK to build our first version of Ango (originally tailored to the construction industry). We pivoted our focus June 2021 and have now just released a BETA version of Ango that operates effectively on Next.co.uk
If you could go back in time a year or two, what piece of advice would you give yourself?
Trust your instincts, they’ve been right more often than wrong.
What problem does your business solve?
We’re trying to 1) make sustainable products easier to find and 2) more affordable
What is the inspiration behind your business?
We noticed that sustainable alternatives are roughly 100_200% more expensive that their non-sustainable counterparts. If we’re going to become sustainable and mitigate our impact on the planet, this has to become more affordable long-term.
What is your magic sauce?
We recommend exact products as users shop online, later we hope to help our users work together with retailers to reduce the cost of sustainable products.
What is the plan for the next 5 years? What do you want to achieve?
We want to be fully operating across 6 industries (fashion, cosmetics, personal hygiene, food, homeware and technology) in Europe and the US.
What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far?
Building a new algorithm that could reliably ‘categorise’ new products without human oversight. We currently monitor 1.5 million products which needs someone to verify what the product is. This helps us with generating highly relevant recommendations but is a slow process. This is in the process of being largely automated which will make our ability to expand into different industries quicker and cheaper.
How do people get involved/buy into your vision?
Simply download Ango on the chrome store and let us know your feedback! it’s in BETA currently and we’re working hard to make improvements. Link is here: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ango-beta/eedlbnnopinjnleagccmhkomjadolkoa
