Entrepreneur stories: Michael Calver

In our latest entrepreneur series we catch up with Michael Calver, founder of Launchpad start-up Amutri which is developing innovative 3D visualisation tools for designers and architects.

What is the problem you are solving?

3D visualisation forms a crucial part of the design, construction, and management of the world around us by conveying ideas, designs and finished products to stakeholders. Despite this, it requires substantial financial investment and hundreds of man-hours to deliver and maintain, posing a major barrier to entry. This leads to reduced profit margins, wasted time and final designs of spaces, places, products, and services that fail to meet the expectations of end users.

How did you get the idea?

I've spent the past two decades pioneering the use of gaming technology within non-gaming applications across Formula One, aviation, automotive, architectural design, and retail. Primarily, this has involved using engines such as Unity and Unreal Engine to form the basis of 3D visualisation and immersive technology products and capabilities within organisations across these industries. In doing so, I’ve seen the vast potential of the technology first-hand, but also the significant issues that many organisations have in adopting it.

Tell us about your solution 

Amutri dramatically lowers the entry point to 3D Visualisation through an automated, cost-effective and easy to adopt software product, enabling more people to benefit from the technology. For those already using 3D visualisation tech, Amutri offers a solution that is hundreds of times faster and more cost-effective, whilst delivering greater value than current alternatives.

What are the key features?

Amutri is the first product to market that delivers a simple path to 3D visualisation. The way in which Amutri achieves this is based on a novel product backend that automates lengthy data conversion and content creation processes which are currently undertaken by costly members of staff. It also hosts, renders, and streams the resulting Unreal Engine 5 rendered 3D visualisations via an on-demand cloud computing platform. This is available from day one, with no development or setup necessary.

Ultimately, Amutri takes care of 3D content creation, rendering, hosting and presentation.  In doing so, Amutri delivers a turnkey solution that: 

• negates the need to recruit specialist skills sets
• negates the need to acquire expensive IT resources to adopt 3D visualisation
• makes the creation of 3D visualisations exponentially faster, and more cost-effective
• enables those currently unable to leverage the technology to adopt it
• saves a significant amount of time and cost of those already leveraging it
• guarantees the quality of resulting 3D visualisations

If you’re interested in trying Amutri sign up for  30-days free access

Tell us about your start-up journey, what have been the highs and lows?

I’m incredibly proud to take our product live after 18-months in development. It’s been an intense journey so far, as I’m sure it has been for most start-up founders. The current worldwide economic climate is making things very difficult in terms of raising funds, but I have great faith in our product direction and team.

You recently went to Slush, tell us about that experience 

Slush is the one event in the year that I feel is a must attend event for start-ups at any stage in their journey. Personally, I put a lot of preparation into Slush which makes the two days super smooth in terms of finding the right investors to speak to. The experience itself is an incredibly proud moment to represent our product and incredible team to investors from around the world. It’s an exhausting two days, but I feel very honoured to represent our business at Slush each time I attend.

What are the key priorities for you over the next few months?

Right now, our key priorities are raising funds. We’re currently fundraising, so if you’re an investor looking for an investment opportunity, please contact me at mcalver@amutri.com 

We’re also busy onboarding our first cohort of 300 early adopters to provide us with the validated feedback necessary to take Amutri to market. It’s super important for us to validate our current beachhead, use cases, and pricing model before we execute our go to market strategy.

One piece of advice you’d give a new founder

This is of course advice from my own experience of building three start-ups, but I would say have no regrets. I’ve certainly not had a perfect run, far from it, but I’m a no regrets kind of guy. I’ve learnt so much along the way, and have had many experiences that I’m very thankful for.

Visit the Amutri website to find out more and keep up to date on Michael’s progress