About Cocoon
Cocoon is an innovative, new and simple to install security device that uses proprietary Subsound® technology and IOT (Internet of Things) connectivity to monitor the entire house. Customers are kept updated by an easy mobile application and can check on their property at any time using their smartphone to access Cocoon’s HD camera.
The company launched on the pre-order crowd funding site Indiegogo in November 2014, smashing the campaign target in the first four days and subsequently received a substantial investment from Breed Reply and Aviva Ventures. Cocoon has been sold to customers in over 50 countries, featured in almost every major tech publication and has secured investments and accolades from the tech community. The company has grown substantially and now has over 20 employees developing the product and serving their customers.
The Business Challenge
Having recently launched, the team at Cocoon were growing rapidly and also preparing for their next round of investment. The founders needed to develop their three- year strategy but were struggling to find bandwidth to do so as they dealt with the many competing priorities of a recently launched start up. The team engaged Graystone Strategy to help them accelerate the development of their three-year strategy, which would be a key component of their next round of discussions with investors.
Our Solution
Using our established strategy definition process the team at Graystone Strategy worked with the founders to understand the business, the priorities and the challenges. This process included:
- A series of interviews with each of the founders to understand their personal perspectives on the direction of the business and the challenges that they would face in the next 3 years
- Identifying areas where the team were not aligned and building a facilitated workshop to work through these outstanding questions
- Facilitating a workshop using Graystone’s Strategy on a page model to define the vision and mission for Cocoon
- Developing and facilitating a further set of workshops with the founders and their leadership teams to discuss and agree the Strategy, Tactics and Critical Enablers that were required to deliver the company Vision and Mission
- Documenting the agreed strategy as a board presentation and also a far more detailed SOSTAC paper that could be shared with a wider audience of investors.
Outcomes
By using independently planned and facilitated sessions the process was able to move ahead quickly with the minimum overhead on the founders and leadership team. The final strategy was agreed and documented less than a week after the final workshop.
This strategy is now at the heart of Cocoon’s three-year plan.
Sanjay Parekh CEO commented: “James Gray from Graystone Strategy worked well with the team to tease out our strategic priorities. The process was undertaken over a number of weeks to allow for the correct analysis and review to take place. The process was efficiently run and we managed to achieve our objective of documenting our strategy so that it was explicit for all stakeholders”