Octopus builds smart platform for selling content

Create selling, up-to-date content that follows brand guidelines – all at the touch of a button. Sundsvall-based Octopus wants to help companies streamline their content creation and drive sales with the right business data.
“In a few seconds we can do what takes several hours in, for example, Canva,” says Henrik Nygren, the founder and CEO.

Many companies want to simplify the process of creating content for social media and digital sales channels. But automation tools are often blunt, and much of the brand identity is lost along the way. This is a problem that the team behind the new content platform wants to solve. Octopus solve.

Founder Henrik Nygren understood the need in his work at the digital agency Flatmate in Sundsvall, which has worked successfully with brand identity and e-commerce. The agency had developed a new digital identity for a client who did not want to be dependent on the agency every time they needed to produce a post or image.

By setting up a brand profile in Octopus With the click of a button, the user can create beautiful and consistent content in various formats, for advertising on social media or e-commerce platforms.

– Once we had it together, we felt it was too good to just be a customer-specific solution, says Henrik.

At the next level, Octopus can be connected to business data such as inventory levels, search trends or – as in an upcoming pilot project – live sports scores. Through these smart connections, customers can be helped to sell more of what they have too much of, present the right products based on what is popular right now, or create relevant content during an ongoing event.

Today's customers are primarily in the real estate sector, an industry that has been involved from the start. The long-term strategy is to offer a turnkey solution for the e-commerce platform. Shopify with 5 million active stores.

– We have a large market there, and also opportunity to reach out globally in one and the same ecosystem without creating a lot of different integrations.

Over the past year, the team behind Octopus has worked to sharpen the technology in collaboration with customers. In parallel, work is underway to refine the business model and raise capital. Henrik Nygren has also taken a seat in BizMakers incubator program, where he, together with advisors, goes through IP strategy, investment preparation work and reviews the possibilities of applying for "soft money" such as Vinnova funding.

– BizMaker is a good sounding board, it is very valuable to be able to get a nuanced second opinion on important strategic issues, he says.

In five years, the founders aim for Octopus to have launched against Shopify, have a turnover of 50–60 million kronor and have built a team of 10–15 people. The demand is there, Henrik knows from many years of customer contacts, and he already sees that Octopus is working as intended.

– We had a great example when the marketing communicator at one of our clients went on parental leave. Then the responsibility for content fell on a girl at the reception who had never worked in communications before. We took a workshop with her and showed her Octopus. Now she thinks it's a lot of fun and feels confident creating content, because she knows it follows the guidelines and looks good when she publishes.