A tech entrepreneur who believes his video compression platform could change the world says he could be evicted after failure to pay his rent for six months.
Edinburgh-based Paul Gardiner has ploughed £110,000 of his own money into developing the Eoovi platform, which he says can reduce file sizes by up to 93 per cent.
However now he says he needs to secure new funding and has spoken to BusinessCloud in the hope that someone will come forward.
Gardiner has developed apps and software for the likes of the BBC, Wimbledon, Clydesdale Bank, Stella Artois and Network Rail over the last decade, while simultaneously working on Eoovi.
Eoovi, which Gardiner and his business partner Brian Higgins have focused on full-time for the last 18 months, is planned for a full release before February, initially as a video hosting platform similar to YouTube.
“Broadband speeds have been getting faster and faster, but at the same time companies have been churning out bigger file and video sizes,” he told BusinessCloud.
“4K HDR is on the precipice of being a standard on the web now. For an hour-long film you’re talking about a 25 gigabyte file size – even with a 10 megabit-per-second connection, you’re going to struggle.
“It’s always going to be a problem. The faster connections become, the more data companies will try to shove down people’s necks.
“To stream the 4K through Netflix, they recommend that the minimum internet speed you need devoted to that video connection is 24Mbps. Our target using Eoovi compression is 1Mbps for the same quality video.”
He added: “In healthcare, for example, you could drastically reduce the size of space needed to store medical imagery. Space becomes irrelevant.
“These things have a knock-on effect on a global scale: parts of the world don’t have the internet because they can only get a 0.5Mbps connection. We could bring education to those areas as well as internet and video: HD would work on a half-meg connection using out platform.”
However Gardiner, who is talking to investors with Higgins, has run into financial problems.
Manchester-based Higgins was brought into the business 18 months ago after Gardiner performed work for his former business GameDay.
“Brian and I work on Eoovi from when we get up in the morning until 2am. We’re living and breathing this because we know what it can do,” Gardiner continued.
“I’ve put £110,000 of my own money into this, not including my time, so I haven’t paid my rent for six months. I’m at risk of getting evicted in the next few weeks.
“We’re speaking to investors but we don’t want to allow our personal situations to affect our business decisions and give away parts of it on the cheap.”