Tom Charman, CEO of KOMPAS, selected as Greater Birmingham’s Future Face of Innovation and Technology
Tom has been named a double winner in the 2017 Future Faces Awards ceremony, after being nominated for the ‘Future Face of Innovation and Technology’. After a rigorous judging process, Tom not only won the award for Innovation but went on to win the organisation’s ‘Future Face of Greater Birmingham’.
Tom is the CEO and co-founder of travel-technology company KOMPAS, which uses machine learning to personalise travel recommendations to its users, describing itself as ‘a pocket guide to the world’s urban jungles’. Tom said ‘It’s an honour to have been selected as the Future Face of Birmingham. After starting my first business at 16, I’ve been passionate about building solutions to problems that millions of people face’.
At present, the company is present across 4 cities in the UK and Europe, including Birmingham, Berlin, Munich and London, and will be expanding into Exeter and Liverpool in the next 5 days. As well as expanding his own business, Tom’s intention is to help others start and grow their own ventures and is a mentor for Virgin StartUp and Startup Weekend. He’s given a TEDx talk on Artificial Intelligence and is quickly becoming a thought leader in the space of machine learning in particular.
KOMPAS was established in 2015, after the founding team realised that there was a large gap in the market, due to the belief that companies had lost touch with their customers, who were placing an increased demand on personalised experiences. The company has gone on to raise a significant round of investment, and have won close to 15 awards for their innovation in travel and technology, with all of the founding team (including Tom) being highlighted as ones to watch by startups.co.uk.
Currently growing at over 50% monthly, and growing at 1000% in the last 6 months, the company is on track to increase its reach into new cities, particularly after signing commercial partnerships with Birmingham based London Midland, and U.S. based Visa Inc. They’re now raising a further round of funding, to increase the speed at which that they grow into the further UK and German cities, putting a particular emphasis on cities that are largely undiscovered.