"I used the money from Britain’s Got Talent to launch my own business": Phil Neale on 'social alarm clock' Snoozle

Phil Neale has turned his appearance on the talent show into a launchpad for a business idea he first had as a student.

When it comes to TV shows proving the launching pad for an attention-grabbing business, Britain’s Got Talent probably isn’t the first show that comes to mind.

But that’s precisely what it did for Phil Neale, who appeared alongside his brothers and father as a harmony group on the show back in 2015, making it to the live final and causing judge Simon Cowell to cry.

And while a career in the charts wasn’t on the card for Neale, the experience did give him the belief - and some of the funding - he needed to pursue his own business dreams.

“Britain’s Got Talent played a massive part in having the confidence to set up Snoozle", says Neale. "I registered the business a few days after our first audition - I thought that if I could get through that, with no experience, then surely I can do something with this idea I’ve had since university.

"After the show, we went out gigging over weekends and that helped me with the money to get Snoozle going.”

Taking control of how you wake up

Snoozle is described as a “social alarm clock”; an app that replaces the jarring beep that you typically get from an alarm with personalised voice messages from your friends.

While you still control the time the alarm goes off, the actual content of that alarm is down to the messages from your friends.

Neale says this is just the start, however, and that long-term he wants Snoozle to essentially be a “connected alarm clock” which allows you to build your morning wake-up.

He explains: “It could be daily news headlines, your horoscope, and news on your football club. If we can get to that point where we have that content curated and available, then it will be quite a mainstream product.”

Neale also has ideas around how the app can do more to help people get to sleep - it already has a Snoozle Lullabies feature which plays soothing sounds - such as the introduction of premium content like audio books and guided meditation.

For now, with the focus simply on building up the number of users, Neale says that it makes sense to concentrate on the social side of things.

“I think this will appeal to a younger audience - people at secondary school or students - as that’s the generation that’s most used to being connected, have a high number of friends, and they are more used to sending voice notes,” he says.

Read our guide to starting your own online business

Where did the idea come from?

Neale says the idea for Snoozle came about while he was at university.

During exams, his girlfriend at the time would send him voice notes on Blackberry Messenger, and he would manually set them as his alarm so that he would wake up to her voice reminding him about that day’s exam.

He says: “You want your phone to make a noise at that time, but having it be a friendly voice rather than an alarm tone that you hate, it just means you get something different and personal every day.”

Turning to the crowd

It wasn’t simply down to the money from post-Britain’s Got Talent gigs that helped get Snoozle off the ground though; the firm also conducted a phenomenally successful crowdfunding campaign, raising £100,000 in less than 10 hours on crowdfunding website Seedrs.

Neale says: “I was working full time, I had a good job and enjoyed it, but if I was going to find out whether Snoozle was viable I needed to go full time. And we needed to have some money behind it.

“Crowdfunding seemed the natural fit. I believe it was the fastest ever campaign - we were the number one investment on Seedrs. Some people are on there for 60 days and never get near that amount raised.”

So what is the key to running a successful crowdfunding campaign?

Neale says that being open and honest about the fact that the business was still in such early stages, and that they had “some skin in the game” was key. The firm also used social media to generate some buzz and awareness of the campaign before it went live.

There’s no doubt that the appearance on Britain’s Got Talent helped with the crowdfunding campaign either.

Neale says: “We had a really strong video for the campaign, and we did drop in the BGT bit early because it gives an element of credibility. People recognise you from somewhere - because it’s such a big show, if you give them a prompt, plenty of people will remember us from that. You have to use it in the right way.”

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What’s next?

For now, Neale is clear that the task at hand is to build up users. Only once that is in place can the firm start to try to monetise the app.

He says: “Until we have people using it and loving it no point in rushing into monetising it. We are effectively creating a media opportunity in the first minute of the day - we want to add some value to that morning experience.”

Would I use Snoozle?

As things stand, Snoozle is very much not aimed at people my age and with good reason - I have two small children who act as alarm clocks, the last thing I need is some ‘dad comedy’ from my friends thrown into the mix as well.

But thinking back to when I was at school, I can definitely imagine something like this appealing to me and my friends. Whether I’d have paid for that is another question, but given the sorts of things I did spend money on back then, I couldn’t rule it out.

If Snoozle gets to the stage where you can build your morning alert - waking up to the main news headlines that I’m actually interested in, an update on my bank balance, and a run through on my list of things to do that day for example - then I can definitely imagine signing up for it.

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