‘My three years at Blippar’: A word from employee number three

Pete Boyles was the third person to join the co-founders at Blippar, coming on board as an intern on 20 August 2011 straight out of university. Three years on to the day, the Blippar veteran (now Marketing Partnerships Manager) talks about how far both he and the company have come in that time. Happy third Blippar birthday, Pete!

‘When my granny asked me three years ago what my new job was, I had no idea what to say. How do you describe ‘augmented reality’ to an 86-year-old when you’re not totally sure of what it is yourself?

The best way to explain Blippar is to show it in action. The technology is so extraordinary it speaks for itself; seeing a demo of the app was what made me apply for an intern position with the company three years ago, back in July 2011.

Pete, centre, at the Growing Business Awards in 2013

I first discovered Blippar while reading a blog about a start-up convention where the four co-founders had pitched the app to the public. I had zero idea what AR was, but a video showed some demo blipps they’d created for Heinz, Omega, Eurostar, Vimto and Puma. I was blown away.

Before then I’d been debating between a career in TV content ideation or tech, and that clinched it. I immediately saw the potential Blippar had, and how it could be applied not only to marketing but also to absolutely everything. It could bring anything to life on a mobile phone - museums, art galleries, anything in the real world. It was extraordinary.

Pete, dressed as a Heinz ketchup bottle, gets blipped by colleague JC

The team liked the fact I’d started my own tech venture while studying Business Management and Innovation at Oxford Brookes. It was a news aggregator called MyUpd8, with tech built by an engineer I met in India, but it turned out to be quite tricky running a one-man company while studying at uni!

When Blippar offered me an internship – as the company’s third employee – I leapt at it. The start-up world appealed to me much more than corporate; you learn faster, progress quicker, have more responsibilities and meet phenomenal people. In my first months I worked with Coca Cola and Universal Biscuits. You’d never get these opportunities working in a bigger organisation.

Pete gets Lazer Tagged by the Blippar app

Since then, as Marketing Partnerships Manager, I’ve collaborated with Richard Reed, founder of Innocent, on the extraordinary Art Everywhere projects; Justin Bieber’s label, and charities including BHF and Children In Need. I feel incredibly lucky to have been a part of it all.

The team itself is brilliant. The co-founders want to nurture their employees and help them grow; they encourage us to pursue our own ideas. We’ve gone from a group of seven squashed in a tiny office in Holborn for six months, to an international community of 140, spread across 11 offices in four continents. It’s quite phenomenal how fast it’s happened.

Pete joins co-founder and CMO Jess Butcher on stage collect a Le Web London award in 2012

Growing so big is a bit of a catch-22; obviously it’s exciting, and the whole extended team is terrific, but there was something wonderful about being part of such a close-knit team in the early days.

We try to keep that aspect of Blippar culture – weekly international team meetings on Skype, office lunches, Friday drinks, fantastic away-days – but you’re never going to be able to know 140 people as well as you knew six. It’ll be interesting to see what happens next as we grow bigger still.

I joined Blippar as an apprentice, planning to learn from the co-founders and get tips for starting my own company, but now I’ve been here for three years and things keep getting bigger and more exciting by the day. Doing my own thing is definitely being put on hold for a while; I don’t want to miss being part of something that is going to change the world we live in forever.'