Day in the Life of John Simpson, CTO, FreshCheck

John Simpson, Chief Technology Officer of White City Innovation District’s FreshCheck

Founded in 2015 by John Simpson and Alex Bond, both PhD alumni from Imperial College London, FreshCheck‘s mission is to transform the monitoring of hygiene and safety for equipment and working environments – with application across a range of industries. Harnessing a patented colour-change swab, FreshCheck’s Hygiene Verification System eliminates the need for traditional expensive and fragile luminometers, saving on equipment and maintenance costs. The swab also provides a result in under 30 seconds – making it dramatically faster and lower cost than conventional microbiological monitoring techniques.

FreshCheck Co-founder and CTO John takes us through his typical day at the company’s offices at Scale Space in White City Innovation District, plus shares his insights into scaling an innovation-led business, the role of AI, and more.

1. What is a typical day like for you?

Mornings will typically start with a catch up with the sales and R&D teams whilst discussing the days Wordle scores. Following this, it is emails and back-end work, such as CRM tasks to reach out to customers, as well as any scheduled meetings. Depending on the day, the afternoons can vary from on-site customer visits through to a day in the lab, though currently it is often the former. Across the week we make time for strategic planning of our marketing along with the overall business strategy. Towards the end of the day it will be tying up loose ends; this can be ensuring our accounts are up to date, through to providing reports to investors or monitoring our marketing campaigns.

2. What do you love about working in WCID – in three words?

Collaboration, Innovation, Community.

3. Why did you choose to be located here?

Choosing the White City Innovation District was an easy choice to make. The community of other likeminded start-ups coupled with the access to top-level equipment made it the perfect location to help our business grow. The access to equipment from top-end spectrometers through to simply needing a pillar drill has helped us greatly. With the other start-ups around us we are able to access a fantastic network of experts who are all ready, willing and able to help each other out. We have made fantastic collaborations with other companies and the Imperial White City Incubator has great social events to talk through the challenges faced by our companies, where often someone has an idea to help overcome them.

4. What does ‘innovation’ mean to you and how does your company contribute to it?

To me, innovation means creating impactful solutions that address real-world problems in novel ways. FreshCheck contributes to innovation by developing a simple yet effective hygiene verification system that uses colour-changing swabs. Our approach is user-friendly, cost-effective, and eliminates the need for expensive equipment, making advanced hygiene monitoring accessible to all members of staff in a food related organisation and one day we hope to provide tools to the facilities management and healthcare settings as well!

5. What are you most proud of in your current role?

I am most proud of being able to see the development of our chemistry from a theory all the way to a fully manufactured product that is now on the market. The journey has had many chapters and seeing the team grow with our fantastic researchers has been incredible. Furthermore, being able to shine a light on an area where innovation is less seen and seeing the positive reactions is great.

6. What is the hot topic in your business?

The hot topic in our business is the integration of AI and data analytics into hygiene monitoring, predominantly in the food industry. There is a large movement at the moment to use rapid data analysis to better mitigate and predict challenges with cleaning and hygiene within the food industry.

We are exploring how AI can provide predictive insights, trend analysis, and enhance decision-making processes for our clients, ensuring they maintain the highest hygiene standards efficiently and to help all companies avoid outbreaks of food contamination. This use can be extended into wider areas such as healthcare and hospitality as we grow!

7. What’s the best business advice you have for people looking to break into your field?

The best advice I can give is to focus on solving real problems with practical solutions. A lot of people are trying to fix an issue that already has multiple solutions. It is crucial to understand the needs and pain points of your target audience deeply and develop technology that at least addresses key pain points of the intended customer.

A good way to ensure your product has a fit is to take a couple of steps back and ask: “Why has this not been addressed before?” or “What is stopping people using the current on-the-market technology?”. Additionally, always be open to collaboration and continuous learning.

8. What would Plan B have been on the career front?

I would love to say working for LEGO® designing new sets but I think I lack the brick-based creativity! In reality, I have always enjoyed engaging with other start-ups so some sort of an advisory role to help new companies face the same challenges as we have and tackle them effectively would be very rewarding.