The Queensland-based startup, founded by husband and wife ad executives Pip Bingemann and Amy Tucker, is using AI to enable ad agencies to ‘supercharge their creativity.’
When Amy Tucker and husband Pip Bingemann self-coded a tool to enhance creativity, it was intended as a prototype to show the advertising industry what AI was capable of. They gave demos to friends and contacts and couldn’t believe the response.
“We had a bunch of people asking if they could pay to use it, invest in it or join us,” Tucker tells Forbes Australia. “And that was the moment when we thought shit, there’s something here. We need to go all in on this. We stopped consulting and started building it into a SAAS business.”
The couple met while working on the Coca-Cola account at a Sydney ad agency. These days they are partners in life, in parenthood, and in business.
“It’s been incredibly helpful being on the same page in terms of where we are going and what’s important. Springboards started as a result of some free time to explore what’s happening in AI and really play with creativity again,” says Tucker.
Parents to two children, Tucker says balancing work and home life with her co-founder also has its challenges.
“It’s tough. The balance of a young family, a startup and everything but you make it work. Lottie was in utero when we started Springboards and just 4 weeks old when we started pitching VCs – she was strapped to my chest in all the conversations,” says Tucker.
Incubating an ad rocket ship
Springboards states that three years after inception, the platform is used by more than 120 ad agencies, including Jellyfish, BMF, and Cummins & Partners. It fills a need in the market to use technology to maximise the creative process.
“We believe combining AI with human input creates something greater than the sum of its parts,” says Tucker. “Creativity in advertising is under siege. Shrinking margins, skyrocketing pitching costs, and ever-higher client expectations are threatening the craft. We built Springboards to help creatives do what they do best: think big, explore boldly, and stay original.”
Building the company took place, in part, through the inaugural cohort of the AI First Google for Startups Accelerator in Sydney, run by Googler Mike Langford.
“We’re thrilled to support homegrown AI innovation in Australia and look forward to seeing what’s next for Springboards.ai,” says Langford, the head of Google Cloud’s VC and Startup Ecosystem.
Langford says he was impressed by the company’s mission and its founders, and was eager to support their growth.
“The team effectively harnessed the accelerator’s resources, including Gemini on Vertex AI, Google Cloud’s AI platform, to enhance and accelerate their AI creative tools and workflow,” he says.
For Tucker, the AI First program was a turning point. “Prior to the accelerator we had a good product and traction, but no real technical moat,” she says.
“Working with Google helped clarify what our product was really about, what matters and how to build defensibility into what was before then essentially a wrapper. We are now so much more than that and now have a dedicated research team building variation into the core of our product which is different to everything else in the world.”
Enhancing the creative output of ad agencies is also a proposition that Blackbird partner Tom Humphrey sees as an opportunity to ‘flip the script’ and approach AI from a contrarian perspective. Humphrey led Blackbird’s investment in the $5 million seed round.
“Most AI applications and LLMs today are designed to drive users toward answers and outputs (input prompt, output assets). This throttles the creative process itself,” says Humphrey in the VC firm’s investor notes. “There has been a lot of noise with AI in marketing, but Springboards’ core beliefs and approach stand it apart.”
The company’s strategy is to lean into the opportunities that present themselves and push forward, says Tucker.
“Life is hard with a young family no matter what you are doing, so we thought we may as well do all the hard things at once! And sometimes, you just follow where the energy takes you,” says Tucker.
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