Audiogum

In February 2020, Hilco Streambank was appointed by Andrew Beckingham and Siann Huntley of Leonard Curtis Recovery Limited, acting as the Joint Administrators of Audiogum UK Limited (in Administration), to run a sales and marketing exercise for the intellectual property assets behind this disruptive smart platform and app business.

Business Background

Founded in 2016, Audiogum specialised in smart user experience for connected tech professionals. The Company focused on providing its customers with flexible Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions that easily allowed them to integrate the Company’s services into their products. As a result, Audiogum had strong relationships with key customers including Bosch, Libratone, Dynaudio, Sony, Napster and Bowers & Wilkins. Its innovative approach saw the Company being awarded a number of awards including a 2019 HIS Markit Innovation Award for Audiogum’s Intelligent Personalisation and Bespoke Voice Driven Playlisting.

Assets available for sale included the Audiogum patent applications, data algorithms, software, brand, trade marks, website content and domain name portfolio.

Our Process

Hilco Streambank ran a comprehensive marketing and sale process designed for the intellectual property assets of Audiogum. We strive to build every sale process in this manner in order to ensure we highlight the value of intellectual property assets in question. Our programme was formulated in order to effectively target buyers who would be interested in the Audiogum opportunity and achieve the best return for the Joint Administrators.

Our skilled and experienced team worked to identify the full range of assets included in this sale before we launched our carefully designed marketing documentation that spotlighted this opportunity. Hilco Streambank contacted over 10,000 parties including investors and those with an interest in technology and intellectual property.

Hilco Streambank facilitated buyers’ technical due diligence enquiries in relation to Audiogum’s software and patent applications. Leveraging our industry-leading position as valuers of intellectual property in the context of insolvency, we provided advice to the Joint Administrators in relation to maintaining the patent portfolio and safeguarding IP assets.

Our process ensures the sale was marketed as widely as possible, by both targeting buyers of intellectual property through our database and listing the opportunity on our dedicated website and associated social media platforms to ensure maximum outreach.

Outcome

At the conclusion of our marketing process, the Audiogum IP assets received considerable interest from interested parties and we guided the Joint Administrators with regards to their decision-making process to facilitate and structure a deal. The winning bidder, a major original equipment manufacturer and previous customer of Audiogum, benefits from bringing the technology in-house.