Meet the Member: COYOSY

Meet the Exchange member bringing ethical tech to the mainstream

Do you know that the device you are reading this on is harming humanity?

There is a reason why trust in big tech is at an all-time low. From planned obsolescence to privacy scandals, the consumer electronics industry is full of immoral practices, constantly harming the people and the planet.

This has inspired many to offer ethical alternatives in the past decade. But there is an issue with current ethical alternatives: they cannot be scaled to the mainstream. They are uglier, bulkier, and pricier than their counterparts, without offering any new features or use cases.

That’s why Exchange members Fady Tarek Selim, Alina Iigilikova, and Daniel Rifaterra Solano co-founded COYOSY. The start-up exists to accelerate the transition to circular and ethical tech by making it attractive to the mainstream.

The team are from three diverse backgrounds, both professionally and culturally. They met in 2019 while working in a hard-tech start-up, where Fady was leading the R&D for three products and Alina was handling business operations. Daniel joined as the design co-founder a year later.

“We’ve never worked in the consumer electronics world, that’s exactly the reason why we are the right ones to disrupt it. Fresh perspectives are needed,” Fady said.

Using wicked modular engineering and open-source software, COYOSY’s first product ‘Speaphone’ is an ecosystem of speakers, headphones, and woofers in one modular system that respects the people and the planet. It satisfies most audio needs for a fraction of the price and the environmental footprint. All paired with a companion app that has a built-in privacy-focused smart assistant.

The initial idea was to make a pair of headphones with a removable headband so that the two earcups can transform into two standalone portable speakers. This initial idea attracted the Huge Thing Pre-acceleration Program by SpeedUp Venture Capital Group and Google for Startups.

There, Fady and Alina worked on digging into the market and the industry’s problems in deep detail, which prepared them to get into the door of Bethnal Green Ventures (BGV), the early investor in Fairphone and many other successful tech-for-good start-ups. BGV invested in COYOSY’s acceleration round, which helped the team build Speaphone’s first functional prototype and validate the solution with initial targeted customers.

“Now, it is the time to prepare for our launch and grow, and we couldn’t find a better community to help us achieve that than the Exchange programme. The network that we have built and the support that we have received in such a short time is mindblowing,” Alina said.

In the next six months, the founders are closing a pre-seed round to build a world-class team that will build so many category-defining products in the upcoming years. They are on the hunt for Manchester’s best talent. If you are an investor, engineer, developer, or marketeer, reach out at founders@coyosy.com.

Also, don’t forget to join the waiting list for Speaphone. Visit coyosy.com and leave your email address for exclusive access to an affiliate program and product configurator.