Ex-Goldman Sachs MD David Kaplan (CEO) and veteran musician John Thirkell (COO) started online music recording platform PureSolo.com in February 2007, got funded in May 2008, then launched in September last year. It announced a deal with major media company FreemantleMedia Enterprises to provide TV show The X Factor with an online karaoke platform this week (October 6 2009). See it here: xfactorkaraoke.puresolo.com

What's the concept?
The individual singer and instrumentalist have not been given the same online capabilities as bands. We’ve licensed well-known tracks to enable people to develop and record for themselves or the wider community. They can access high quality backing tracks at home for a very inexpensive rate. For £10 to £20 you can create your own CD.

Why's it unique?
My co-founder John picked up a trumpet at 13 but didn’t play with accompaniment until he did his Grade 8, yet we have the Berlin Chamber Orchestra as a backing track for individual musicians. In terms of online there’s no place but PureSolo to go for that. If someone wants to record and email to a teacher, friend or granny they can do it from a browser plug-in for the price of some sheet music.

Where are you now?
To be in the public market for a year, execute a deal we’re the right combination of satisfied and paranoid – 1% satisfied, 99% paranoid. It’s the beginning of our milestones. Ultimately people will see us as an enabler for jazz, singing or classical – a place for users to improve and share. Part of developing musicians is in the formal educational space. We expect to be incorporated into the Sing Up government-backed programme (www.singup.org).

Where will you be in two years?
We’ll be seen as an enabling platform for people to develop their music skills and use socially. We’ll have increased the number of X Factor-like deals, such as in jazz, guitar and classical.

Who's backed you?
The initial investment was from the directors, including myself. Investment went into the technology, research and securing licenses, then we went to the outside world. We spent time with private wealth individuals and angels, rather than formal venture capital. In the early stages they challenged the model and we evolved to take some risk out.

How much did you get?
We raised £1.1m from a small double-digit number of investors, but are keeping their details confidential.

When did you raise it?
May 2008. We were talking for over a year – the first conversation was general and conceptual. Then we had rough versions, hashing around ideas, then a formal offering document.

How long before the cheque cleared?
Raising money takes time from ideas to building trust in the management and belief that the project can be executed. These are important factors people consider as well as financials.

What did it teach you?
Plan ahead. You have to have a commitment and willingness to overcome obstacles. It’s hard work, but savour and love it, be passionate. When we look at great businesses out there like Spotify, it looks really glamorous, but we know how hard they’re working. I take my hat off to those guys.

How has investment improved the business?
It’s key to invest and spend to put money to the vision while striking a balance with the tough economic climate. It offers a little more flexibility in people and technology, paid our legal bills on licensing music, and got us in front of some very grown-up businesses. And they liked what they saw.

Tell us something that will help another entrepreneur keep their investor happy.
Honest, open, continual communication. We don’t have to write and post on a monthly basis, but if there’s a special development we keep them in touch with phone calls and invites to our offices. They trusted us with their capital so should feel a part of it.

Why should we keep an eye on you?
There are certain things we can do to make the platform even richer. And watch us in the education space.

User experience is everything for a website – the richer, more compelling and intuitive, the better. This is where UXA Technologies Limited, trading as 10CMS, comes in.

Content management systems (CMS) – the back-end unseen side of a website – can be the most frustrating things in the world when they play up. And Flash sites have limitations around search engine optimisation and editing. CEO Fergal O’Mullane and the co-founders of 10CMS were familiar with these issues, with head of development Jon Benham having performed bespoke work-arounds for clients while running web design agency Bare Brands with O’Mullane.

A solution to this tiresome problem would be invaluable in terms of time and cost they reasoned. Benham then beavered away on a code to crack it. And like a war-time inhabitant of Bletchley Park he did. Once done, the company, was ‘go’, complete with a WYSIWYG CMS (‘what you see is what you get’ – meaning the editable back-end mirrors the front-end look and feel).

O’Mullane and his three co-directors ploughed in £1m. And in February the team closed a venture capital round from the Irish Enterprise Fund worth another €1m (three out of the four directors are Irish).

Between times, they promoted the solution to the highly fragmented development community to little success. Smaller businesses with full Flash builds were again too fragmented so they raised their sites yet again, this time to the top of the food chain – enterprise level - by offering to integrate their rich media solution with companies' existing systems.

A handy ‘in’ at Shell via one of the company’s non-executive directors a year and a half ago has proved a major milestone. With Shell.com already one of the world’s larger sites, with 80 different country sites in 40 languages, the stage for 10CMS is about as big as they come. Like many things there was an element of luck as Shell’s new global site encountered a stumbling block at the eleventh hour. “We were parachuted in within matter of weeks. They put us through the wringer in making sure it worked, but didn’t horse trade on price.”

Shell.com now boasts rich media ‘quadrants’, displaying key messages. The same commoditised solution is proving popular with retailers too with rich media slideshows, carousels of products, galleries, banner images and videos driving e-commerce conversion rates for the likes of high-end homeware store Heals.co.uk and children's shopping portal Kiddicare.com That is why O’Mullane has made the retail sector 10CMS’ main target for 2009. “One client told us that by increasing their conversion rate by just 0.5% would be more cost-effective than creating a new high street store. We’ve actually seen conversion rates more than double using the solution.”

This highlights the major issue for retailers during the recession – the need to cut costs, but make sales. Shifting more online and differentiating their sites is proving a sensible option and the trend is making 10CMS a beneficiary, to an extent, of this recession. The company has over 70 clients in the enterprise and e-commerce space and is expecting to hit break-even on outgoings this year after substantial investment, with another round of finance sought towards the end of 2009 to push it into profit. Providing market conditions don’t worsen dramatically the chances are we’ll all be seeing a lot more sites with a 10CMS back-end.