Fiercely ambitious former management consultant Tim Aikin set up Team Boxwish in 2007. Having raised two angel rounds he's looking to accelerate the growth of its social shopping concept.

What’s the concept?
We’re a new media start-up focused on building cool social websites and applications centred around elements of popular culture. Our flagship site Boxwish.com is a movie inspired social shopping site where people can find and buy products (like fashion and gadgets) seen in movies. We also recently launched Movie-Cupid.com - a dating site for film lovers.

Why’s it unique?
With our first site Boxwish.com we were the first company around to build a site focused entirely on the inspirational aspects of movies – like being able to get the fashion, use the gadgets, drive the cars, visit the locations etc. Since then we’ve grown a basic concept into a powerful association engine, which ties together shoppable content with elements of popular culture, such as movies, characters or people.

Where are you now?
We’ve just expanded the team to six people, relaunched Boxwish.com and are working on a number of other great products including a new type of advertising platform and an e-commerce marketplace. We’re also just about to open a new funding round.

Where will you be in two years?
If all goes to plan we’ll have quite a bit going on, including not just our own consumer sites like Boxwish.com but also running our different e-commerce and advertising platforms for other consumer companies.

Who’s backed you?
We’ve got a small team of excellent angel investors who have been a tremendous support. They include a former investment banker, a chartered accountant and the UK marketing director for a very successful e-commerce company.

How much did you get?
We haven’t disclosed the amount raised so far but it’s six figures.

When did you raise it?
We raised our first round in March 2008, completed a small second round earlier this year and are just about to open another.

How long before the cheque cleared?
The time from initial meeting to money-in-the-bank was actually very quick in both rounds. That said each had at least three to four months of prior planning and preparation put into them.

What did it teach you?
The key thing I learnt was the value that being both prepared and passionate have in convincing investors to back you. It’s not only about constructing a convincing argument for the merits of your product, the strength of your team and the rigour of your financial model, but also delivering it in a way that demonstrates you’ve got the passion and dedication it takes to put in the long hours required to execute.

How has the investment improved the business?
In lots of ways. Completing our first round allowed us to get the ball rolling and prove our initial concept. Our last round gave us the chance to expand the team, bringing on board really talented technical and marketing leads. It also allowed us to evolve our strategy to be even more ambitious than what we started with.

Tell us something that would help another entrepreneur keep an investor happy.
Two key things, honesty and enthusiasm. Keep them constantly informed of what’s going on, good and bad (if it’s bad make sure you follow it with what you’re doing to get things back on track) and in doing so be enthusiastic and passionate enough to make them an ambassador for your brand. If they invested in your business they probably have more than just a passing interest in your industry, product or service. Make sure you engage them in what you’re doing, share your plans and visions for the future, get them excited about you and your brand so that they’re telling all their friends and colleagues about it.

Why should we keep an eye on you?
Our flagship site, Boxwish.com was an exciting first step but we’ve got a really ambitious product plan for the next 12 months and a passionate and dedicated team to make it happen.

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.

According to Creative Director Rob Wood, Music Concierge is a “music consultancy dedicated to offering bespoke services to brands and branded places” In other words, while there are similar companies around, Music Concierge’s focus is on the ‘bespoke’ part of that concept, helping restaurants, hotels, and brands at “'the high-end, brand-focused end of the market' achieve the right sound for them.

Wood hinks that his team’s background make all the difference. He insist Music Concierge has unparalleled knowledge of numerous genres and an enormous, less commercial playlist, which can potentially make a brand’s uniqueness stand out. As former editor of the now defunct but no-less iconic Jockey Slut magazine, as well as an established DJ throughout the nineties, he’s allowed to shout such credentials were the classic ‘lift music’ accusation to be leveled.

Like many start-ups, the idea came by chance. "Very organically, different brands started to approach me, to help them sound right, to choose music for their website or for their branded compilation album”, says Wood. “Hotels also started to approach me to help me choose their music.” With that, the idea was born, and hotels around the world, from Cape Town to the Maldives, including the Connaught Hotel in Mayfair, as well as the Mandarin Oriental, are counted as clients.

The company went to market in the autumn of 2007 after being formed in May, with Wood using his own money and a loan from family members. In the same year, it won a number of accolades including winning the BT Essence of Entrepreneur Competition in 2007.
Now, expansion is the plan, with the hunt for funding and the setting up of up sales reps from mainland Europe, to India and the US underway. Lobby music might just be getting a whole lot cooler.

Sending large files around the web has gotten increasingly easy in the last few years, as start-ups work on providing a platform for media professionals and others to send files to one another without the use of E-mail. According to SoundCloud co-founder Alexander Ljung “SoundCloud lets users move music fast and easy via the web. The platform takes the daily hassle out of receiving, sending and distributing music for artists, record labels and other music professionals” But while other sites aim to attract those wanting to send video files, SoundCloud is aimed at those in the music industry, with a focus on collaboration and sharing of tracks (think social-networking features), the ability for the receiver to use an in-built player in the system (meaning there’s no need to download the track) and the chance for the uploader to track how many times the song has been played once uploaded.

Started by Swedes Alexander Ljung and Eric Wahlforss, SoundCloud, says Ljung, is different from the current batch of sites that allow big files to be uploaded, due to less focus on the actual ‘file’. “These kinds of services focus everything on ‘the file’ that's sent between desktops – we want people to think less of files and more of the actual music so we try to avoid any unnecessary steps in between. If somebody sends you a track your first reaction should be to press play not press a few ads, wait 60 seconds, download a 50mb file and so forth.”

Despite the Swedish core, the company is based in Berlin. “Berlin has a great creative scene and low living costs, there's a booming web start-up scene and plenty of great music around”, says Ljung. “The choice was easy for us to move here!” The pair had been involved in the running of a couple of smaller businesses (while Wahlforss was CIO with the 24 Hour dotcom project), but describe SoundCloud as their first ‘full-on’ start-up.

With 6 full time staff and the use of a freemium model (free for those who don’t use so frequently, and a charge for those who do), the company has been able to get off the ground using the investment provided by a large group of angels.

UPDATE [14/4/09]: SoundCloud has raised an additional €2.5m in a funding round led by Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures. The site now claims to have 100,000 registered users. Doughty Hanson's Stefan Tirtey has joined the board as part of the deal.

This summer, The Times reported that each teenager in the UK had an average of 800 illegally downloaded music tracks on their MP3 player. This says two things. The first is that the young love their music, and the second is that if we (and by 'we', read first 'humans', and then specifically, the 'UK') want to continue to create professionally produced music - in terms of nice sounding production values - then the artists who make it need to continue to get paid. While government and the major labels favour punishmenttehniques, others call for a rethink.

"Kerchoonz is built for musicians by musicians, to serve the public. It's free, and the artists and the licensers of the music get paid." These are the words of Indianna Gregg, co-founder of Kerchoonz.com While sites such as last.fm have become hugely successful promoting the work of musicians (some who post their own work for exposure, others who have it posted by others against their own will), the income they generate is minor - only when the listener decides to pay to download the MP3 after streaming the track do they make any money. With illegal downloads elsewhere on the web, the income is obviously zilch.

Artists on Kerchoonz set up a profile, and pay an admin fee of £12.50. Every time a song of theirs is streamed, they get 0.5p. Each time a song is downloaded, they receive 10p. As an incentive to listeners, they too are paid for referring the band in question to friends onKerchoonz who decide to buy the music. "As soon as a band gets £12.50 in revenue, £2.50 is transferred to your referral account", says Gregg, who feels strongly that artists need to make a livable income, after suffering herself after releasing her own album: "We (Gregg and husband-produce/Kerchoonz co-founder Ian Morrow) had VC funding and major sales, but when we went to work out why we weren't doing so well we a found there'd been 1/4m downloads from torrent sites. The thing is that they don't hurt the major labels, they hurt the 400 indy labels in the UK."

The site went into beta phase at the end of October, after receiving start-up funding from the Discovery Investment Fund in Dundee and the Scottish Co-Investment Fund. At the moment, the revenue comes from advertising, but major labels will soon be on board, according to Gregg, and to download the tracks of those artists, users will have to pay. Whether users will come to the site to listen to free music of new acts and then pay for musicians who are freely (really very 'freely') available elsewhere, is the big question. But the fact that the site is so unique in providing a space for listeners who want artists to get paid as much as they want to get music for free, might mean it becomes incredibly popular due to the goodwill of the public (Kerchoonz currently claims users stay for a massive 29 page views each)- which should be a plus for advertisers.

It's clear that if artists hope to make a living from their work-(work which, at least where the UK is concerned, means a lot in terms of exports), something will have to be done. Without it, the whole prospect of a life in music will be less appealing, and we'll all suffer. The idea of punishing ISPs for their customers' behaviour is gaining pace, but, surprise surprise, policymakers are looking out of touch. With such a huge issue, perhaps sites like Kerchoonz.com where a majority of content remains largely 'free', while still managing to make some cash for the artists, provide the answer. Let's just hope they manage to make enough for themselves to remain operable.

The growth in online video seems to know no bounds. It’s becoming increasingly clear how useful it can be as a tool (or is that unclear?), and one idea exploiting this new tool is Virtual Presenter, an offshoot of Corby’s Run Visual.

Founder Steve Smith has a background in video production, and saw the chance for a living, breathing TV-style presenter to guide internet users through a client’s homepage: “We were putting stuff on the web 4 or 5 years ago, but broadband was so poor at the time. It wasn’t a good user experience, but that all changed around 2 years ago.” With more broadband connectivity, better video-compression techniques, and a local EMDA grant, the gap in the market presented itself.

Launched as Run Media in 1999, the company switched to Run Visual in 2003, working on a range of products and services from marketing and communications, to print or web content production. But Virtual Presenter might just be their killer idea. “Rather than adding just text and photos someone can help add a unique selling point, adding value to the website”, says Smith. “We can’t help people get to your site, but it’s what you actually do with people once they’re on it. If you can say something in the first 10 or 15 seconds then you’re halfway there...It’s a call to action.”

And the selection process is simple. As Smith says “You just go to the website, and choose a presenter. They’re all pros who can work quickly, and you just pick one that suites the project your trying to offer.” Clients don’t have to sit in on the production, so it’s mostly it’s independent of the geography. And with some early feedback showing the simple addition of a pretty face can triple response rates on click-through parts of the site, the concept could get traction very quickly.

Gig Junkie is the first brand in a portfolio of social networks from the MOO Group. As co-founder Marc Bridgen told cmypitch, there are a lot of social networks out there, but no one’s quite figured out the perfect monetisation strategy.

Gig Junkie is getting off to a good start – targeting a gap which desperately needs to be filled; live music. As music fans in the UK now, there’s still no definitive place to go in order to find inspiration for gigs, free or otherwise. You’re stuck with mainstream sites profiling the O2 Centre, made to head to genre-specific forums, or left trawling individual clubs’ pages.

“Gig Junkie is a live music network we’re working on making the most definitive place to check for gigs...We want to have everything from one man and his dog to the Foo Fighters at Wembley” And to get a definitive list of events those smaller artists will be playing at, Gig Junkie will be trawling myspace for gig listings – currently the number one spot for emerging artists. But importantly, the company is also utilising fans, promoters and musicians themselves, who are all slowly creating a musical social network.

Brothers Bridgen are not exactly newcomers to starting a business: They had both been involved very early on with document-management firm Randall Lyons, and exited after it was sold to Capita in 2005. They used some of their proceeds to launch MOO and Gig Junkie, and are now at the VC-funding stage. When I spoke to Marc, they’d just had their first meeting.

“There are so many free gigs out there but currently no way of promoting that”, says Bridgen, who quit his latest job with his co-founders last summer. But while a place to find those free gigs will be one driver, income is key. The primary source of revenue will be tickets. Currently, 25p per ticket sold using Ticketmaster comes in, which goes up to 40% when a certain volume is hit. On top of that, the affiliate model is being utilised to sell albums, while new models such as premium-rate SMS competitions, charged-for SMS reminders for when concert tickets go on sale, and a text-a-photo-from-the-gig-to-your-profile service are all being implemented.

Launched in beta version with the founding trios savings, “Mixcloud is a platform for user-generated radio, whereas users of other radio sites don’t have the potential to upload their own content”, says co-founder Nico Perez. The Alpha version launches this month, and the hunt for VC funding gears up.

The founders have backgrounds in engineering, graphics/web design and maths, but are unsurprisingly united by a love for music. As Perez says “We’re all big music fans, and had a radio show of our own at university. So the needs we’re solving are frustrations we know ourselves.”

Whereas traditional radio, including ‘traditional’ web radio, lets a small number of DJs play their music to an audience, new concepts such as Last.fm let ‘the wisdom of crowds’ theory suggest new music to users, using tags to throw new tunes in the direction of listeners. But Mixcloud replaces it with the more traditional ‘wisdom of the expert.’ “There are already enthusiasts out there but they’re not being found. It’s a platform for those content creators.” In other words, you just tune into the person or DJ who’s right for you, and let them inform your tastes. And the key-ingredient of always providing a track listing means it's catching on fast, according to Perez: “There are 500 DJs already signed up to our mailing lists!’

“It’s based on that tried and tested radio method, advertising. But we have less expenditure”, Perez pointed out to me. On top of the 15-30 second adverts before each half hour show, revenue is expected via affiliate sales, possible brand sponsorship, and the freemium option. If the wisdom of crowds succumbs to the wisdom of experts, the older industry buzzphrase of ‘user-generated-content’ could be around for a lot longer – and Mixcloud might well be there.

In the world of digital media where new tools and applications are popping up left, right and centre, someone has to be making these new agenda-changing products. One young firm describing itself as a ‘cultural construction company’ is Harmonypark. Or as co-founder Andrew McPhee says “We were started to create socially useful applications and experiences.” As well as creating products for the likes ofeBay, Harmonypark is currently busy working on 3 new i-Phone applications, following the market to where demand is. In addition, they're enjoying the buzz around recent expense sharing tool Expensure.

But while designing ‘apps’ is a key, product and service incubation for others is also a huge part of what the company’s about, and the balance fluctuates “ It changes month to month: We try do something like 50/50, but it switches to 80/20 and to 20/80.”

Kiwis McPhee and Ebony Charlton, as well as Canadian Mike Evans, began to boot-strap with the company in 2005. They all had experience in starting their own companies beforehand, taking in digital agencies and E-Commerce ‘in Australasia’. “We’ve all worked in advertising, but this is creating useful applications in digital culture: we solve problems”, says McPhee. “Between us we all had the complementary skills: When you start you find out there are things you aren’t good at: we threw them all together.”

The company has developed well, being responsible for incubating successes such as video-player Vzaar. This whole process has taught the team the importance of taking equity in the fruit of their labour: “More often now we’re taking a stake as well as payment. It’s been an eye opener. Some products have gone on to be worth millions... and we didn’t take equity”, says McPhee matter-of-factly. But with a string of useful apps under Harmonypark’s belt, it looks like the opportunity to do so will continue to present itself.