Our Launch 48 Awards

Last night we were able to rub shoulders with a number of innovative, early stage, technology startups who have started to make waves within the UK whilst in their embryonic stages. We received very positive comments and feedback from those who we demoed MinuteBox to however we did not expect to win an award let alone two!

All of the MinuteBox team present was amazed with the quality of the exhibitors, presentations and the audiences analytical comments and questions. The judges, Hugh Chappel (Angel Investor), Julian Ranger (Angel Investor) and Reshma Sohoni (CEO of Seedcamp), asked a range of good questions forcing us to think long and hard before responding. Their advice was brilliant and we are confident that their input will help us develop our offering going forward.

We would like to thank Launch48 for the awards and their fine hospitality. We would also like to congratulate the other participants including the other winners HipSnip, QRky & Skystack. It was a true honour to demo alongside the other outstanding start-ups in this exciting sector.

The immediate response from winning the award is an even more motivated MinuteBox team dedicated to work that little bit harder as we approach our beta launch.

We are currently recruiting experts to join MinuteBox!!!

Experts and freelancers are now able to create MinuteBox experts profiles prior to the launch. Once your profile has been created we will contact you the day of our beta launch. There are a limited amount of very special profile badges available to our ‘founding members’ but be sure to sign up soon as they are ‘going like hotcakes’.

Josh & Cristiano demoing MinuteBox.com

We really appreciate the help from those of you who participated in our ‘usability beta testing day’. You provided some great feedback and were a great set of guinea pigs! Yesterday, we went through all of our notes and had a long and constructive discussion on how to improve our website.

We are now busy making the changes, and we would like to let you now that our website will be ready for Experts, freelancers and industry leaders to create profiles from Wednesday the 18^th of August.

Once we have enough quality experts with us, we will launch the website in Beta. It is important to us to have the experts onboard prior to launch because “no one wants to go to a shop with no stock”.

During this initial stage we are focusing our efforts on getting experts, freelancers and key industry leaders to join MinuteBox in the following areas:

Business:

-       Accounting

-       Planning

-       Strategy

-       E-Commerce

-       Employment Issues

-       Entrepreneurship

-       Financial Advice

-       Fund Raising

-       General Advice

-       HR/Payroll

-       International Trade

-       Legal Advice

-       Management

-       Project Management

-       Tax Planning

Marketing:

-       Advertising

-       Customer Service

-       Community Management

-       E-mail Marketing

-       Lead Generation

-       Marketing

-       Market Research

-       Public Relations

-       Sales Advice

-       Search Engine Marketing

-       Social Media

-       Viral Marketing

Information Technology:

-       Databases

-       Desktop Applications

-       Mobile

-       Networking

-       Online Payment

-       SEO

-       IT Support

-       User Experience

-       Security

-       Server Administration

-       Testing/QA

-       Design

-       Hosting

-       Web Development

-       Management

If you have expertise in any of these fields and want to sell your spare time (and make money)  then stay posted over the next couple of weeks.

You can follow us on twitter, @minutebox and/or add your email address at www.minutebox.com to be kept up to date with MinuteBox over these very exciting times.

If you have friends who are experts in the above areas please let them or us know and we will approach them at a later date.

Thanks a lot for your support.  :)

We are MinuteBox. If you do not know who we are yet, please check our introduction blog post.

It is an exciting time to us. We are about to launch our Beta website. Our team has worked very hard and is determined to deliver good services to our users. Before the launch, we really want to know how online users respond to our website. We can then make the final changes before we launch it.

We are gonna have 2 days (Sunday 08/08/2010 and Monday 09/08/2010) of on-site usability testing, hosted in our office in Camden. It is e is about 2 mins walk from Mornington Crescent Tube Station:  37 Camden High Street (via Symes Mews) London NW1 7JE

We will really appreciate it if you can pop by and give us 30 minutes of your time. Task is very simple. You sit down to have a cup of coffee and some snacks, we will give you some tasks to do through our website. We will ask you questions along the way to get the feedback from you. That is it.

If you are willing to help, please fill in the form for us to know your availability. We will contact you and arrange it with you.

Many thanks in advance.

MinuteBox Team

To find out more about MinuteBox and what it offers please go to the about page.

From next week we will be inviting industry leaders and expert advisors within the UK to join MinuteBox whilst in Beta.

If you would like to be invited to join us during this time please leave your email address on the MinuteBox Homepage

After a quick dinner with CEO of Minutebox.com, we arrived at 6:50 p.m. with the Collective already
bustling with interesting people. Everyone was dressed to impress whilst wetting their lips on the
beverages at the bar. The place was full of well dressed, good looking people. With great lighting and
good music I felt instantly at home.

With moveable walls, minimalistic decor and a solid internet connection, it is an ideal place to get
creative and innovative. Wasting no time, I was introduced to the fellow residents at the Collective, the start-up company FatStudent.. It is ran by graduates providing an online jobseeking service for students to new graduates.

Over the course of the evening I met a range of talent and interesting start ups associated with the
collective. With the average age lingering around the mid-20 mark this became even more interesting
and maybe even a little inspiring.
Following an assertive yet well mannered tapping of the wine glass to grab the attention of the
endlessly chatting and tweeting crowd, Simon Pitkeathley, CEO of Camden Town Unlimited gave a
good insight into what “Camden Collective” Project was all about. By his words, this project was part
of a larger scale movement initiated by Camden Town Unlimited in partnership with Camden Council
to renovate the commercial and creative scene at Camden and be a leading area for retail and for young
innovative businesses to grow.

By creating an office for start-ups and creative minds Camden Town Unlimited hopes to encourage
these and other innovative businesses to move to Camden rather then other areas in London.
After too many drinks, a lot more chatting and few more tweets, people gradually left the Collective.
I found the event an excellent opportunity for us to meet and greet our office neighbours and attain a
better understanding of the collective..

Opening Night of the Camden CollectiveWe have recently moved to Camden Town United’s new office space suitably named The CamdenTown Collective. After a quick dinner with CEO of Minutebox.com, we arrived at 6:50 p.m. with the Collective alreadybustling with interesting people. Everyone was dressed to impress whilst wetting their lips on thebeverages at the bar. The place was full of well dressed, good looking people. With great lighting andgood music I felt instantly at home.With moveable walls, minimalistic decor and a solid internet connection, it is an ideal place to getcreative and innovative.Wasting no time, I was introduced to the fellow residents at the Collective, the start-up company FatStudent.. It is ran by graduates providing an online jobseeking service for students to new graduates.Over the course of the evening I met a range of talent and interesting start ups associated with thecollective.

With the average age lingering around the mid-20 mark this became even more interestingand maybe even a little inspiring.Following an assertive yet well mannered tapping of the wine glass to grab the attention of theendlessly chatting and tweeting crowd, Simon Pitkeathley, CEO of Camden Town Unlimited gave agood insight into what “Camden Collective” Project was all about. By his words, this project was partof a larger scale movement initiated by Camden Town Unlimited in partnership with Camden Councilto renovate the commercial and creative scene at Camden and be a leading area for retail and for younginnovative businesses to grow.

By creating an office for start-ups and creative minds Camden Town Unlimited hopes to encouragethese and other innovative businesses to move to Camden rather then other areas in London.After too many drinks, a lot more chatting and few more tweets, people gradually left the Collective.I found the event an excellent opportunity for us to meet and greet our office neighbours and attain abetter understanding of the collective.

by Seung Wook

Following on from their successful pop up shop scheme, Camden Town Unlimited (CTU) have announced their latest venture to support the hottest new creative talent emerging from leading London educational institutions into a difficult jobs market.

This is an innovative new office concept, designed specifically for the start up creative sector and developed from a design partnership including CTU, Dexter Moren Associates, Conran Design Group and Camden Council that can easily be configured into almost any space.

CTU is testing their new collaborative space the Collective, at 15 – 37a Camden High Street (opened on 1^st March 2010).

CTU are particularly committed to working with graduates from leading London institution including UCL and Central St Martins, supporting London’s top creative and tech focused talent.

Dexter Moren Associates, a dynamic and creative architecture firm have innovatively converted over 3,000sqft of old warehouse space (previously a Bakery) into a bold re-interpretation of the 21^st century office space, where the office functions as both the inspiration and stage for new creative ideas.

“Flexibility is at the core of the concept, with a moveable internal structure. The ambition of the design partnership was to create the first 24-hour commercial space, where the interior can be re-configured quickly into a broad range of uses – the space can be a studio, a meeting room and a catwalk within the same day.” says Jacqui Labb, Director of Dexter Moren Associates.

Simon Pitkeathley, Chief Executive of Camden Town Unlimited says “Our ambition is to make Camden Town one of the most creative districts in London by supporting the development of original, unique and eye-catching businesses. We believe that traditional office space has not adapted to the requirements of the new creative office requirements and we want to provide somewhere which fosters business growth in the creative sector through collaboration and innovation.”

Councillor Keith Moffitt, Leader of Camden Council says “Together with CTU we have been leading the way in finding unique and innovative ways to support the creative industries here in Camden. The opening of Collective is another step towards equipping Camden Town with the space it needs to establish itself as the creative district of choice.

“None of this would have been possible without a vision and I pay tribute to all of those involved to create such a fantastic space that will serve new creative talent for many years to come.”

Thanks to a great initiative from Camden Collective a hub for tech startups and innovation.