About the Book

The book highlights the power of recruiting people with Social Media! Social Media is not only an effective marketing tool to get candidates and customers onboard but also a tool to help decrease costs on communication, interaction, knowledge management/ transfer inside a company and externally with suppliers and customers.

Update (16th December 2010) The book is now available on Amazon.com / Amazon.co.uk/ Sony Reader Store / Infibeam.com (Asia)

Book Information

About Christian Arno

With a degree secured in Italian and French from the University of Oxford, Christian Arno’s passion for languages and a more-than-passing interest in the newly-flourishing e-business boom led the 22 year old Scot to launch his home-based translation service – Lingo24 – just a few months after completing his studies in 2001.With the support of a £5,000 loan from the Prince’s Scottish Youth Business Trust (PSYBT), and a shrewd £500 investment of his student loan on the stock market which yielded a return of £15,000, Arno was able to build Lingo24’s website and IT infrastructure which would facilitate the young company’s success in the early years.

Arno’s main ambition was to build the ‘top online brand’ for translation services and set about doing so entirely from a spare bedroom in his parents’ home in Aberdeen.“It was nice to have such a short commute from my bed to the office”, says Arno. “But the main benefit was that I didn’t have to pay for premises and had minimal overheads. This meant I could offer some pretty big clients prices up to a third cheaper than our industry competitors.”

The Business

Indeed, this allowed Lingo24 to develop a lot faster than it may otherwise have done and in 2003 he launched a virtual office in New Zealand, followed by China a year later, both staffed by home-based workers. Arno says, “We recruited some fantastically talented management and linguistic personnel in China and New Zealand, and having operations in other time-zones meant we could operate ‘round the clock’. When our handful of home-based staff clocked-off in the UK, we could pass the reigns over to the guys on the other side of the world. It was a very effective system.”

Going global

Having operational capacity in multiple time-zones was key to Lingo24 ‘going global’, and they launched their first physical office space in Romania in 2005, followed by Panama in 2008 and finally their first UK office arrived in Edinburgh later the same year. “The key for businesses going global is carefully managed growth”, says Arno. “I found that by doing things in stages, building up one part of the business, seeing the success and then moving on to the next stage was crucial. Trying to grow things too quickly can spell disaster for young companies and their precious start-up funds.”

Indeed, carefully managed growth has been pivotal to Lingo24’s success. Equally important has been Arno’s realisation that the foreign language internet is the best way to tap into new and emerging markets:

“Three quarters of the world’s population speak no English at all”, says Arno. “And of those who do speak English as a second language, the simple fact is people prefer to do business in their native tongue. I arranged for Lingo24’s website to be translated into ten or so languages in our key target markets, so that businesses in Germany, France, Sweden, Japan or wherever they may be know that we’re serious about what we do.”

And there it is. From home-working and carefully managed growth, to multilingual websites and staff across multiple time-zones, businesses of all sizes can go global with nothing more than a networked computer and a touch of entrepreneurial nous.

So what does it do?

The application is puts your conversation in a simple readable format. Let me explain: When you are sending a typical email. You might write multiple questions, the responder then quotes your response and replies. Its messy and fairly time consuming. Another scenario is where you are twittering a question and all your pals reply via @username. If you are smart enough you will be using a tools like Tweetdeck, if so you still need to sieve through each response to see if they are replying to your question or just making a comment.

Nurphy keeps all conversations in one place:

Just like Google Wave you can add someone at a later stage and read all the conversations you have had in the past, something you can’t do via email or twitter. You can also Fork a conversation i.e. branch your conversation which needs further discussion.

Nurphy also has good privacy features and best of all its simple, the founders have followed KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) to the letter.

5 Reasons why you should be supporting Nurphy

• Nurphy is a simple tool which can really help increase your business productivity.
• It allows you to have control over your conversations and make it easy to track them.
• Nurphy is founded by two entrepreneurs who are bootstrapping the build and have done a fantastic job at it.
• The app has been covered in New York Times and Read Write Web, shows the credibility of the app and founders.
• I think it’s a fine example of European ingenuity where it’s about being creative and thinking logically.

There’s no secret formula for succcess and every entrepreneur has their own idea of how to achieve it. Four network members share their advice

Obviously in these circumstance using LinkedIn alone isn’t enough. To find the right candidate recruiters need to find candidates who aren’t necessarily looking for opportunities but would consider a tempting offer. Here is a list of communities which you can tap into:

Professionals

• ASmallWorld: It’s an invite only community of high value people from consultants to models and entrepreneurs. It has them all!
• CourvoisierTheFuture500: Includes a group of high value people, awarded by Courvoisier and The Observer for their work in creative, science, business etc. Many of the people involved are consultants and consider new opportunities.
• Doostang is similar to LinkedIn but a good source for candidates from exclusive top schools and recently graduated candidates.
• Xing and Viadeo provides access to professionals mainly in the UK and in Europe.
• AffinityCircles is social networking for member-based online communities, such as alumni associations mainly in the US.
• Naymz aims to simplify the process of managing and building an online professional network.

Connecting with people abroad

• Bebo is a UK based site, with younger audience now around the globe, including the U.S., U.K., Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Poland, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, India and the Netherlands.
• Hi5 is a social network in over 30 countries across Latin America, Europe, Asia and Africa.
• MiGente is social network geared toward the Hispanic community mainly in the U.S.
• Orkut is a Google owned property, absolutely fantastic to get in touch with individuals and organisations in Indian and Brazil.
• Mixi is a Japanese-language site with over 10 million users with a lion share in Japan.
• Kaixin is a fast-growing social network in China that attracts college students and white-collar workers.
• Tianya: Another fantastic community for the Chinese market. The website includes user blogs, classifieds, photo hosting, news, sports news, and university information, as well as a club that enables politicians to campaign, answer questions from constituents, and gather grassroots support.
• CyWorld is another community with has large numbers of users in Korea, China, Japan and Taiwan.

Today I followed a link to their website and was shocked to see:

Clearly the restaurant didn’t pay for the website, but would you do this as an IT Consultancy? (By the way I’m not judging the IT consultancy or the restaurant).

I asked the question on Twitter. Response:

Kwiqq

Below I have written a true account of building the business: success, failures and things we learned on the way.

Background

Kwiqq supplied social networking software to customers like Eurostar, British Council, East Hampshire District Council etc.

Typically working as a social networking software development house with focus on technical development. The company began in 2007 and came out of my work whilst finishing of my masters in computer science and artificial intelligence.

Why social networking

The fact was that I really enjoyed socialising and developing software. Although my main focus at university was developing video games actually what I was passionate about was how humans interacted with each other. That’s when someone told me (end of 2006) about Myspace phenomenon in the US. I thought to myself, surely this could be a fantastic product for brands looking to speak to their customers.

Pieces of the jigsaw

In 2006, I was working with Jon Markwell to get a team of entrepreneurial students together at Sussex University, Ilumus. He often referred to four cornerstones (originally from Beermat Entrepreneur). Board of directors from technical, delivery, finance and sales backgrounds to complete the team. Now I had a mission in life: to build a Myspace clone and then get four cornerstones, launch and conquer the world.

Well I had put myself in-charge of the technical side but knew no on the finance, sales or delivery. So my search began. I met someone who said I should speak to someone at BusinessLink, they further introduced me to a entrepreneurial team at Cranfield University, where they were organising the Upstart Programme. To cut a long story short, Prof Andrew Burke, Bettany Chair of Entrepreneurship at Cranfield University joined us as an advisor. Prior to which Sumner Makin joined us as an advisor on the strategy, legal and business development side.

Finally we had Jack Fairhall and David Hill as CEO and principle investor. That was it we began, we never looked back. We began and our first customer was First Choice Holidays, see 2wentysworld.

Success

We worked with First Choice Holidays, Eurostar, British Council, East Hampshire Council, Oxford University Press, Startups.co.uk, Highams PLC and various others as their technical partners. For our product, service and entrepreneurial ambitions we were covered in various publications like BusinessWeek, The Observer, Telegraph, Hindustan Times, New Media Age, TechCrunch, Revolution, Eastern Eye and various other magazines. What’s increadible is that we never used a PR company, we apparently generated £600,000 worth of PR without really spending a penny.

We also were one of the 20 promising start ups as recognised by HSBC and Oracle when we were awarded the Webmission 2008. In addition the founders were awarded with BusinessWeek Europe’s Young Entrepreneur, Courvoisier Future 500 (alongside The Observer), 50 most influential people in digital (Revolution magazine), Sussex Entrepreneur of the year (finalist).

Short comings

I will be the first person to admit that our strategy wasn’t perfect. The first year when we began, we were finding our feet in the industry. Trying to establish our USPs and what made us different from others. It was a steep learning curve although and enjoyable one and really quickly (ironically) we realised that we weren’t alone, we had established competitors.

Who is the client?

Year two we spent finding a good team, at one point we had six people full time at Kwiqq and we were working on 2 to 3 social networking projects at anyone time.

Our biggest shortcoming was that everyone was our customer, we weren’t targeting a vertical market. Instead we were a bit like the whole world is our target market. Perhaps the biggest mistake we ever made. Having a niche market segment would have meant that we would be targeted and were hence building a long term business.

Growth Strategy

If I’m honest, we weren’t clearly presenting the value of using social networks. If from day one we were showcasing the advantages of using social media i.e. to help increase sales, marketing, website traffic etc like we did Case Study 1, Case Study 2 and Case Study 3 we would be in a better position now.

Unfortunately we weren’t clear as to who would sign off the project: marketing, sales, business development or HR director. The value proposition wasn’t clear and that isn’t fantastic when one is trying to close a deal.

Non-recurring business model

This is probably the worst thing a business could do. Unfortunately we were too focused on delivery and really weren’t focusing on sustainability. As a matter of fact we weren’t working on long term recurring revenue models which actually made sense. We should have aligned our customer’s ambitions and tied it in with success they had from the site.

Other influential factors

Recession, drop of customers

Although there were short comings in our business plan we were actually doing well. We had a steady flow of clients coming in and generating enormous amount of leads from our website. It was incredible that we had built such a fantastic page rank for Kwiqq and no.1 position for relevant keywords that really we were generating a decent amount of traffic every month.

Once the recession came biting, the cracks in our business plan were visible and really we needed more than just a good Google rank to make this work. This coupled with the fact that we weren’t clearly showcasing our value proposition wasn’t great news.

Dominance of Facebook

I wouldn’t blame Facebook for us getting less business although what I would say is that actually over the last few years Facbeook has become venues for brands. When we opened doors in 2007, Facebook wasn’t very dominating, although Myspace was. Forming a community outside Myspace was necessary simply because not many people liked the website. The user experience was poor and for many brands Myspace didn’t have the target demographic.

With Facebook pages a small business really doesn’t need to invest in a full blown social media site. Big businesses need to start transforming their existing web offerings to social ones. Perhaps integrating with social networking channels. Either way this means that actually building custom social networks doesn’t really make sense. This is what we mainly did at Kwiqq and perhaps was a trend which was diminishing.

Outcome, was it worth it?

In short Yes. I have learnt so much from the experience. Essentially that things can look great on paper but implementation is a totally different ball game. As one executes an idea, one learns more about the industry, competitor, clients and demands. I invite everyone who hasn’t actually taken the step towards entrepreneurship, to actually get out there and do it. Yes it is challenging but totally worth it.

It has also been great for the profiles of the individuals involved. I felt once you have made something out of nothing it suddenly adds another feather to your hat ‘been there done that’.

What’s next?

I have decided to continue in the social media arena helping various industries get their heads around it. I have started to blog on RajAnand.biz. I’m contactable on +44 (0) 1273 251414 or email me <at> rajanand.biz. I’m sure you will hear me doing my thing in the industry, it is the start to the next chapter of my life.

Related articles

• Furness Young Professionals Event: Starting a business (rajanand.biz)
• Kwiqq founder named Future50 alongside Twitter, Spotify.. (kwiqq.com)

Fantastic initiative by SalsaBrighton and Sue Ghimire, supported by Aids Alliance to organise a Salsa (dance) charity night to fight HIV/AIDS. The event is taking place in Brighton Coalition and promises to be spectacular, with over 2,000 people turning up.

The team is looking for partners (if you would like to attend the event), sponsors, please contact Sue Ghimire on 01273 380596 or email sueghimire@gmail.com if you would like to be part of this fantastic event.

World Aids Day Salsa4 HIV AIDS 1 Dec 2009

The Talk

My talk will concentrate on:

1. JFDI (Just Doing it) Encouraging others to just get on with developing their business idea and not get bogged down by nitty gritty of starting a business.
2. London not centre of the univers: In essence not all businesses have to based in a densly populated centre, but actually businesses like social media can be done remotely.
3. Youth Driven Initiatives Several businesses nowadays are actually best executed by young talent. Think Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook.
4. High Growth Venture Worth thinking about high growth ventures like medical, computer related, telecommunication, bio-technology etc.

Other details (courtesy FYP)

Have you ever thought of starting your own business? Have you considered taking the leap with that great idea you’ve had? Raj Anand did.

Raj was a graduate in computer science and artificial intelligence when a chance meeting with a professor from Cranfield University gave him the vision he needed to take the leap into entrepreneurship.

Raj was right on the mark with his social networking software concept and hit the big time early when he raised angel investment to turn his dream into a reality. It wasn’t long before Raj was voted Business Week’s European Young Entrepreneur of the Year. But it can’t have been that easy… can it? Well we have the opportunity to ask Raj himself when he visits the Furness Young Professionals on Friday 30th October.

The event will take place at the Duke of Edinburgh in Barrow from 6.30pm, with a three course dinner served from 8pm followed by drinks in the bar.

Book now