Two self-confessed “nerds” are aiming to be the next big thing in social media.
Now Huddersfield University students Alex Malkin and Dale Green, founders of social media start-up Bithive, have landed a £1,000 grant to take their fledgling business to the next stage.
Alex and Dale were among seven young entrepreneurs – a mix of students and recent graduates from Yorkshire universities – to compete for funding in front of a panel of business advisors in the Investment Readiness Programme run by the West Yorkshire division of the Institute for Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.
Alex and Dale were chosen by the panel as winners of a £1,000 business grant.
The duo have created an innovative social media platform called Bithive, which they believe will have a global impact by revolutionising the way communities work.
They are seeking investment to employ staff, build a website and create a mobile app. The aim is to go live next year.
Bithive allows groups of people to create online communities around common interests for a limitless range of topics such as video games, movies, music, celebrities, hobbies, tourism or even “physical” communities such as villages or schools.
“There isn’t really a platform at the minute that focuses just on communities on the internet,” said Alex, who has now graduated with first class honours from his architecture degree course at the university.
“Facebook does have ‘groups’ but that’s not its main feature and there are a lot of problems, such as the fact that Facebook forces people to use their real names.”
Dale, who is in the final year of his computer games programming course, said: “The Facebook experience is centred around individual users. Bithive is all about the community.”
Both Alex and Dale describe themselves as “proud nerds” who have been immersed in computers, coding and website development since their early teens.
Dale, who is in charge of technical development at Bithive, already has a company named Greeny Games and Alex’s activities have included creating an online video game journal called LambdaGeneration. When that started to receive a million hits a month, the seeds of the Bithive concept were sown.
Alex realised there was a gap in the cyber market for a dedicated, user-friendly platform that would make it easy to set up communities where people could share ideas, gossip and information about any subject that enthused them.
Alex and Dale met while attending the Enterprise Team Event Series – talks for those interested in self-employment, freelancing and business start-ups. The talks are part of the programme offered by the Enterprise Team based at Huddersfield University’s Duke of York Young Entrepreneur Centre.
The two were introduced by business adviser Catherine McGrath and when Alex started to describe the Bithive concept, Dale soon saw the possibilities.
Commenting on the £1,000 funding boost, Dale said: “The grant will helps us get intellectual property for our brand, which is the last thing we need before we can launch. Having the money to do that now is just fantastic.”
The Bithive duo have moved into an office in the Media Centre in Northumberland Street, where they both work on Bithive full-time.
And Alex, who is Huddersfield-born, and Dale, who comes from Bradford, are determined to stay locally-based – even when they’ve made their millions.
“We want to start a Silicon Valley in Huddersfield,” said Alex.
