The Cultural Diet

Munch: Will it mobilise the restaurant industry?

This is a piece I originally wrote for Real Business, first published here.

With an app allowing high street restaurant chains to provide food delivery, serial entrepreneur Rich Martell (Floxx) might be about to give the industry a real boost. Nick Levine reports.

Serial entrepreneur Rich Martell has decided to disrupt the restaurant industry. His latest brainchild, Munch Delivery is a soon to be released app that will provide well-known high street restaurant chains without delivery facilities with a portal to manage food takeaway. 

A key feature of the Munch service is the ability to track the location of your food on its journey from the restaurant to your home. With this it seems to hit the nerve of our local, mobile time.

Prior to Munch, Martell had already received significant attention in London’s tech startup community. In 2010, his final year at UCL university, he created FitFinder, a website which allowed students to tag and geo-locate attractive peers. The project was initially conceived as a joke for Martell to “let some steam off whilst [he] was revising for [his] finals.” But the website quickly became a viral hit amongst students and received substantial attention from the media. 

UCL were quick to clamp down on the potential negative associations of the website and forced Martell to close it down. Martell told Real Business: “I never really took it seriously as a business concept but in the end it is what got me started in my career.” When probed about whether he would have done anything differently, he says: “The only thing I would have changed was to push back at the university slightly more before I shut it down.” 

Martell, both of whose parents are entrepreneurs, knew from a young age that he wanted to run his own business due to “want[ing] the lifestyle that they had.” Prior to the creation of Fitfinder he had planned on fulfilling these aspirations later on in life. However, after university and a six month stint in banking these plans were brought forward: “It was probably then that I realised that the time was right for me to start something serious.” 

In early 2012, building on the nascent success of Fitfinder, Martell rebranded the company as Floxx, a creative agency focused on mobile products. Floxx was initially an entity which created its own apps. However, the business changed its focus to client work after Martell realised just how competitive the industry is: “The app development market has very low barriers to entry so it was tough for us to get any breaks in that industry when 20 companies take [around] 90 per cent of the revenue.” 

Floxx is still a going concern, with Martell working with clients on a day to day basis. However, recently the bulk of his focus and energies have been taken up by Munch. The vision for this new business is to offer consumers the ability to be able to order and have food delivered from their favourite high street chains. 

Munch are not due to trial their service until May but will be delivering well-known high street brands including Wagamama, Nandos, Pizza Express and Gaucho for the test period. The concept received market validation when over 500 London based people signed up to a landing page advertising such a service.

In March Munch was accepted onto Wayra, Telefonica’s incubator for startups. Martell decided to enter Wayra due to previous dealings with the entity, when he helped out with the mentoring team. When asked why he applied to them as opposed to any of the other accelerators he says: “There is a different vibe at Wayra compared to other incubators – a very community driven one. With Munch we realised that the problem we are solving is not an easy one and so the added weight of Telefonica behind us does aid us with business development conversations.” Despite not having formally started on the programme, Wayra have already lined up a meeting with the founder of several well-known chain restaurants.

Martell believes that restaurants have been slow to adopt technology, and cites the example of them being under capacity outside of peak times: “If you’ve ever been to Pizza Express on a Tuesday or a Sunday night you will realise that they are not even close to capacity.” 

He believes that Munch will help solve this problem by allowing restaurants to “have the opportunity to utilise their kitchens and cater for people who want to enjoy their food from the comfort of their own homes.” This is likely to help restaurants improve their operating margins as it means that fixed costs such kitchen staff wages, rates and electricity will be spread more evenly.

One of the key features of the Munch experience is to give customers the ability to track their order in real time. Martell says “We are going to be allowing customers to follow their food on a map from the restaurant to the door.” The business model has two revenue streams, consisting of a revenue share with the self-employed delivery driver, and a percentage of the total order value from the restaurants. 

The trial service of Munch will be tested on Apple’s iOS platform with a small set of customers who are based in the city, and are cash rich and time poor. Martell is aiming to grab the attention of this market by conducting a series of PR stunts outside the banks and on London’s tube and bus network. He says, “We want to grab people’s attention right at the point that they are thinking about food and often that is on the way home from a long day at work.”

Students are the best entrepreneurs

This is a piece I originally wrote for Real Business, first published here.

An accelerator programme exclusively for student-run businesses is proving that the UK’s future business leaders are all around. Nick Levine visits Student Upstarts…

Christian Jakenfelds and Matthew Stafford believe there has never been a better time for students to start a business

An accelerator programme for student-led businesses has grabbed the country’s attention for playing its part in supporting the UK’s next big entrepreneurs. Run by early-stage investorMatthew Stafford, and undergraduate studentChristian Jakenfelds Student Upstarts is not your average accelerator.

The goal of Student Upstarts is to invest in 100 student-run businesses by 2015. The terms of the programme are that up to £15,000 is invested in return for an eight per cent equity stake. Student Upstarts is not FSA regulated and Nick Wheeler, founder of Charles Tyrwhitt shirts and the programme’s main investor, personally makes the investment decisions about businesses selected.

Student Upstarts aim to predominantly back technology-led businesses. However, Stafford points out that Wheeler is keen to invest in non-tech businesses, too – Wheeler has said himself that he “just sells shirts after all.”

Whilst there are a number of incubators in the UK (Springboard, Seedcamp, to name a few), Student Upstarts differs: applicants must feature at least one member who is either at university, or has completed their higher education within the last year.

Additionally, the programme invests in teams at a relatively nascent stage. Stafford told Real Business: “We back teams at idea stages that aren’t incorporated and don’t have anything else set up because we help with all [of] that.”

Alongside helping teams incorporate their companies, they are also given access to a group of professional advisers. This includes lawyers, accountants, and support in business functions, such as sales and operations.

Stafford originally came up with the idea of launching an incubator for students back in 2005, but became “sidetracked by the city and the corporates working for software companies in financial services.” Subsequent to completing his MBA in 2011 at Imperial College Lonson, he met co-founder Christian Jakenfelds, who “had been working on a similar idea in parallel.” It seemed natural for the two to join forces.

Initially, it was Jakenfelds’ intention to bring on board six separate investors to have a good spread of expertise and sector exposure. However, Wheeler was keen to be the sole investor, believing this to be advantageous as it would speed up decision making and execution. Jackenfelds told Real Business that when he was sold on this idea, Wheeler “promised to invest £1.5m over three years.“

Stafford believes that starting up a business whilst in higher education is the ideal time to do so. “Students have far less to lose as they are used to living lean, have less responsibilities, a great network of other students and the time and energy to go for it.” He does not necessarily believe that starting a business and being a full-time student are mutually exclusive activities. Stafford encourages students to give entrepreneurship a go, by “treating it like a project whilst at university and following the lean startup methodology, by failing fast and learning.”

Stafford sees significant growth for technological areas in the future. He is tipping toward mobile, but is keen for applicants of Student Upstarts to shake up a number of incumbent sectors: “Mobile and Social are clearly very hot right now, but I hope that we will get some very ambitious teams wanting to solve problems to do with energy, healthcare and agriculture. I really want some bold visions to truly change the world coming from students.”

Student Upstarts has led to four companies winning investment so far, greater efficiencies in business processes being a notable trend. Shift Swap, for example, allows employees in companies to reallocate their shifts in an intelligent way. Marizca, another Student Upstarts “alumni”, allows for organic and local seafood to be produced in busy metropolitan areas.

Part of the support provided by Student Upstarts is access to relevant mentors who coach teams and offer advice. This is, in part, facilitated by a supper club for entrepreneurs put on by Stafford. He sees one of the main benefits of mentorship that “it is good to take advice from someone who is six to 18 months ahead of you.” 

Stafford and Jakenfelds have already matched portfolio companies with mentors who are providing tangible benefits. Shift Swap are currently being mentored by Greg Hodder, managing director and head of Charles Tyrwhitt, with the shirt company looking at implementing Shift Swap across the chain to give their employees more flexibility.

Over the coming months, Student Upstarts are looking to see an increase in both the number of teams pitching to them, and invested in. They will be holding open office hours on December 15, during which candidates can pitch to them. 

The 21-year-old entrepreneur who turned down university

This is a piece I originally wrote for Real Business, first published here.

Ted Nash is a 21-year-old serial entrepreneur who came to sensational success via Apple’s App Store. We talked to him about education and the real opportunities for young entrepreneurs in the UK.

Ted Nash has been active in entrepreneurship since his early teens. His interest in enterprise was piqued as a pre-teen by encountering a neighbour who was just a few years older than himself, and ran an online affiliate marketing company called Veoda.

As a 12-year-old, the independence and trappings of success which Veoda founder Ben Reeves had acquired made a lasting impression on him. “He was six years older than me [when] I first met him but nonetheless, all the toys and the gadgets he possessed interested me,” said Nash.

Inspired by Reeves’ success - and probably his toys and gadgets - Nash began to sketch out various ideas for businesses. He was convinced that if his neighbour could achieve success, then also could he: “I remember lying in bed [at] night thinking to myself, if he can do it, why can’t I?”

Nash’s tentative first steps to being a successful entrepreneur were aided by Craig Clark, a computer engineer who mentored his development. Clark, who was working for Nash’s family at the time, was extremely generous with his time: “Without his help, [Nash’s first venture] Rediz would have remained clunky and my next steps into web design and development would have been much more difficult.”

Mentoring is something Nash believes is integral in the development of aspiring entrepreneurs: “You need to relate to people making revolutionary products today. People and entrepreneurs you can communicate with and relate to are extremely valuable whilst developing your business.”

His first notable creation was Little Gossip, a website which let pupils at school anonymously post gossip about their peers. The site built up a huge audience very quickly but garnered publicity for the wrong reasons, due to users posting malicious content. Despite a huge amount of media attention, Nash was cautious about the fall out and quickly sold on the site for a nominal amount. Nash commented to Real Business that “if the media hadn’t been so aggressive, Little Gossip could have evolved into something much more positive.”

To date Nash’s most significant successes have been on Apple’s App Store.Rackstare and Fit Or Fugly are both games which can be described as “lad or pub-style humour”. The latter features an algorithm which rates the physical attractiveness of users’ photos. His creations have achieved more than five million downloads to date. Nash was always confident of having success on the App Store: “I wouldn’t have made the decision to pursue [creating products on the App Store] if I didn’t think [they] would have a chance of success.”

AppDaq, Nash’s latest creation (a joint venture with the digital media agencyFloxx), was recently released on the App Store, and indicates a more mature, new direction. It comprises of being a virtual stock exchange for the most popular downloads on the App Store. AppDaq has only been available as a download for a few weeks but users in the game are already trading $400,000,000 of virtual currency per day. 

As a successful entrepreneur and university-rejecter, Nash is also outspoken in his views on teaching entrepreneurship and business. Nash told Real Business: “I chose not to go to university because I had something I knew I was going to do [and] was passionate about.” He believes that young people should seriously consider their options at school leaving age, as in the UK, “we have few exciting businesses, and a dwindling amount of opportunities for graduates and university candidates.” 

Whilst Nash has accepted an invitation from a number of universities to speak on his entrepreneurial journey, he will actually be using the experience as an opportunity to issue a wake-up call to both higher educational institutions and students. 

“Universities are generations behind, and people of my generation are being forced and instructed to go to higher education because it is seen as the right thing to do. I am going to speak at universities to express my thoughts around these issues. I want my peers to have the best chance of success,” said Nash.

It’s his belief that the future growth of the UK economy will be heavily reliant on the tech sector: “The barrier for entry in order to start a business is the lowest it has ever been, which gives us a huge opportunity to move fast and exploit holes in emerging markets, and also pick holes in more traditional ones… The tech sector and the internet gives us easy access to resources worldwide.”

And the government’s efforts to stimulate entrepreneurship, such as Tech City? “As with most policies there seems to be a lot of noise and promises but a lot less is actually delivered. However, there have been some really interesting new appointments which could improve the delivery of schemes which are being touted.”

Josh Buckley on turning mobile game MinoMonsters into a cross-media brand

This is a piece I originally wrote for Wired, published here.

20-year-old Josh Buckley started programming aged 11 and has since launched and sold a number of businesses. His latest startup, MinoMonsters, has attracted the investment of Mind Candy. Wired.co.uk caught up with him

Josh Buckley is a prodigious 20-year-old from Kent, who at the age of 18 emigrated to San Francisco to start up and runMinoMonsters, a game which allows users to collect and battle monsters against each other. MinoMonsters has been downloaded more than 1.6 million times and generates revenue through in-app purchases of additional monsters and accessories.

Buckley is something of a web veteran, with almost a decade’s worth of experience. His motivation to become a successful entrepreneur was borne out of an early interest in business, alongside not wanting to be a passive consumer. Buckley told Wired.co.uk: “A lot of it came down to [a] desire to create things that people used. I enjoy being on the creation side, rather than consuming products.”

He began freelance programming at the age of 11 but quickly became bored of working for other people. His first commercial venture, Yibbe, was a website which consisted of original programming materials, alongside an index of other tutorials from around the web. Buckley told Wired.co.uk, “It was mostly a learning experiment to see if I could build my first high quality product for the web.” A month after building Yibbe he auctioned it off for $2,000 (£1,250) on Sitepoint, a web development site.

Buckley did not let his location in Kent and educational commitments hold him back from engaging with the startup scene in London. During his schooling years he would make regular visits to the capital after class in order attend industry events and network. One of the most inspiring events he attended was The Future Of Web Apps. The event had such an effect on him that he followed the conference overseas to Miami the next year.

A useful contact he made during this period was Michael Acton Smith of Moshi Monsters. Buckley told Wired.co.uk that their chance meeting resulted in Moshi holding company Mind Candy being “one of my early investors [in MinoMonsters] and [they] are helping to advise us on product licensing.”

Buckley’s next creation was Menewsha, a community for people to create avatars. He cites the building of this as being crucial in the development of his ability to manage teams. This was his first major financial success, and resulted in a sale price of six figures in 2007 when he was 15 years old.

Subsequent to the sale he took stock of his achievements by spending time travelling and investing in startups. The most notable of these was providing the seed funding for DailyBooth (recently acquired by Airbnb), a site which allows users to post pictures of themselves on a daily basis. Buckley told Wired.co.uk that he had got to know founder Jon Wheatley online: “We became good friends on [the] internet forum [Talk Freelance] and started going to conferences together. I had no involvement with working on the site, and was simply an avid user of the product.” He has since sold his equity in DailyBooth.

In the past Buckley has been critical of the UK startup scene but believes that recently it has started to catch up with international competitors such as Silicon Valley: “Larger technology companies are starting to open UK offices, and the government is taking it seriously.” He believes that further growth can be facilitated by tax breaks: “Successful entrepreneurs need to reinvest their capital back into early stage startups. Tax incentives from the government could really help this.”

Buckley’s regular visits to London instilled a hunger within him to make a product which could scale. This led to the creation of MinoMonsters in 2010. Citing Angry Birds as an influence, he says “I saw a market opportunity in the sense that I knew this idea would work. There is a huge opportunity in mobile gaming… It is something I am incredibly passionate about.”

Through his association with alumnus Wheatley, Buckley’s MinoMonsters was successfully referred onto the prestigiousYCombinator programme in San Francisco. Shortly afterwards he became the youngest person to raise finance from top tier venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, resulting in the company injecting $400,000 (£250,000) in return for an equity stake. To date the company has received $2 million in funding. Buckley views his young age as bearing no real significance: “It can be a pretty big responsibility to receive such a big cheque when you are still in your teens. However, I have always seen age as merely a number. I have been doing this for almost a decade.”

Initially MinoMonsters was a paid-for download. However, Buckley and his team pivoted the business model by making it free to download, with the addition of in-app purchases. Buckley said “We realised early on that [it] makes much more sense when the product is a free download.”

Another reason for offering the product as a free download is that Buckley’s long-term vision is to create a multi-faceted brand, and that a free download is in line with this strategy. His ambition is for MinoMonsters to become a cross-media brand, similar to Angry Birds. “What Rovio has done withAngry Birds shows there is huge potential in licensing products from a great IP that has started in iOS. They are a big inspiration to me. We have been approached by branding agencies, and Hollywood, and we will pursue that direction when we are ready.”

MinoMonsters’ first formative footsteps outside of the gaming world will be in late November, when a cinematic trailer for the game with high production values will be released. Buckley hopes that the trailer will receive around “two million views,” aided by the possibility of bringing in some “big [media] partners” on board.

Rather than being a promotional activity to aid the future growth of the game, Buckley sees the trailer as being an opportunity for consumers to experience MinoMonsters in a new format: “I want to show that people really want to engage with MinoMonsters in every medium. From a game, to the big screen, to merchandise.”

Ted Nash, the young app entrepreneur, grows up

This is a piece I originally wrote for Wired, published here.

Ted Nash is a 21-year-old English entrepreneur. Already noteworthy for a number of pub humour-themed viral hits, he is ready to leave his youthful endeavours behind with the imminent launch of Appdaq, an app which lets users trade virtual shares in some of the App Store’s most successful downloads.

Nash first hit the headlines in 2010, with Little Gossip, a website which allowed users to anonymously post gossip about their peers in school and college. Despite not having been conceived with any malicious intent, the site very quickly garnered negative publicity from the tabloid press, in part aided by its phenomenal growth in a very short time frame. The website received 33,000 hits within its first hour of launching. Nash looks back on this time without any regret, telling Wired.co.uk: “I understand that if I am to be original and successful, I will undoubtedly face mistakes and failures along the way.” Summing up the experience he said: “I can’t promise I won’t make any more accidental mistakes but next time I will be much better prepared.”

Subsequent to his sale of Little Gossip (to Platinum Century for a nominal fee that didn’t even cover setup costs), Nash quickly built up a reputation for being a viral hitmaker. Notably through the successes of Fit Or Fugly and Rack Stare, he has achieved over two and a half million downloads on the App Store and generated around £1 million.

The games both fit into a category which can be described as schoolboy or pub humour, and it does not take much imagination to work out what they are about. Rack Stare, for example, is a game that challenges players to stare at a woman’s breasts without getting caught (yes, seriously). The game advises that “looking at boobs for at least five minutes a day is good for your health”.

He does not shy away from this accusation: “They are slightly risqué. However, if you look at [them] from a business perspective, these two apps have been a test bed for me. They have allowed me to experiment in an unknown market.”

He tells Wired.co.uk his intention with them was never for them to be “viable businesses” long term, and instead were his way of “experimenting in a brand new emerging market”.

When probed about his success on the App Store, Nash responds with a degree of humility but also hints that this is just the start of a journey: “Having one million apps distributed on the App Store is hugely rewarding and something I am delighted about. However, I know that is it just the start, and I am nowhere near where I want to be in terms of achievements yet.”

He has been fortunate to have been mentored and financed by Steve Pankhurst (cofounder of Friends Reunited) from a young age. They met by chance when Nash was fifteen — Nash’s father attended a conference with one of Pankhurst’s former colleagues Michael Murphy. After the conference, Nash contacted Murphy and eventually met up with him and Pankhurst. “I owe a huge amount to Steve for my success so far,” he said. “It must sound very clichéd but I wouldn’t be where I am today without his financial support and most importantly his personal backing and motivation through the ups and downs.”

Nash’s latest venture, Appdaq, a collaboration with the London based digital media agency Floxx, gives an indication of his future ambitions. Due to imminently launch on the App Store, the game uses an intelligent algorithm to create an app stock exchange simulator, providing players with an experience to act like real traders, without the financial risk. Apps on the exchange are selected depending on a range of characteristics, such as their ratings, ranks, and reviews. The values of the apps on the exchange are determined by these parameters, as well as the number of people buying and selling them.

In terms of aspirations for Appdaq, Nash hopes that it “becomes successful but also generates a user base that we can remain loyal to”. He sees the app being “the start for many other similar applications that can be been as entertaining by a particular audience.” The latter assertion is indicative of his desire to move away from the puerile pub humour evident in his previous products.

From an outsider’s perspective, the collaboration between the young entrepreneur and Floxx is relevant. Rich Martell (founder of Floxx) has a similar past to Nash in that he also created a viral hit which received negative publicity. Martell was the founder Fitfinder, a platform which allowed university students to anonymously post the location of attractive students. Nash had not previously considered their similar background and tells Wired.co.uk that “any negative press we receive certainly wouldn’t faze me. I have learnt to be quite hard-skinned.” More relevant similarities he sees between himself and Martell is that “[they] are both passionate about technology and sport, and are both very product focused.”

At present there are only plans for Appdaq to be available on Apple’s App Store, with the main reason being that Apple’s platform has the most earning potential for developers. Nash is readying himself for one day developing for Android and monitors the market carefully. “I actually have some secret applications in the Android Play Store at the moment,” he said. “It is not because I see it as a business yet but so I can keep a very close eye on the rankings and to quickly understand when those numbers change.”

He still sees plenty of room for growth within the mobile market. “It is still a very naïve industry in my opinion,” he said. “At my age being older than the existence of my industry indicates there is a lot of growth that still needs to happen.”

Nash does have personal interests within the stock market but is cautious about using it within an investment strategy: “I wouldn’t say that at this moment in time it fills me with confidence. I prefer to invest in my own ventures as I have much more control over how they perform.”

Alongside Appdaq he is working on a number of other projects, and has recently appointed a co-founder and CTO for his company. Nash is convinced that as long he is able to remain “hungry, healthy and passionate about what [he] believes in” he will continue to be successful in his endeavours. With so much already achieved from a young age it would be unwise to bet against him.

Appdaq has not yet launched but users can sign up to be notified about its release on appdaq.net

Eric Schmidt being greeted by Krishnan Guru-Murthy at Google’s Big Tent

Mike Harris at London Business School’s Tell Series 15.2.12

“Be excellent at pitching. Pitch all the time, to everyone you meet.”

 ”I always design brand experience from scratch. Deliver a grand brand experience.”

 ”Emerging technology changes the economics of brilliant service.”

“Pick a problem and pick a technology.”

“Tell everybody who you meet what you are doing.”

Codecademy Aims To Teach The World To Code

This is a piece I wrote for Wired, originally posted here.

“Teach the world to program,” reads Codecademy’s mission statement. “[It’s] a skill we think will be the most important in the 21st century.”

Launched in August of 2011, it acts as a free platform to teach people with no coding experience how to program software. Since its inception, it has experienced rapid growth, with the number of registered users swelling to 200,000 within the first three days of the site going live.

Codecademy was founded by Zach Sims alongside Ryan Bubinski, with a small team including Amjad Masad, Allison House and Leng Lee. Since the beginning of 2012 it’s been promoting a campaign called Codeyear, which encourages would-be users to sign up to the site and learn how to code as a New Year’s resolution.

The site snagged an additional 350,000 users, and there were also a number of high-profile new members, including mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg. Sims was surprised. “[The promotion] garnered a response far above what we were expecting,” he says. “The user growth and the media have been terrific”.

Under the Codeyear campaign, users are sent a weekly email containing tasks for them to complete. When probed about how committed users are to completing the Codeyear tasks, Sims kept his cards close to his chest, stating that “we don’t comment on user motivation but we have been very impressed with the results”.

The introduction of an initiative to teach ordinary citizens how to code is a timely one. With the global economy in free-fall, and with digital being one of the few growing sectors, Sims believes that it is becoming increasingly important for people to become “code literate”. Elaborating, he says “we will see that people will learn [to code] more often in order to better understand the world around them”.

Codecademy has already engaged with the White House to create an initiative to teach children to learn how to program. “We worked with the United States Chief Technology Officer Aneesh Chopra to bring coding to communities with low-income youth,” Sims explains. “It is called Code Summer+. We will be launching the program this summer and it will include parts of our popular Codeyear program optimised for children.”

Despite Education Secretary Michael Gove’s recently-proposed reforms to the teaching of programming in ICT lessons, he is yet to come knocking on the door of Codecademy. Sims says that “we haven’t talked to anyone from the UK government yet, but we would welcome the opportunity to do so.”

Hands-on
I signed up to the site to give it a go, and as a complete novice when it comes to coding, I found that I was frequently coming up against hurdles that slowed my progress. However, Sims doesn’t think that this is necessarily a bad thing. Admitting that “programming is a difficult thing to learn”, he subscribes to the view that “tinkering is immensely important” but suggests that if a user is “really confused, the question and answer forums are there to help explain what the solution is and why”.

While there are few examples that have so far emerged from Codecademy of the transformation from coding virgins to rockstar developers, it’s important to consider that the site is only a few months old and, at present, the only language taught on the the site is Javascript. Sims says that he gets “emails from users all the time [telling us] that they’ve begun to learn how to code on the site with no prior experience at all. “Hundreds of thousands of them are completing applications like the taxi cost calculator.”

Looking forward, Sims aims for Codecademy to have “more content and more features designed at creating a cohesive learning experience for our users” by the end of 2012, and within the next five years “to be educating tens of millions of people in the skill that matters most in the 21st century.”

If you want to give it a try for yourself, sign up for Codecademy right here.”

Flipside Of A Memory: Tack! Tack! Tack! Retrospective

This is a piece I wrote about I club night I used to run, for the Ja Ja Ja blog.

Original link here

Before Ja Ja Ja, there was Tack! Tack! Tack! – birthed from the brain of Nick Levine (pictured above with Cat5), it was a celebration of the finest Swedish indie bands and labels delivered with a gung ho spirit every month at London’s West End venue The Social. Memories were born, legend was made. And, for the first time – underground acts of Sweden were given a platform to showcase their wares. Or backing tracks.

Here, Levine sums up the history of Tack! Tack! Tack! re-counting some of his favourite shows and experiences.

Like so many of the best ideas, it started out in the pub. At the John Snow in Soho, along with co-founders Jason Christie and Simon Tagestam, we sketched out an idea of putting on a live music night for Swedish musicians in London. The premise for the night was initially inspired by me going to see Labrador Records’ Wan Light play at the Barfly to a crowd of twenty on a damp Tuesday night.

It was the autumn of 2004, and I had recently relocated back to London after a three year hiatus living in Brighton. During my time by the sea I’d become infatuated with Swedish indie pop after being given a mixtape by a friend who was studying at the language school in Portslade.

At the time I was familiar with the more popular Swedish indie artists of the day. Bands like The Sountrack Of Our Lives, Kent, The Hives and Sahara Hotnights. However, the compilation opened up my ears to a myriad of exciting and seemingly exotic sounds I never knew existed. From the likes of pop pinup Hakan Hellstrom, to the nerdy indie of Bob Hund, these bands were a world away from their more well-known commercial contemporaries. Around a quarter of the songs on the cassette were in Swedish but when the melodies were this sweet I didn’t give a damn.

There was never any long term plan for Tack! Tack! Tack!. It was more of an experiment. The overriding rule of the promotion was that three quarters of any band playing had to be in possession of valid Swedish passports.

For the first event we put on Cat5 and The Legends, artists from Sweden’s two finest indie labels: Service and Labrador.

Whilst the lineup couldn’t be faulted, the flyers and posters were shoddy. Having to pull in favours left, right and centre, the first poster design was a crude yellow on blue affair and screamed information overload long before before broadband became ubiquitous.

Through sheer chutzpah we managed to sell out The Social on the opening night, despite both artists on the bill being completely unheard of in the UK. We promoted the event at notorious Swedish hangouts in London such as The Harcourt Arms, the Swedish Church and plugged the event online via Scandinavian journal It’s A Trap and the London Svenskar website.

For the next two years we put on some of the best known artists in Sweden in a concrete basement with no windows. The capacity of The Social may have only been around 200 but the perception in Sweden was that the night was much much bigger. Our mantra was taken from the infamous New Yorker cartoon, “On the internet no-one knows that you are a dog.”

Through the implementation of cheeky bots, on the then nascent MySpace, and being placed in the Top Friends of notable Swedish artists, the Tack! Tack! Tack! profile amassed over 20,000 friends.

It was not uncommon for people to fly in overseas from Sweden (alongside Swedish pop fans from other European countries) and use the club night as an excuse to visit London and see their favourite artists in an intimate setting compared to their home territory.

Running an international promotion on such a small scale was a logistical nightmare. Itineraries had to be planned around Ryanair’s sales and we bartered payments for the artists by trading in Kopparberg tokens (our generous sponsors alongside It’s A Trap) for cash. At the time neither me nor the other co-founder Jason Christie had conventional jobs.

The most nerve wracking event was the first time we put on The Tough Alliance. At the time Erik Berglund was dating ex-Concretes singer Victoria Bergsman. On the weekend prior to TTA’s show the couple had been at an overseas music festival in Europe. Upon returning to Sweden, and the night before Tack! Tack! Tack!, Erik could not locate his passport. We had sold out the show on pre-sales, with a number of the orders coming from Sweden, and it was not clear whether the show would go ahead.

Despite persistant phone calls to Erik’s mobile on the morning of the show, I couldn’t get through. After corresponding with Carl, the manager of The Social, the plan was for the show to go ahead as a freebie with the original support act The Honeydrips adopting the headline slot. It turned out that this contingency plan never had to be acted upon. Erik touched down in London two hours before TTA’s allotted time and the show went on.