Have you and your friends ever thought of a business idea over dinner, in the bar, pub? My guess is that you probably have, I guess now is the time when you should probably start writing those ideas down..

Three Kingston post-graduate students (Ana Mikaela, Joe Peach and Sam Mclintock) started their company Tshaped after stumbling upon an idea one evening at their university pub.

After having a quick chat with them on why they wanted to start the business

They said “We were inspired by the love of creating a digital business that would be useful to others and that would make us passionate to work on. Although we were encouraged to create the business by the Masters program, we decided to put our heart and souls in a business that will go much further than a university project”.

The fact that all three come from different business backgrounds also helps;

Ana Mikaela (advertising and communications background and plans the marketing strategy of the company); Sam (industrial design and engineering background) Joe ( conceptual art background, he visualizes and creates ideas, balancing out his team mates with a more creative and artistic approach).

They have since launched their first service from Tshaped called be “Hold the Front Pages.com” A digital newsstand that provides up-to-date view of the front pages of newspapers and magazines.
It allows anyone to browse the front covers with a click of a button. It is a free service that enables quick and easy access to the newsstands.

I also spoke to them about how they are looking to monetize the service;

Our website will be monetized through magazine subscriptions in the initial phase, in the second phase we hope sell advertising space and also sell “tabs” in the website (selling means that the metro might want to pay to have a whole tab called METRO, where people can only see their newspapers).
Another way of getting revenue will be the Sponsored pages, where in a further stage, magazines and or newspapers (or other entitites) can sponsor a page by paying us, which will make that page more prominient in our website and be tagged as “Sponsored page”.

Not bad for a business that the total costs comes up to £250, which i might add is from the bright ideas competition.

I would like to thank Kingston entrepreneurs society for their assistance.