No?

Stand up.  Look around.  Choose a target.  Sneak up on them and give them a pinch and a punch for the first of the month (this works best if they’re holding a cup of steaming hot coffee).  I’ve been looking forward to today for the past few weeks.  It’s been 30 days since I’ve had a legitimate excuse to pinch someone mid-way through a meeting, and I can’t wait to do it again.

Okay.  I know what you’re thinking: why does this warrant a blog post?  And you’re probably right, it doesn’t.  I am excited for today, but the pinches and punches are only part of the reason.  Let me explain:

When we launched SendSocial back in November, we came out of the starting blocks with support for Twitter and email.  That was a fantastic place to start, but we were missing something pretty big: an integration with Facebook.  Yeah, that teeny weeny social networking site a few of my friends use.  You might have heard of it.

It’s a pleasure to be able to announce that, from today, you’re able to login to SendSocial using Facebook Connect, and you can link your SendSocial account to Facebook if you’re already a member of ours.  Essentially, what this means is that you can now send items to any of your Facebook friends by clicking on their name within your account.  When you send a request, it’ll show up on their wall and they’ll be able to deal with it from there.

This graphic explains things a little better:

I don’t know where any of my friends live, but I’m linked to all of them on Facebook.  I’m really excited about today’s roll-out because I finally have an easy way of sending them half-decent birthday presents.

Now, I just need to see who’s birthday is coming up next…

Shortly afterwards, we found ourselves with a pretty mammoth deal on the table, and I am delighted – no, honoured – to finally be able to announce our partnership with ByBox.  You might not have heard of these guys before, but I can safely say that I have never been so excited about receiving a book than when Stuart Miller, ByBox’s CEO, popped one into their network for me.

Not even 48 hours later, I woke up to find a text message on my phone.  It read something like this: “Your parcel has been delivered into your chosen ByBox.  Please type in 600679 on the keypad to retrieve it.”

Obediently following Stuart’s instructions, I hopped on a tube to Victoria Station, in Central London, and discovered the ByBox lockers outside by the car park.  A few seconds later, and there I was: book in hand, amazed look on my face.  I fell in love with the service instantly.

No more ‘missed delivery’ cards ever again, and a 48-hour service through SendSocial.  The price?  Just £2.99.

As well as adding ByBox as a delivery option alongside myHermes on SendSocial.com, the deal we struck with them means that we are now able to drive things forward faster than any of us had ever thought possible.  Perhaps one of the most important things about our deal with ByBox is how incredible the people there are.  We’d always said that if we were to take on investment, it would be from people we enjoyed spending time with, and people we could learn from.  We didn’t want investment for the sake of investment, but ‘intelligent money’.

I was originally quite surprised by ByBox’s enthusiasm towards us, but I quickly realised where all their energy came from: they’re nice people.  Stuart, Dan and Indi are the sort of people who I would more than happily spend my holiday with (although I’m not sure they’d share the same eagerness).  They don’t have work hats, and their hours aren’t 9-to-5.  They live and breathe what they do, and you can tell that they love every minute of it.

I’d like to extend a very public thank you to everyone at ByBox for their faith and support over the past few months.  To Indi, for that first phone call, and for forcing Stuart to meet us.  For working so closely with me.  You rock.  To Stuart, for letting Indi force you to meet us on that foggy January afternoon.  Here’s to Dan, for your ‘that’s great’ attitude and help on the development side of things.

To the ByBox board: thanks for saying yes.  Hats off also to ByBox’s developers, for working with Antony and James to make all of this happen, and of course a big thank you to the men and women doing the hard work on the ground.  Without you we have nothing.

SendSocial is a business built on trust.  We wouldn’t have even launched back in November had myHermes not agreed to take a leap into the unknown with us, but it is that faith and vision of what could be that is pushing things forward day in, day out.

It’s crazy to think that all of this started as an idea posted on Twitter.  It’s even crazier to look back and realise that we’ve never actually all been in the same country at the same time, let alone the same room.

But the unconventional nature of everything we’ve done hasn’t mattered one bit.  Why?  Because I’m working with a dream team, whose commitment and dedication never staggers to amaze me.  We have Antony, Marc and James, who slave away making our crazy demands a reality.

We’ve got Glen, our astonishing CEO, and Ben, who I can safely say is one of the most remarkable people I have had the pleasure of getting to know.  You wouldn’t expect a non-exec to meet you at 10 o’clock in the evening, ‘just for a chat’, but Tom does just that and, to top things off, there’s Simon, who’s knowledge and expertise proves to be invaluable time and time again.

I’m having the time of my life, learning things no university degree could ever teach, and meeting amazing people every single day.  I wake up every morning buzzing for the day ahead.  I settle down by my laptop at 9pm, and before I know it the sun is rising and the birds are singing.  And it’s so much fun.

Things can of course be a bit of a rollercoaster at times.  There was a two week period not too long ago when I experienced the biggest highs and the deepest lows ever.  Peaks and troughs that I didn’t even know existed.  But as they say, what doesn’t kill you will only make you stronger.  2010 has really taught me the value of friends, so here’s to Chloe and Verity, Oscar, Steph and Nat, for keeping me going and pushing me on.  Good luck for the rest of your exams, I know you’ll all do just fine.  There would be so many more grey hairs if it weren’t for you guys.

It’s funny when I think about it.  So much doom and gloom in the economy.  A potentially unstable coalition government.  Global warming, and a list of 100-or-so other odd things that are wrong with the world.  Aliens must think we’re all mad.  But then you sit back and realise that, you know what, actually none of that matters.  To have a positive impact on the world and be the change you want to see, you first have to do one very, very simple thing: stand up and have fun.

Do that and everything else will follow.

SendSocial isn’t where we want it to be just yet.  It might take us a few years.  It may even take us a decade.  But oh boy will we get there.

One tweet, eight people, and a desire to change the world.  The SendSocial story has only just begun.  Will you join us for Chapter Three?

The show’s timing was quite interesting, given that our new government had just been formed and how politicians can help people into business will no doubt pop up on the agenda at some point in the near future.

Getting young people involved in enterprise is a big personal interest of mine, and I want to highlight an initiative that I think is doing a great job. My own opinion is that shows like ‘The Apprentice’, ‘The Junior Apprentice’ and ‘Dragons’ Den’ are hugely important in making the route of ‘entrepreneur’ a viable and respected career path but someone needs to step in on the ground. That someone shouldn’t be government.

Last week saw the awards presentation for the Make Your Mark With A Tenner competition. The idea is simple: loan £10 to 28,000 schoolchildren and see what they can do in a month. I’ve known about the competition for a few years now, but only this year did I begin to take an active involvement with it, as an ambassador for Enterprise UK.

And wow. If anyone ever questions the enterprising spirit of the youth of today, just point them towards one of the schools taking part in Tenner. I spent an hour back in March in a school in Newcastle (my old school’s arch rivals, as it happened) listening to some of the ideas that the kids had, and I was frankly amazed.

If the success of Scott Chapman, who turned his tenner into £537, is anything to go by, we are in good hands.

The key to getting young people to take the leap shouldn’t lie with central government. Nor should it lie with Business Link or the country’s regional development agencies. It’s down to initiatives like Make Your Mark. It’s down to people like us.

Like you.

Each year was a milestone that came with some added benefit.  And then I turned 19.  I have fewer than 365 teenage days left, no more university, and I even have to do my own washing (luckily, though, I’m quite persuasive when it comes to getting people to cook for me).

It also dawned on me that I’ve spent almost a quarter of my life in business, and I’ve taken a look back at what kept me going when things weren’t going well, and what spurred me on further when things were going great.

Here are three of my tips and recommendations.  Please do share yours.

1. People – it’s so important to surround yourself with the right people.  I have had the privilege of meeting some incredible individuals over the past few years – Caroline Theobald, Oli Barrett, Mick Jackson, and of course Ben Way, to name but a few – and it’s hard to over-stress the importance of having the right network at your disposal.




2. Read books – yes, we have the entire internet at our disposal, but there is a lot of knowledge and inspiration hidden away in books.  One book I’d insist everyone read is ‘Banker to the Poor’, by Muhammad Yunus.




3. Tell the world – when I have an idea, I tell anyone and everyone I meet about it.  It drives me to follow through and when things aren’t going great, knowing that people are waiting for me to achieve something is a massive motivator.

As a parting message, I’ll leave you with an Eleanor Roosevelt quote that I had printed on the back of one of my first sets of business cards:

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.

It’s Sunday night – well, Monday morning now – and I’d planned to go to bed hours ago, but my head is whirring away with ideas and I’m in such a creative mood that it would be foolish to waste that by climbing into bed.  I wish it was possible to plan when these bursts of inspiration would come; then, maybe, I would be able to arrange to see my accountant on a day when I’d got more than only a couple of hours’ sleep.

I started my second semester at university in January convinced that I would be able to see my business management course out, at least until the end of this academic year.  Not two weeks into the term, and I’d decided to take a leave of absence to pursue SendSocial and my other business interests on a full-time basis.  Things were getting to the point where my management course was proving to be little more than a distraction from the excitement of being an entrepreneur, and the prospects of never having to write another essay or sit another exam were too much for me to ignore.

Most of my friends at university don’t know about my life as an entrepreneur (they probably think I’m just some lazy layabout who never manages to make it into lectures), and it has been weird juggling my entrepreneurial exploits with learning about Pareto efficiency and other obscure economic principles, on the odd occasion that I was able to drag myself to my university’s Waterloo lecture theatre.

So I did it.  I took the leap.

And I don’t regret it.

A lot has been happening behind the scenes here over the past few weeks – things that we can’t talk about just yet – that have me more excited and confident than ever about what lies ahead.  We quietly released our API a few weeks ago, and our first partner integration will be complete in the coming weeks.  The prospect of being able to ‘send via SendSocial’ on your favourite ecommerce websites is something that I am looking forward to, and our API allows this to happen.

Part of me wants to spill the beans on everything else that we’re working on, but I’ll most likely wake up to a barrage of angry emails and phone calls if I do.

I’ll blog about them as soon as I can, and that’s a promise this time.  Right now, I’m going to go to bed, open my eyes in the morning, and continue to enjoy the journey.

Somebody wake me up in three-and-a-half hours, please.

I had butterflies in my stomach when a myHermes courier turned up at my house bright and early on Monday morning to collect an address-less parcel.  Even the courier was impressed – the first time she’s collected something like this, she said, but most definitely not the last.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: one of the things I love about SendSocial is that we’re all entrepreneurs.  We’re all passionate about what we’re doing and what we’re trying to achieve.  I glanced at my watch the other night to see that it was 4.30am.  Quite how I was still bursting with energy at that time, I’m not too sure.

It might have been the coffee, but even at that time of night, emails were flying into my inbox:  “What if we do this?”, “That could work…”.  There’s such a buzz within the team at the moment, I think it highlights the fact that launches are always fun and we’re really grasping this one by the horns.

Most people I speak to love the concept, but a concept is of course a very different thing from a business that people will use and appreciate.  That’s why tomorrow is very important to us – it’s the first time that real people can see what we’ve been working on, and you’ll be able to send and receive requests from the off.

We’re conscious, as well, that people are going to come up with ways of using SendSocial that we’d never even have thought of.  And, for our investors, it all starts tomorrow.  We can’t wait to hear your feedback – good and bad – on the site.

Oh, and if you’re not an investor, there’s no need to feel jealous (well, maybe a little): we’ll be opening our doors to you before long.

Antony and Marc are continuing to do a great job putting the finishing touches to the website.  Bug testing is going well and I’ve been busy putting the final copy text together.  We almost have a finished product now, and we’re just waiting to send out the first of many address-less packages.

A lot of our time over the past week has been spent discussing launch plans and working out how we can maximise our coverage, and we’ve come up with a few cool ideas.  The story behind how SendSocial began is interesting in itself, and we genuinely think that the innovative nature of our offering will resonate with the public.

Our timing probably couldn’t be better either, with the postal service in the news daily at the moment.  It was announced a few days ago that there are going to be more Royal Mail strikes at the start of November, which means that post will remain a fiercely debated topic for the foreseeable future; or the coming months, at least.  And, whilst strike action is annoying and disruptive, it makes sense for us to try and capitalise on it; our launch date could not be better.

One thing that I’ve loved about being a part of SendSocial has been its open nature.  Ever since Ben offered Twitter users shares for re-tweeting his original message, I’ve been struck by your helpfulness and enthusiasm, both on and offline.  Regardless of how great a team we have, SendSocial owes its existence to social networks, and it is ultimately social network users who are going to define our success – so we’ve been determined to engage and take your views on board as much as possible.

There’s nothing I enjoy more than the feeling that I’m part of something big, something exciting, that has the potential to change the world.  It’s what being an entrepreneur is about, and I know that the others share my views.  I really hope that you’re as excited as we are, and if there’s anything you want to say to us, please say it.  If there’s something you think we should do, something you think we shouldn’t, someone we should be talking to, speak up and let us know.  Heck, if you want to recommend a blend of coffee (mine ran out the other day), we’d love to hear from you.

We want you to be a part of SendSocial as much as we are, and share our enthusiasm and excitement.  It would be great to learn a little bit about our investors and other well-wishers.

After watching the days, months and weeks fly by, we’re almost there: SendSocial is coming.

We’ve been testing our systems internally for quite a while now, and we feel we’re ready to go public. On Friday 13 November, SendSocial will launch in closed beta, before going live to the nation a few days later, on Monday 16 November.

Our recent blog silence hasn’t been because there’s been nothing to report, but quite the contrary. We’ve been so busy making the site look good and work well, agreeing partnership deals and planning world domination that it’s been hard to find time.

So here it is, the update you’ve been waiting for:

Courier partnership
We’ve been working closely with with one of the UK’s leading independent courier networks, myHermes, for a number of months now. myHermes is the consumer arm of Hermes UK, who deliver over 100 million parcels every year, and the partnership gives us national reach.

This collaboration has really brought Ben’s idea to life. myHermes will be able to read our unique, address-less delivery labels, ensuring absolute privacy for our members.

We’ve tried to simplify the postal service too. Our process is easy: as long as you know your recipient’s Twitter ID or email address, you can make a request. Once we hear back from your recipient, you simply confirm the weight of your package, make payment, print our delivery label and wait for myHermes to collect and deliver it.

When Antony first demoed this on our weekly conference call, we were all stunned at how simple and painfully easy the process was, and we’ve had the pleasure of watching an awesome process become amazing as he’s coded upgrade after upgrade, and integrated everything with Marc’s striking designs.

How we compare with Royal Mail
Not only are we easier and less time-consuming to use than Royal Mail, but we’re actually cheaper too – almost half the price in some cases. We will collect and deliver an address-less package weighing up to 2kg for £3.99. At the same weight, Royal Mail will charge you £4.41 for a delivery-only service.

We don’t strike either. Royal Mail already have a backlog of over 30 million items: not a good thing in the run up to Christmas and the busiest postal period of the whole year. Working with myHermes means that we won’t be affected by Royal Mail strike action, and will be able to stick to our 3-5 day delivery period regardless of what the unions decide to do.

Not just on Twitter
When we began working on SendSocial, the intention was to use Twitter as our medium, but we’ll be launching with email too. Email is a universal thing, and we’re confident that it will widen our appeal from the word ‘go’.

I hope this update has given you a taste of what’s to come. We’re counting down the days to launch with excitement. If you’re superstitious, there’s no need to worry – myHermes will collect from your door, so you can experience SendSocial from the comfort (and safety) of your own home.

Jonathan (@groob)

The fact that Twitter’s so open means that it’s easy to get in touch with people who you don’t know well enough (or at all) to send an email to. It’s unlike Facebook, which I keep for the preserve of people I know and have met. The creation of Send Social really represents what’s possible when the right platform is there. Ben’s initial idea has, in just a few days, spawned a great team who I’m really looking forward to working with, but none of whom I would be in contact with were it not for Twitter and Ben’s original ‘what do you think of this…’ tweet.

In two days, around 50 emails, brimming with ideas, have been sent around the group, and I can’t imagine how many other creations and similar partnerships Twitter may have created and will go on to create. The social network makes finding the right people easier, and it’s breaking down contact barriers.

It’s fitting that a business being set up to serve the needs of social networks has spawned from one – I wonder if it’s the first?