Virgin inspires winning entrepreneur
- By Jack Preston -
- May 24, 2012
One of the cornerstones of the Virgin and Richard Branson ethos is a strong entrepreneurial spirit, with a passion for celebrating and encouraging the work of young entrepreneurs.
Therefore it was with great pleasure that Virgin was able to help and inspire award winning entrepreneur Andy King, who recently won £10,000 of kick start funding for his fantastic ‘TaptoWiFi’ app.
King, along with fellow entrepreneur Dr Matthew Bolton, created a NFC app to make it easy to connect to free WIFI hotspots, such as the one in King’s local Virgin Money Lounge, just by touching a compatible phone to a sign or poster.
Their invention was entered into a technology business contest - where they scooped top prize, the pair then took TaptoWifi to a trade fair in Monaco, where they were awarded with the 'best startup' prize.
Following on from their success King was keen to point out the role of Virgin Money in making the success of the app a possibility. “I moved banks to Northern Rock in January, which has allowed me to use the Norwich Virgin Money Lounge for study; I'm in the first year of a Maths with Business degree at UEA,” explained King.
“The atmosphere of the lounge was such a far cry from my old bank and I imbibed the 'Screw It, Let's Do It' attitude with my free coffee. This inspired me to start my own business - we started it in February while sitting in a pub trying to access WiFi. We used the idea to enter a competition for new smartphone apps using NFC technology and worked on it using the Virgin Money iPads and held our early meetings all in the lounge with Richard Branson watching over us.”
Congratulations to both Andy and Matthew on their success, if you’d like to find out more about their app then visit www.bluebutterfly.co.uk.
By Jack Preston. Content Executive. Tweets at @JackPressedOn
