Huddersfield entrepreneurs seek investors to launch new social media platform Bithive

Two University of Huddersfield students have created a new social media platform named Bithive.

Creators Alex Malkin and Dale Green, who met at special enterprise sessions for budding entrepreneurs, believe their new business venture will have a global impact by revolutionising the way communities work.

The duo are currently seeking investment to enable them to employ staff to accelerate the development process, which involves coding a website and mobile app. The aim is to go live next year.

The platform allows groups of people to create online communities about their 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.

Alex, who is CEO of the newly-launched company, has now graduated with First Class Honours from his architecture degree course at the University.

He said: “There isn’t really a platform at the minute that focuses just on communities on the internet. Facebook does have ‘groups’, but it’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, added: “The Facebook experience is centred around individual users. Bithive is all about the community”.

Heading up the technical development at Bithive, Dale already has a company named Greeny Games, whilst Alex’s activities have included creating an online video game journal called LambdaGeneration.

When that started to receive a million hits a month, the idea of the Bithive concept was born. 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.

Alex and Dale met while attending the Enterprise Team Event Series – talks for those interested in self-employment, freelancing and business startup that are part of the programme offered by the Enterprise Team, at The Duke of York Young Entrepreneur Centre, which operates from the University of Huddersfield.

Dale was on the Enterprise Placement Year built into his degrees course, while Alex, as a graduate, was taking up the opportunity of free support and advice available to former students for up to five years after graduation.

The two were introduced by business adviser Catherine McGrath, and when Alex started to describe the Bithive concept, Dale soon saw the possibilities.

The Bithive duo, who are currently seeking investors, secured £1,000 at a pitching session that was part of an Investment Readiness Programme hosted by West Yorkshire Society of Chartered Accountants. One of the organisers was Paul Greetham, also an Enterprise Team Business Adviser at the University.

They also recently moved into a dedicated office in the Media Centre in Huddersfield, where they are both working on Bithive full-time. The pair aim to secure an investment by the end of the year that will enable them to build a team to develop, launch and maintain the platform.

Alex concluded: “We want to start a Silicon Valley in Huddersfield.”