I’ve always been a music fan and even now and again thought I could give Simon Cowell a run for his money, more from a spotting good talent angle as opposed to knowing how to create a beast of a tv show and milk it for every cent possible!

Anyway, a number of months ago myself and my business partner in the Olive Group came across a band from Bray called Peakin’ Trippers and we approached them to see if they were looking for management. We felt they had the talent and we had the connections and resources to help get them out to a wider audience so we might make a good team. We started recording an album with them, set them up with a few little promotional spots like an appearance on Fade Street (thanks for that @stevemc11!) and set about changing their name from Peakin’ Trippers to Big September. We changed the name for a number of reasons but mainly it was because no one knew how to spell it, say it or most importantly remember it.

So, we’re re-launching them and we have a few really interesting things lined up over the next few weeks/months so watch this space. They’re video is at the top of this post so please have a look and spread the word if you like it or them.

No need to say it…I know I’m a Del Boy!

I thought I’d write this piece because a promising Irish web business has just taken the ballsy decision to re-brand and god knows I have experience in that area (although my experience was less about initiative and more about public pressure).

Revahealth.com today became WhatClinic.com and I think it could be a big turning point for them, even though they’ve already proved very successful since they launched. Here are some of their stats, and it’ll be very interesting to see the effect on these numbers over the coming months:

- 500,000 unique visitors per month

- 1,700 leads generated for clinics per day (e-mail and phone)

- The average value of an enquiry is €2,000

Anyone who’s ever been involved in an online business will realise how impressive these stats are, but at the same time they’d understand what a huge decision re-branding the website must have been for the WhatClinic team.

Time for the rough cost-benefit analysis:

If you’re not meticulous when it comes to the re-direction of pages and all the SEO aspects of a change in domain, Google will bitchslap you and your traffic will drop like a stone. With 500,000 uniques per month in the bag, a mistake on the re-branding could cost WhatClinic up to 50% of that traffic, if not more. Now, if they lost 50% of their traffic it would be equivalent to losing probably 6-8 months of hard work/cash and it could effectively shut them down so it’s not a decision Caelen and the team would have taken on a whim.

So, why would they decide to do something so risky? Because the potential upside is very big…and it’s worth it! Why is it worth it?

- Revahealth.com while it worked was not as memorable a domain as WhatClinic.com and word of mouth referrals might increase based on the fact that it’s easy to remember;

- The new domain explains exactly what the website does, it helps you find what clinic would be best for you and it’s always good to say what you do on the tin;

- It’s very easy to spell and get right, and therefore leakage is minimised; and

- Hopefully they’ll rank even higher for google searches of ‘what dental clinic to use in Swansea’ etc. which could provide a massive boost to their organic traffic.

All in all, I think it’ll prove to be a very good move for them and could see them move to the next level and become one of the very successful Irish web businesses which I’d be delighted to see as I’m a big fan of Irish web businesses, a big fan of their service (I’ve used it) and a big fan of the guys involved…and because I know how meticulous they are when it comes to SEO I’m pretty sure they won’t end up reeling from a Google beating.

Congrats to them on having the balls and the good sense to take the chance.

So, it’s been nearly 3 years since I started my journey with iFoods with my best mate Niall and we’ve had many ups, downs and roundabouts during that time.  The journey’s proved to be more fun than I ever imagined, and the experience I’ve gained thus far has been worth its weight in gold.

However, all good things must come to an end and over the Christmas period, I got the opportunity to reflect on how far we’ve come, and what may be the next step for myself, and indeed the business. As time has gone on we’ve slowly moved closer to becoming a video production company for brands looking to create rich media for their websites, as opposed to an internet business of our own. Whilst we still operate our websites, the majority of our revenue is generated from creating content for brands while a lot of our costs have amounted from our web presence.

Given that my background and experience revolves mainly around business management, development and strategy and I had less involvement on the video production side of our company, I felt the time was perfect for me to explore new opportunities. I’ll remain a shareholder in the company and I’ll be watching how it progresses with updates in the pub from Niall every now and again.

So, what next? Luckily, I’ve been very fortunate in that I’ve been approached by a few people who feel I could add value to their business, product or service and I’ve also got a few personal projects I could focus some attention on.

I just also want to take this chance to thank everyone who has helped me out at any point during my time with iFoods and thank everyone who always supported me and supported iFoods, and our many websites!

Cloudsplit were today named the 3rd best new startup in Europe at the LeWeb conference in Paris.

There are 2 reasons I’m highlighting this, firstly Joe Drumgoole and the guys at Echolibre are good friends of mine so I’m proud of their achievement in coming 3rd at such a prestigious conference (especially given the level of funding they’ve received compared to some of the other startups) and I’m excited for what the future holds for them.

Secondly, I feel they were robbed. Ok, I didn’t watch all of the startup pitches but I did happen to see the top 3 pitches (Stribe came first and Tigerlily came second) and Cloudsplit not only had the most unique product of the top 3.

Stribe were showcasing a new white label version of their site and facebook connect integration! To me that is not a new startup but just some new features to an already launched service and while it’s great for the startup to be able to showcase these new features to a large audience, they shouldn’t be up for the top prize. It reminds me of oDesk making it onto the TC50 stage from the demopit, when they’ve been around for years and were just showing off new features to their well-funded and established service. Another issue for me would be that Stribe is in competition with the likes of Ning, socialthing and Meebo so it’s not exactly groundbreaking.

Tigerlily, however, is pretty cool and a useful service for corporates looking to create a nice facebook page but it’s a service that already exists again so nothing really groundbreaking.

On the other hand, Cloudsplit are in one of the fastest growing spaces in the online world, have built something that hasn’t been done before and provide a service that most businesses online would happily pay for…but on the downside they’re not French, unlike the other two! (Note: Irish people no longer trust the French after what Thierry Henry did to us in the World Cup Qualifier )

If you’d like to see Joe’s pitch at LeWeb, it’s below:

The app allows restaurants to build their own restaurant website through our service and then map the site to their own domain, as an added bonus the restaurants are also added to our site for their particular city. We launched the app in Dublin a few months ago and after a number of feature requests and a few requests from outside Dublin to extend the geographical scope of the offering we decided to do just that. We’re still looking at what marketing initiatives will help to grow the business and we’re looking at crowdsourcing a sales team, since actually building an international sales team isn’t an option financially, so any and all suggestions on how we can improve the service or grow our customer base internationally are greatly appreciated! Of course, I’ll keep you posted on what we’re doing with it as time goes on.