THE CULTURAL CREATIVES

Phil Harrington, Founder, You Bloom

Finding solutions is what Dr Phil Harrington does best. A true problem solver, he tells Niamh Mac Sweeney why his social networking website is blooming.

A former student of medicine at the Royal College of Surgeons, Dr Phil Harrington always had an entrepreneurial streak. After qualifying as a regular doctor his attention turned to alternative medicine and music therapy. Through his love and involvement in music he was inspired to set up a social networking website, You Bloom. This site allows bands and other social media creators to monetise their sites through the sharing of ad revenue and the sale of their products directly to targeted communities.

“Having worked in regular business I saw what it was like for small creative businesses and how difficult it was for them, because they didn’t have the know how and they didn’t have the infrastructure to be really impactable or to put stuff out there,” Harrington reveals.

Dedicated To The Dream

Although the development of You Bloom had a long gestation period Harrington has fully dedicated the last three years to the project. This required Harrington to learn a great deal about the software and the technology. Working in the US in the mid-nineties for an internet service provider called Earthlink, was an obvious learning experience for him. “That is where I got my baptism in technology and the internet. I was in on the ground floor and that is where I became immersed in the whole thing,” he says.

According to Harrington technology is a means to an end, a solution to a problem. “For me the inspiration is not about the technology it’s about being able to solve a problem for people,” he says.

Problem Solver

Originally Harrington bought code from a company in the UK and gradually started to build on that code. “We bought code that was being used by small independent record companies and then started to innovate on that to give the independent bands and independent record companies more tools. Then we started to conceive what would we want to build if we could build the total solution. We started to build that a year ago and now at the moment we are testing that solution and we will go into public beta with that in April and then full release in the summer,” he explains.

Sweet Smell Of Success

Recently, funding raised from investors Cooney Carey, is allowing You Bloom to complete the testing and is enabling them to role out the product to the public. However, Harrington has actually grown the company through sweat equity. The phrase ‘sweat equity’ refers to equity shares given to the company’s employees in recognition of their work. Sweat equity usually takes the form of giving options to employees to buy shares of the company, so they become part owners and participate in the profits, apart from earning salary.

Sharing The Business

Harrington explains, “I basically grew the company through sweat equity. I got people to work for a share in the company and in fact there is already a community or culture happening in the company, a very strong culture around the people who have contributed and built it up to where it is now.” According to Harrington the sweat equity method has proved very successful and the "atmosphere, the rapport and the camaraderie are fantastic,” he says.

While Harrington may be the driving force behind You Bloom, it can only help that his partner is Sir Bob Geldof. “Bob was an investor in my old business in Dublin and through that we became friends. When I had the idea for You Bloom I chatted with him about it and he liked the idea. Before I formed the company I went to him and I said will you work on this with me and he said yes, because he is very passionate about this whole area, he is very closely involved and keeps updated on it all the time, but he is not involved operationally,” Harrington says.

Forging Conscious Consumers

Built on open source java enterprise software the You Bloom site is low cost, but it is enterprise software which means it has unlimited growth potential. Harrington admits that not only is the technology of You Bloom boundless but equally the possible customers are also endless.

“There are the conspicuous consumers and the conscious consumers, who are the cultural creatives. In American alone there are 60 million people in this community and it is these types of people, who are socially and environmentally conscious, that we are looking to serve. We have our sights set on serving that type of community, wherever they are in the world and obviously this is a very fast growing market,” Harrington concludes.

Contact: You Bloom
W: www.youbloom.com
E: contact@youbloom.com