We've been busy

But I know that's no excuse for not posting. A lot has happened over the last few months, including the soft launch of LaunchLab.co.uk.

LaunchLab provides advice, guidance and news to small business owners and entrepreneurs.

Pop along and have a look around the site.

Discussion Forum now live

The main www.launchlab.co.uk site is still in development but we couldn't wait to get the ball rolling so we have started the discussion forum.



The LaunchLab discussion forum will give small business owners and those planning to start a business an informal place to chat and share ideas and expertise.

Come along, sign up and join in.

A bank account at last

Success! We now have a bank account (a full three months after we first applied for one). And while our account application inched towards its conclusion other aspects of the business got off to a flyer.

This week we approved the back end and the design of our launchlab.co.uk website and are on track to go live in late March. We also have nicely designed business cards and a couple of logos.

P&FM’s infrastructure is also growing rapidly. This week alone we got our mits on a new laptop, a fridge, kettle and some cups. I even treated myself to a couple of new shirts.

Long may the getting of new stuff continue.

All in all, things are going great thanks very much!

Profile in the Guardian

The Media Guardian has featured us in the "Elevator Pitch" blog.

Dan Matthews spoke to Jemima Kiss about our background, our plans and the nightmare we have had trying to get our bank account set up.

You can read her post about us here.

More like this please!

Nick Booth, a journo who runs a couple of websites: www.late4work.co.uk and www.inertia247.co.uk (both worth a look), sent us the following story.

One thing people should be wary about, when starting a business, is the buggers that refuse to pay you.

One bloke, a millionaire no less, refused to pay me even though his client had published my work on their web site. And when I took him to a small claims court, he phoned me and made death threats. (You can hear his threatening phone calls here http://www.spymac.com/details/?1813867) There’re a few lessons here for the self employed:

Be careful who you work for

Make sure you get a purchase order

Use the small claims court

Tape your phone calls

Don’t expect the police to help you if you get death threats."

If you'd like to contribute to either this site or LaunchLab.co.uk (due for launch in March), email me here: dan.matthews@pointandfiremedia.co.uk

Why are banks so awful?

I’m amazed. These companies make £10bn a year in profits, yet they’re bureaucratic, sluggish and even incompetent. Our first choice bank failed to organise itself to open our account in more than a month.

When we finally gave up on them and tried another, we were asked unnerving questions by the ‘manager’, like “do you think the forms are filled in right?” (shouldn’t you know that?), and “do you know where I send these forms?” (ditto).

It’s scary. But it gives me hope. If Point & Fire Media is half as incompetent as the big four we’ll be doing £20bn a year in no time…

The ‘glamorous’ Point & Fire Media

Any good business needs a decent set of corporate shots to send around the media and contacts. Being a trendy Hoxton start-up, we feel that the standard shirt and tie portrait pics don’t quite cut the mustard.

So we have enlisted the considerable skills of Michael Palmer at Ignite Photos. He specialises in glamour photography, so a trip to rainy Shoreditch to snap a couple of (all be it rakishly handsome) men might be something of a come-down.

We’ll post the pics as soon as we get them…expect the unexpected!

New Offices

After a slight delay, caused by the general Christmas slowdown, we have agreed terms and have moved into our new office.

We are just around the corner from the painfully cool Hoxton Square on Kingsland Road. The building has a number of other new media and design companies so we might even be able to share a bit expertise.

The contact page has now been updated, but just to make life easier for you all, here is our mailing address:

Point & Fire Media Ltd.
The Shoreditch Building
35 Kingsland Road
London
E2 8AA

P&FM agrees tie up with AGI

We've worked with AGI before, and have a good working relationship with its head honcho Damon Segal. They're really quite good at building and optimising websites. The contracts are due to be signed any minute work is already underway to create our first website, launchlab.co.uk.

It's all very exciting.

In other news, we're about to move into our new Shoreditch-based offices (hopefully next week) and install all our PCs and related equipment. We're also negotiating our first batch of revenue generating contracts - more about these later!

Getting the sites up - phase one

Starting a business is easy.

At least in the strictest sense. You need to register it in legal form (a quick job), get a bank account and find some premises. That's pretty much it! The hard part is working out how you'll keep it up and running.

I'm a journalist, James is a salesman. So we need some help when it comes to the technical stuff. People are falling over themselves to help, which is great, but it's also a tad confusing.

What should our products look and feel like? Which company should we get to build the sites? Who'll help out with the search engine optimisation? How much marketing help do we need, and when the best time to mobilise it? These decisions are make or break, and you just know that our first mistake is just waiting to be made.

Such is the life of a fledgling entrepreneur...