Business

From Dragons’ Den to an academy and training, Connector has explored diverse avenues over the past two years. In his first Diary of a Start Up piece for JOE.ie, company founder Conor Lynch brings us up to speed on everything about Connector, which went from part-time hobby to full-time operation in February 2010.

My name is Conor Lynch and I am the founder of a new start-up company called Connector. A connector is a sociable person with numerous friends and diverse contacts.

In the era of social networks, these people are becoming powerful hubs for marketing, communications and social activities. Connector’s aim is to create and share connections online and offline through events, training and consulting.

In 2005 as Online Marketing Manager of RaboDirect, I was voted the Irish Internet Association's ‘Internet Marketer of the Year’. However, I increasingly wanted to spend more time offline and spend more time interacting with people. So in 2008, I started Connector as a social blog about the interesting people I connected with at events around Ireland.

Three months after the blog started, in August 2008, I thought it would be a nice idea if all the interesting people I was meeting could meet each other too. So I arranged a meet-up over a few beers on a Thursday night.  To my relief, 12 people turned up and Connector Events was born.

These meet-ups has become a free monthly social networking event, where people meet face to face for social and business connections. Since then, we have run 21 events in Dublin city centre locations such as Lillie's Bordello, The Church, Krystle and the Science Gallery with guest speakers and entertainment every month.  As I promoted the events and blog exclusively online using social media, the people who joined our social media groups and the number of attendees has grown and grown.

Den, De Den, Den

In April 2009, I appeared on Dragons' Den, accompanied by a group of my friends from Connector. Only 60 seconds were broadcast, but we got great exposure!

After that, Connector launched a partnership with Edelman PR to launch the Canon Alegria camcorders series. We organised a "freecording" digital video contest, which had over 120 entries and which attracted over 150 people to the awards night. Liam Cunningham, the well-known Hollywood actor, was the ambassador of the contest.

Along the way we have made great connections with many brands, sponsors, media, venues, and 'celebrities' as the President Mary McAleese, Dita von Teese, Chis de Burgh, Rosanna Davison (former Miss World) and top managers at companies like Wikipedia, Bebo, Facebook, Daft and Wordpress.

The blog is still very active at connector.ie/blog and currently there’s a multinational team of over ten collaborators writing regularly. Last summer we had two interns from the USA, who helped us organising events while gaining work experience. Since then several students and graduates have joined the team and contribute on a voluntary basis. This has now become the "Connector Academy", a project to connect students and recent graduates with real world work experience.

Prior to February 2010, I worked part-time for a top digital marketing agency on projects for clients such as Toyota, Nokia and Meteor. I worked on the Connector blog and events in my spare time and survived through this incredibly busy time with great help from friends, business partners and volunteers.

Going full-time in February meant we opened a city centre office with a small team of full- and part-time staff. We have just launched Connector Training which offers strategic marketing workshops for Irish business interested in social media.

So what started off as a blog to create a personal brand has evolved and grown to be so much more.

For more on how Connector works, check out the following Youtube video: