FreshNetworks Blog

It’s a good day today at FreshNetworks. We’re dusting off some slightly fuzzy heads and Charlie, one of our CEOs, has finally got to leave for his much delayed holiday. Why all the excitement? Well last night we were crowned London winners of the £35 Million Bank of Scotland Entrepreneur Corporate Challenge.

The prize is a good one. As London winner we’ve been awarded an interest free loan of up to £5 million, with which to really grow the FreshNetworks business. We’ve been building and managing online communities for some big brands for quite some time now, and have a great and growing internal team. This money is going to help us go really big.

We were chosen in the final from a shortlist of great companies, including Gü Chocolate Puddings, Justgiving, Country House Weddings and Quintessentially. We now go through to the national final in December, where we will compete against the winners from six other regions across the UK for the chance to be named ‘Entrepreneur of the Year’ and the opportunity to be mentored by one of Britain’s most successful and high profile entrepreneurs. The judges chose us for lots of great reasons: our flair, vision and creativity, as well as solid business acumen and impressive plans for the future.

There was an article about the finalists in last week’s Sunday Times and we’ll be in it again this week. I’ll let you know more about what we’re going to do with the funding and may even share the video we had to film for the final! But right now I need to move on from the excitement in the office and head to a client meeting.

Some coverage of the award

• Capital talents in the spotlight: The London regional finalists
• Photos and a video of the awards
• FreshMinds wins £5m investment prize
• FreshMinds Wins London Entrepreneurial Crown
• Online venture FreshMinds wins £5m of funding for founders
• FreshNetworks wins £5m funding in Entrepreneur Challenge