Alumnus of the Month - July 2017

Chris Underdown
BA Music and Sonic Media, 2015

"As an ideas person it took a while for me to hone my business skills. Luckily I was given a lot of support to develop and market my music start-up while at LSBU on the Student Entrepreneurship in Action scheme (now called Spark). I’m a bit of a jack-of-all-trades and bounced around studying art and music for a few years, but now I see myself as an entrepreneur in the creative industries. My new business Code and Wander is a digital agency set up just a few months ago. 

I was a music start-up founder, then an employee and now I’m back with a start-up. My previous start-up, Choosic had some great moments of success, and I was nominated for an Entrepreneur of the Year award at the National Business Awards in 2015. But despite a great partnership with Bosch and Jaguar Landrover, Choosic just didn’t make enough for me to build a full-time sustainable business off the back of it. I needed revenue and experience so I went to work for a digital agency. When that folded after 18 months I realised I’d built a good network of potential clients and industry contacts, so I started freelancing. It went so well that it made sense to open my own agency. I contacted two former colleagues and Code and Wander was born. We are currently based at the Clarence Centre. 

Five months in to this new venture, we are smashing it! There are three of us here full time, each with highly specialised skills. We develop mobile apps and web-based products and do client work around websites and other platforms. Our clients are a range of big brands, smaller businesses and start-ups. At the moment I’m particularly excited to be working with Copa90, the leading youth media brand for football. They're growing their fan base massively through brilliant editorial content and smart use of technology. We act as extension of their in-house team by supplying tech expertise and development capability.

I’ve definitely learned from my early mistakes. Understanding some of the difficulties I had after launching Choosic has helped me work smarter in my new business. Of course the challenge will be in scaling the business, and particularly in deciding when is the right time to grow the team. 

My vision for Code and Wander is that it can work as a collective of digital nomads. There’s no reason why we can’t work as a remote company. We don’t need to be in the same place as our clients (in fact we just spent a week in Tenerife with no disruption to service) or even as each other. I see us working for partners and clients – and developing our own products – from anywhere in the world. I envisage staying small, with fewer than 15 people, and focusing on high-impact products and businesses. 

I’m not someone who wants to follow others but Tony Nwachukwu, a tutor on the LSBU Music and Sonic Media course, has been inspirational for me. He was a successful music producer and programmer who then went on to found CDR, an amazing collective that exposes the thought process behind music and runs collaborative events around the world. I also admire Steve Bartlett, who started Social Chain, a massively successful social media marketing agency. He’s disruptive in his approach to business, and I totally respect that. 

All entrepreneurs want to make an impact. At Code and Wander we want to do that through creating digital products that stand out in the market and make everyday life easier, more playful or more experimental. And with the revenue we make I hope to keep investing in new ideas, whether it’s one of our own projects or another start-up.  

Profit is not my number one driver – it’s about ideas first. I want to build a company that doesn’t fit into the normal model but is experimental in its approach and process. I want to prove that we can work from a range of locations with a culture where everyone enjoys their work and is pushing the boundaries to create innovative products. Most of all I want us to be extremely good at what we do."

You can find Chris on LinkedIn and follow Code and Wander on Twitter. 

Find out more about Student Enterprise at LSBU, including Spark and the Graduate Entrepreneur Scheme.  The Graduate Entrepreneur Scheme is now looking for applicants for their 2017 intake.