History
Mint was founded in the summer of 2004 by Andy Bell (who elderly people in Corfe Castle still believe "invented the internet") and Noam Sohachevsky (later dubbed "one of the best designers to come out of Basingstoke in the 90s").
Having spent four years working at RDF Media, one day Andy and Noam were walking on the road to Hammersmith when they were hit by a blinding light. It later transpired that this was a discarded metal box of Curiously Strong Mints reflecting the headlights of the No. 9 bus.)
That night Andy and Noam both had the same dream: they were watching TV and having meaningful interactions on their computers. They were not taking part in telephone votes and they were not playing an interactive CD ROM. Excited, they decided the next day to break out from TV and do something different: they decided to set up Mint Digital. (As the picture below shows, it was almost Spearmint Associates or Flat 57.)
Doing something different is all well and good but with no credibility, like most frontiersmen, Andy and Noam's immediate concern was staying alive. The early Mints were simple folk. They set about making websites, or anything else, for anybody who was prepared to take a chance. This "we will do anything" rhetoric is often overlooked in business books but it led to some early success. In its first year, Mint worked for, amongst others, qualitative advertising researchers and capital allowance specialists.
At this time, Mint's philosophy was simple: try to be like Innocent and Skype. Create sites that talk to you, the user, as a person. Don't blast you, the user, with marketing goo.
Times were good. For a while, it seemed like the only thing that could halt Mint's relentless commercial progress was one of Noam's housemates ironing a blouse. (Mint used the ironing board as a desk in those days, an early example of the ingenuity and agility that would serve them well.)
High on this early success, the Mints ran into their first disaster.
A mix-up involving a sandwich resulted in the loss of a £20,000 project. At the time, this was more than five month's turnover.
But feedback is the breakfast of champions. Since that day, there is no record of Mint making a sandwich-related mistake again...
In the long winter of 2005/06, Mint moved into its first proper office. Andy had walked past Westminster Business Square many times. Like all entrepreneurs he dared to dream. Seduced by the smooth contours of the former Marmite factory, the vibrancy of the yellow window frames and the plethora of cafeterias in the area, Andy was determined to get a unit at one of Vauxhall's most prestigious business addresses. When his offer of just over £800/month was accepted, Andy felt that he had made it big. Together with Noam, they blew nearly £40 on a vegetarian meal with tap water at the Bonnington Cafe.
At this point, Andy and Noam became obsessed by three things, YouTube, Wikipedia and living the high life.
That inspired a thought.
Wouldn't it be great to create TV shows that allow web users to get involved in the creative process? YouTube and Wikipedia suggested ways this might be possible.
Incredibly, one business angel (a genuine business angel, if ever there was one) gave Mint some money to turn that half-baked dream into reality.
And that was enough for Tim Morgan and Cameron Price to leave the pre-credit crunch safety and high-rolling status of city jobs for the choppy seas of a web start-up.
With this new outlook, Mint created its first mass-participation projects. It launched the social casting site Islandoo. The Independent, with laudable understatement, called Islandoo "a internet phenomenon to rival the social networking site MySpace".
On the back of that, Disney commissioned Virtual Rush and MTV commissioned Oxjam.
Since then Mint has had ups and downs. The biggest down related to a capacity issue caused by an "up" (the site being popular far beyond expectation). A national newspaper made space on its front page to say the project was "a great idea ruined by incompetent execution". Alas, the idea was the client's, the execution was Mint's.
Talking about this dark episode, CTO Cameron says "We operate in a harsh technical environment. This project exposed a number of weaknesses in our way of doing business. Our methodology has evolved as a result of experiences like that."
Since then, Mint has been joined by a number of truly outstanding individuals. We can't mention them all (for security reasons). The following are not wanted by international police: Thomas Pomfret and Colin Miller (collaboratively the wonky techno pioneers Bass Invaders), Tom Harman and Bob D'Mello (rockers from the very popular (in Exeter) band Super Tennis), Ron DeVera (the only Mint to have a day dedicated to celebrating his existence), Adam Rogers (a man who burst through the Channel 4 Bursary scheme), Jenny Wong (just try and stop her), Krzysztof Zylawy (Kraków's answer to Sergey Brin), Phil Nash (never mix rugby and code), Sophie Fisher (she is the law), Utku Can Akyuz (relentless glory hunter), John Corrigan (don't bet against him), Dean Strelau (whose Mum makes Mint Digital t-shirts) and Christopher Wilson (The Taskmaster).
We have put on one play, one musical, three conferences (UGTV '06, UGTV '07 and 2-Screen) and commissioned one piece of sculpture.
We have launched a widely-ignored piece of open source technology. (It's like Rails for the real-time web.)
The most important part of the Mint story has been our clients. We’ve grown together in our understanding of social media and the challenges inherent in fusing the mass-participation of the web with the power of TV.
Thanks to the people at RDF Media, BBC, Channel 4, ABC Family, Ogilvy, Thumbplay, Sony Ericsson, River Island and everyone else who put their faith in Mint. We hope that we have repaid your confidence.
