our mission

 

to build smart-thinking. cutting-edge. cost-effective solutions for business


to make top University students and graduates industry-ready through REAL project experience


to release skilled-up. proven. tried and tested talent into the digital tech sector

low-cost. cutting-edge. smart. solutions.

wow elite crew bridges the critical skills gap between University and the REAL World Of Work by engaging top students and graduates into REAL client-driven, commercial projects – mentored by top industry professionals to deliver low-cost, cutting-edge, smart UX. Web. Digital and Social Marketing solutions to business and skilled-up, tried and tested talent into the tech sector.

Our student crew’s are comprised of some of the best new talent coming out of top UK Universities including UCL / Ravensbourne / Imperial / Cambridge / City / Manchester and others – while our mentors and advisors work with many of planet’s largest corporations and businesses.

As a client – this means you get the very best new talent working together to deliver your solution – with all the creativity, energy and smart thinking that motivates our wow elite crews. Your project is fully managed by our senior PM’s and all projects are developed using the very latest in online communication and project delivery tools.

wow elite crew and our not-for-profit programme, The WOW Foundation have been founded by Alan Stuart – an entrepreneurial ‘maverick’ who has managed and delivered over 150 student-team projects to start-ups / SME’s / Social Enterprises and large organisations incl Comic Relief / Cyberkudos / JoinClubSoda / EMI Records / News International / World Development Movement….and his mum (well…ok that was only a cake! – but still required planning, teamwork and timely delivery!)

His LinkedIn profile quotes him as being drawn ’to all things in this world that push us to be creative, innovative and think beyond the Norm’ – with a specific liking for many things that begin with M: ’ music; martial arts, motorcycles, messin’ about in the kitchen’. (PS – no offence to anyone called Norm!)

innovate. evaluate. build. get social.

PROTOTYPE

When some funding routes require considerable match-funding and application processes are way too laborious - then WOW-elite may just be your way forward to MVP!.

WHAT WE DO:

Brainstorm
Feasibility
Proof of Market
Proof of Concept
MVP Development
Prototyping
Lean and Agile
Hack and Test

UX

We have access to the best MSc students and graduates in UX and Usability and they just love to drill down into the most efficient route to successful site conversion.

WHAT WE DO:

Best practice
Competitor analysis
Requirement spec.
Usability testing
User journey
Wire-framing
Reporting
Recommendations

WEB

We unleash the brightest new coders and developers who – somewhat like a hungry pack of kittens – get down and dirty with all the key platform languages we use to build.

WHAT WE DO:

Branding
GUI Design
Coding
Customisation
Responsive
CMS
E-Commerce
SEO

Social

Our 'omni-channelled', social-media savvy, campaign-obsessed Digital Marketing students live and breathe the social world – so much so they’ve even completed a degree in it!

WHAT WE DO:

Setup
Campaign
Monitor
Track
Engage
Converse
Respond
Report

 our clients

connect. engage. collaborate. deliver.

quality assurance and client satisfaction are our highest priority

‘This report was fantastically useful for us!’ Sport Relief 2014: On The Night: Donation Page UX Testing: (More than £51m was raised for charity on Friday’s live Sport Relief show – breaking the previous on-the-night record. BBC News)
Zenon Hannick: Head of Agile Delivery Comic Relief
‘Considering the young team – the wow-elite crew always impressed me with their professionalism. It is clear that their motivation is to create something special and be involved with projects that challenge and encourage them to thrive. A refreshing approach and one which I am very fond of”
Ed Kendall: Founder / CEO: On The Floor Bar Limited
‘We at CyberKudos recently collaborated with the team at wow elite crew to create our crowd funding video for ITRecruitment.com. I personally have to acknowledge and praise their commitment, effort and willingness to challenge the brief to achieve a better result. wow elite crew are a passionate, effective business that CyberKudos will be using again in the future’
Michael Hall: Co-Founder / CEO: CyberKudos / ITRecruitment
‘Working with wow elite crew has been invaluable in getting our MVP up and running and getting us to a position of being ‘investment ready’. The crew delivered all elements of our project and delivered what we wanted’
Laura Willoughby MBE: Co-Founder: JoinClubSoda

our student crews

get connected. get experience. get hired.

making students industry-ready

‘I worked with wow elite crew for about 3 months during my Masters degree. My experience has been very valuable and enjoyable; gaining industrial experience through working on interesting projects allowed me to focus on the specific skills that I wanted to develop. This has helped me to attain a graduate job at a top UX agency. Alan was very supportive and working hours were flexible which was ideal, being a student. Working for wow elite crew is a perfect opportunity for students to gain hands-on experience and prepare them for graduate employment; I would recommend others to get involved.’
Misha Patel: MSc HCI (Human Computer Interaction): UCL: UX Crew
‘wow elite crew is a fantastic opportunity to work during studies. It gives you a chance to work on commercial projects and gain quality experience, confidence and reward. 
Obviously, these things make it easier to get full-time employment after studies. Through this experience and references from wow elite crew, I was offered full-time employment in a leading digital agency’.
Majid Afzal: Graduate: MSc Computer Science: Dev Crew
‘Milestones were linked to client meetings and were frequent enough to maintain steady development and allowed us to always have a feature or improvement ready to show at the client meetings.’
Victor Popescu: MSc Computer Science: UCL: Dev Crew
‘wow elite crew introduced me to the remote working concept. It is a refreshing and modern approach to creative development and is a method that will benefit future projects.’
Tom Deacon: BA Broadcasting and Production: Ravensbourne: Media Crew

questions. answers.

clients.

Each project has a dedicated Senior Project Manager (one of our co-founders), a crew project manager and we also make available the relevant mentors and industry professionals – so that our wow elite crew have all the tools and opportunity to seek advice and guidance.
All projects are managed on our Teamwork PM tool and we use GIT for code convention.

We work closely with you as the client to ensure that we build and develop according to your requirements and we have tight reporting schedules so you are always fully up to date on project progress.
Above all – it is made profoundly clear to all our wow elite crew members – that the key driver for our service is quality – plain and simple.

We have an extensive network with our University partners and connect and engage our top students and graduates through specific presentations or ‘call outs’ to the Universities. We regularly present ‘in-class’ and work closely with renowned subject leaders across our specific skill sets eg UX / Comp Science / Digital Media / Marketing etc to source and find the best in emerging new talent.
Many of our wow elite crew members come through referrals from current crew members who recognise the value they have gained invaluable through engaging on real projects with us and who are keen to encourage their peers to have the same opportunity.
We hold informal meetings with prospective wow elite crew members to see if they have the technical and personal skills to fit – we then progress this to more formal interviewing and skill testing prior to their engagement on first projects.
We assign a crew Project Manager to your project. They have responsibility for day to day management of your project and report directly to our Founder / Director Alan Stuart.
We work very closely with you at the earliest stage to clarify exact project requirements and deliverables. We encourage full wow elite crew engagement from the start so that you can be sure that your project crew are fully on task and ‘on page’ to deliver their very best.
We use Teamwork PM tool to manage the project and set daily/weekly ‘stand-ups’ to ensure your project progresses as agreed.
There are a number of ways of initially engaging with us:

Simply send an email to: info@wowelitecrew.com or complete the brief contact form at the bottom of our site.
You can DM us on Twitter: @WOWELITEUK
Alternatively – please feel free to contact our Founder / Director: Alan Stuart on 07971 791048.

No two projects are the same – however a normal process is as follows:
1. We get an outline of your broad requirements
2. We meet with you to discuss in more detail and to drill down into specifics
3. We then start to scope out the technical requirements and start to put together the wow elite crew who would work with you to build / develop your project
4. We submit our proposal to you which outlines in detail our approach to the project, strategy and fees.
5. On agreement of proposal – simple contracts are exchanged.
6. We build and deliver.

Costs
Each project is costed separately to reflect the diverse requirements and scope of what we can offer and more importantly – what you really need!.We use collaborative, remote-working tools that enable us to work without expenditure on expensive offices and so our project fees solely reflect the skills, creativity and smart-thinking solutions of our wow elite crews. Our costs are based on the number of hours our wow elite crew will require to successfully deliver the project. Each wow elite crew member is paid variable hourly rates for their work dependent on number of projects they have completed with us.

We love to be right at the beginning of any client’s journey and we have developed some fantastic MVP’s and prototypes for tech and social start-ups here in the UK and further afield in Silicon Valley.

We will work closely with you to evaluate and clarify on the core features YOU need to make your MVP something you can truly move forward. We can then put together a crew of smart thinkers and builders to deliver.

Whether you are looking at proof of market, proof of concept or a viable prototype – please contact us and we can discuss how we can help get you building.

students.

If you believe you have very good skills in your specific skill set and you also recognise that real project experience is invaluable in developing your CV and portfolio in preparation for the real world of work then we would love to hear from you – so please email your CV to us at: info@wowelitecrew.com
It is beyond doubt that the ability to evidence REAL project experience on your CV is critical to you gaining employment. We work and network with countless employers / agencies / tech companies who consistently tell us that they want to see what you have done / built / created – not just heard about in class or read in lecture notes.

Here is what others say:

’87 per cent of scale-ups said that they would be able to grow faster if university
graduates had the skills needed to meet customer demand.’ Sherry Coutu: Scale Up Report 2015

‘Finding quality skilled talent with the right attitude is the issue. One or the other are found in some candidates but both together are rare.’ Tech City Futures Report

‘We need skilled developers who can hit the ground running. They are few and far between at the moment which significantly slows down all other activities.’ Tech City Futures Report

Ideally, we look to engage you on a wow elite crew project without any impact on your study or class commitments. However, we are a client-driven, commercial agency and our primary driver is to deliver highest-quality, smart-solutions that are also delivered on time – so we will always clarify with you as to whether you can actually commit to your projects tasks around your studies.
Oh….we have some very big plans for showcasing all wow elite crew (and WOW Foundation) crew members – but if we tell you that now – we may have to expire you!!

Until then – we network heavily with agencies / business and employers and at every opportunity we highlight and talk about our wow elite crew.

We also get countless requests from agencies / start-ups etc asking us to refer the next new star.Our only caveat is that you need to complete any current project you are engaged on.

We reference those who have worked with us very highly (unless you were a bit useless!) – and LinkedIn is nailed with lots of WOW Elite references for students and graduates.

We do not hide our wow elite crew’s in dark corners and feed them pizza!! Our methodology is all around developing the student and graduate experience in a REAL project environment.

As part of a wow elite crew for a project – you are engaged and included in all project scoping, requirement analysis and client engagement from the start.

We actively encourage autonomy and your ability (where appropriate) to challenge assumptions, the brief, the specifications and us – this is a two-way street and we want you to feel very much an integral part of the project that you are engaged on.

Remember – if you are proud and satisfied with your contribution to the project – we all benefit – the client – us and your CV!

challenge. opinion. inform. debate. smile. today.

the wow foundation

We are proud to launch the WOW foundation: a unique Summer Charity Hack that will allow students from across UK to work in teams on our collaborative, remote-working platform against a challenge set by one of our Charity partners.

Students will also have FREE access to our unique Professional Skills Programme (PSP). This will be a set of online modules consisting of a short video presentation by one of our industry mentors focusing on key employability, professional and ‘on-trend’ skills required by employers.

The PSP will NOT be telling you how to write a CV or how to choose the right shoes for an interview. We will be focusing on REAL skills development around personal branding / networking / pitching and real workplace integration.

wow elite crew believes that the WOW foundation programme will allow students who do not yet have a skills level appropriate for our wow elite crew commercial projects an opportunity to gain these through the Summer Hack and PSP. Those who successfully complete the WOW foundation programme will not only be better skilled but will be ready to step up into wow elite crew paid projects.

Go to the WOW foundation

connect. engage. collaborate. deliver.

Our wow elite crews are simply itching to build something very cool for you – so why not give them a scratch and get in touch through our simple form. Please give a few details about you, your start-up, business or vision for world domination and we will get back to you before the kettle has boiled!

If you are a student or graduate and believe you have the skills, professional approach and genuine desire to develop yourself into something truly irresistible to employers –  then we at wow elite crew would love to hear from you. Please attach your CV.