A digital start-up in Carlisle has entered a huge national competition to raise awareness of its app and boost the profile of the city.

Jonathan Lowe, chief executive of Geovim Ltd, has developed Geo Hitch, a unique new location based activity app that allows users to engage with their surrounding in new ways.

In one of our weekly “10 minutes with” articles, Mr Lowe said that a victory for the firm could boost the national and international reputation of Carlisle as a fantastic place for professionals in the digital industry to live and work alongside Manchester, London and even Silicon Valley.

So, who is Jonathan Lowe?

"I’m the CEO of Geovim Ltd, the company that has developed Geo Hitch but really we’re not that bothered about titles at the company and we all pitch in to get the work completed.

"We’re a start up business that began six months ago and we’ve been working on getting Geo Hitch ready for the general public and we officially launched the first version of the app last week."

The launch of Geo Hitch

"It all comes from the idea of geocaching, which we thought was a fun idea to get people outdoors and exercising, but we figured that we could build on it introducing some of our own ideas into that.

"We’ve put it onto a phone and an app so that it’s easy for everyone to use, and we’ve developed a skin around it to give it a similar feel to a game.

"It involves virtual hitchhikers, who you can pick up and drop off wherever you fancy, and in a fun way that’s not just for kids, we’re already in 10 countries and have had a number of users setting up in America recently.

"We have an internal tester who since February and March has been using it to go out on her lunch break to go and get some exercise, to try and find virtual coins or a hitchhiker and there are so many way to be involved with it."

Virgin VOOM campaign

"We submitted our pitch for the Voom campaign last Tuesday on the deadline day, initially I had thought we’d only need around 500 votes to reach the final 80 but it looks like we’ll need around twice that figure now.

"You can vote in less than a minute here .

"So the vote closes on the Monday, which only gives us a few days to break into the top 80 which is where businesses will be able to make it into the next round.

"The next round would see us take part in a 29 hour pitch-a-thon which will be judged by the Virgin business team and other professionals and after that we’d be in the semi-final and in with a chance of winning £50,000, meeting Sir Richard Branson which would be a huge personal dream of mine realised and the chance to advertise on a huge billboard in London."

Raising profile of Carlisle

"I’ve lived in Carlisle for my entire life and it’s kind of like a hidden pocket of fantastic skills that can be utilised depending on where we’re going as a city, I can see no reason why the people that work in silicon valley, London and Manchester wouldn’t want to come here to live and work.

"With our expansion plans, we’re going to need to find the maybe four or five new people full-time to help take the company further and take it international in the next 12 months.

"If we were to win this competition, we’d be able to showcase what we’ve created and really put Carlisle on the map."

Charity pledge

"One of the team members here found out that his child had been diagnosed with cystic fibrosis a year ago so we’ve pledged to give £1 for every vote we receive in the Voom competition to the Cystic Fibrosis Trust.

"Also, if we were to win the whole competition or the crowdfunding campaign, I said that the company would donate an extra £10,000 to the charity."