In 2002 Daniel Watts, founder of Aluminati, created an independent ‘Oxford Graduates Email Service’ in response to the university’s decision to terminate all email accounts for leavers. Graduates, having for several years coordinated their lives using their university email accounts, were unhappy about losing this critical communications platform exactly at the time they needed it most: to keep in touch after leaving the university.

The service, which still exists is called Pidgeme.com and having signed up over 1500 leavers in its first year, continues to cater for thousands of Oxford graduates. After launching a similarly successful service at Cambridge, UCL contacted Aluminati to run, on an official basis their own “Email for Life” service (as it is now known in the sector): UCLMail. Other universities soon followed suit.

Over the next few years the Aluminati team grew, deeply developing their industry insight and establishing a team of technical experts in the field of designing and operating engaging online platforms for alumni.

From 2008 the company began to apply this expertise more widely, developing new products in the online space, all in service to the educational sectors objective of keeping alumni connected and engaged.