This week, I also had the privilege to meet another leader, Tom Bloxham of Urban Splash. Tom has done more than anyone else to regenerate Manchester and Liverpool over the last 15 years. He has won over 120 awards for architecture, regeneration and business success. It is amazing to see some of the regenerative work he has done – especially before and after effect. Some of his success is due to taking on projects that no one would touch and using young architects with new ideas to create magical transformations. His residential apartments usually get sold out within couple of hours, and people usually camp out before the doors are opened. A rare breed indeed!

Technorati Tags: Urban Splash, Tom Bloxham, Entrepreneurs

I finally had the pleasure to meet Gary Turner, MD of Pegasus this week. His business has changed hands twice over the last few months, first with Extensity and then with Infor. He has not only survived, but has positioned his company well within Infor creating further opportunities for growth. We spoke business for two hours and then spent the next hour speaking about blogging, hype of SaaS and other interesting issues over lunch.

He has been blogging for well over 5 years and have successfully managed to keep business out of his blog. A remarkable discipline. When it comes to ebdex, blogging forms part of our marketing strategy. A totally opposite approach to Gary’s. [DH, thanks for the introduction].

Gary is also a great photographer. You only need to look above to agree! Visit flickr to see other gems. 

So what business did we discuss? I am afraid you simply have to wait.

Technorati Tags: Infor, Pegasus, Extensity, ebdex

According to Sam Sethi of TechCrunch UK, there are many opportunities for Internet start-ups and VCs to get together and share ideas in London.

I would love to find out of any similar events taking place in the North West. We have a monthly breakfast event at Daresbury Innovation Centre, but it is not dedicated to software. There is also a monthly Beermat Monday event taking place at Tiger Tiger, which mainly attracts consultants and life style businesses. N4B is similar.

Sam reports…

From the QnA session, the one thing I took away was the fact that VC’s are struggling to find start-ups to invest in. The point being that start-ups no longer need to raise the £1m+ previously needed in the web 1.0 period to get an idea up and running. Now £20-£40k gets you on the web and with actual subscribers/users to prove the model. In some cases the start-up can actually be profitable before they need to raise new growth capital. The thing that is still missing is the angel investment capital which Philip Wilkinson describes as the equity gap.

Interesting point about VCs struggling to find investments. We are not web 2.0 but SaaS and could do with between £1.5m over the next two years. However, if we win some decent sized clients, and provided we can work out decent advanced payments, we would not need any VC funding. Ironical, is it not?

We have continually been on catch 22 – chicken and egg situation with respect to VCs. Initially, we wanted external investment to develop our solution, but VCs wanted revenues – same as bankers – very risk averse in my opinion. So, we struggled for the last 18 months and now have the transaction hub (ebdex Document Exchange) up and running. We just need few decent sized clients and staying power.

Technorati Tags: Daresbury Innovation Centre, TechCrunch, Venture Capital, Equity Gap, Start-ups, ebdex, SaaS, Web 2.0