Daily Archives: 17/11/2009

How to join edocr Exclusive

Posted on by
2

If you are a customer of edocr.com, you can now join edocrExclusive Private Group on Twitter.

home

How To Join This Group

Go to edocrExclusive and click on the “send request” button. We must approve new members before they are permitted to post or receive messages from the Group. Please note this service is only for paying customers and not for those who use edocr Free service.

How To Post

At the beginning of your Tweet type “d edocrExclusive”. This will send a private message to the group, which Twitter4Groups will then forward to everyone else who is following. Do not use @, this makes the message public to everyone.

Use Case
We hope this will allow our customers to communicate easily with each other improving trading and perhaps extend the goodwill by offering discounts to other customers where it makes sense.

New flyer for edocr.com highlighting our focus on sales leads generation

Posted on by
1

As part of our preparations for exhibiting at Technology World 2009 on 23rd and 24th November 2009 at Coventry, UK, we have produced a new leaflet highlighting our current focus on sales lead generation through documents and the priced options we currently promote.

edocr Flyer - Generating Sales Leads from your Documents 2009 Apr - edocr Flyer - Claim your company now edocr Flyer

Embedded above is the new flyer on the left hand side followed by previous flyers. The middle one was prepared for Internet World held in April 2009 in London. Below is the full document, A5 size in terms of print.

Why should you consider edocr.com?

This section highlights 5 benefits we provide:

1. Maximised Exposure – We can bring significant traffic to your documents by simply being published on edocr.com.

2. Distribution – Your documents can be bookmarked to 198 largest websites in the world from Facebook and LinkedIn to Twitter. In addition, the documents can be emailed to mail lists. This can be done by you or anyone else who come across document.

3. Free SEO – Indexed by Google, Bing and other search engines, documents are easily found through search engine listings, increasing the traffic to your documents.

4. Prospect Power – Anyone who finds your documents of interest can contact you direct without waiting for approval or knowing the corresponding contact details.

5. Sales leads capture – You will soon be able to run campaigns based on sales leads captured.

What I realised by producing this flyer is that messaging on edocr.com home page and associated pages need to be updated. It seems work never stops

Your picture size correction at edocr.com

Posted on by
2

For an unknown reason, the image sizing module within edocr.com have malfunctioned over the last few weeks. As a result, your picture would not have re-sized to suit your account page or your document pages. This has only affected accounts created recently.

If your picture is displayed without resizing, it will look like the following image, in terms of giant size.

In this case, please upload your picture again, and it should re-size automatically.

Please don’t hesitate to contact us if you come across any problems with this process or any aspects of edocr.com.

Is the environment right for venture capital in the north west?

Posted on by
7

Michael Taylor, the Editor of the Insider Magazine, just ran another successful Deal Makers 2009 Award ceremony, which  clashed with my own, Managing Growth – Tech Entrepreneur Series held at eOffice on 12th November 2009.

Michael in his weekly column argues that private equity needs to get back to its venture capital roots. The Good news is that LDC is making a change in their investment criteria by wanting to invest into early stage businesses. So Michael thinks this is a good ground for celebration, especially as LDC won one of the awards he gave them.

Disclaimer 1: I am jealous as I could not attend the event. So you know why I am taking this attitude!

In my view, just like any industry, you see companies changing their strategy from time to time. Whilst LDC is speaking about lowering their investment criteria with the hope of netting the next Google (why is it that they all pick Google as the one to beat?), which is great news for Northern StartUp 2.0 community, there are others who have got tired of early stage investment, and changing their strategy by targeting companies with stable revenues and profits, but could do with an injection of new ideas to revive growth. In fact, just over the last two months, I have spoken to two tier-1 VC houses from London on the same topic.

So whilst we should be jubilant on one hand of LDC’s decision, we should be less happy on the other hand with my friends from London! In essence, we have equilibrium, one going down and two going up, well almost!

Disclaimer 2: As I cannot be a friend of Roger Cashman (he is way too cool and hangout with only the A-list), I decided to be friends with Michael, as Michael is the second best thing to Roger!

Extract from Michael’s article on his website

“Eales told Insider that although LDC only makes investments below £5m on an exceptional basis, he was keen to see technology developed in the UK and not lost abroad. “I am considering plans to set up part of LDC to invest in special situations,” he said. “I would like to develop LDC downward. We could still do all the things we are already doing but could also do SME investments.”

As if to dampen our enthusiasm, Eales cautioned that plans for the shift were in the embryonic stages, but as he outlined further ideas of how it would work, it rather suggested progress was being made. “The level of due diligence we carry out on our current investments – between £5m and £50m – would not be appropriate,” he said. “We would need individuals with specialist industry knowledge to explore the business for us.”

I can only say, bring it on! as we, the Northern StartUp 2.0 community got the experience and know-how and the odd failures (1 under my belt) to help LDC reduce its risk exposure! But more than anything, it would be a blessing to add another brand to the community. Whilst the EV Group and Liverpool Ventures (now gone!) invested in to early stage tech businesses in the past, we have seen our new friends, A2E Venture Catalyst investing into another NS20 tech startup and making two more offers. Sorry, I cannot reveal the names here!

Whilst Northern StartUp 2.0 has engaged with Aquarius Equity Partners, I do not believe they have invested into any startups from the NS20 community. In fact, I believe their interest lies in heavy research based (IP rich) companies than software startups.

EV Group and YFM Private Equity have always been supporters of Northern StartUp 2.0. However, it seems I have annoyed EV Group with my last newsletter, so I now need to rebuild our relationship! All I want to say about this issue is, whilst I may have jumped the gun a bit (my analyst days coming back), we cannot just talk about the upside! We must talk about failures and learn lessons, if not, how can we ever learn?

Of course, Michael is operating at a level much higher than me, rubbing shoulders with the top elite of corporate financiers delivering news whilst trying to entertain the not-so-entertainable chaps such as me!

Disclaimer 3: As far as I know, I appeared at least 3 times on Michael’s flagship product, the North West Insider

Just to conclude, it is great news to hear that LDC’s new strategy. EV Group has also geared up with recruiting two staff from now closed Liverpool Ventures. In addition, they now have offices in Preston, Manchester, Leeds and Birmingham.

Disclaimer 4: Given my big mouth and Michael’s charming network, don’t you think it makes sense for us to work on a project together?

From my side, I would love to see lot more entrants in the market, from single investment partner to multiple. We need to create competition within the venture capital market place. We need to change our attitudes, and see technology businesses are worthy of the news as well as investment. Just to close this, you all should be attending Northern StartUp 2.0 events and supporting my efforts in building the ecosystem (shameful plug!).