I will be attending my third Seedcamp event tomorrow as a mentor. Seedcamp is without a doubt the main event for any budding tech entrepreneur team in Europe, and it is getting bigger each year attracting companies from all over the world.

For those who are not familiar with Seedcamp, it was first introduced in 2007 by none other than Saul Klien. Reshma Sohoni joined from 3i to run the day to day operations. In 2008, Mini Seedcamps were introduced in four cities to short list companies. The number of Mini Seedcamp events have gradually increased to 9 with Johannesburg added to the  calendar in 2010. The finalists of Mini Seedcamps will enter into Seedcamp week held in September each year.

This year, there will be 21 teams pitching on 27th July at UCL in London. I will be catching the first train out of Stockport tomorrow morning to take part. Unfortunately, no single tech startup from the north west has qualified this year. It would be good to find out how many companies applied this year from the north west. The company I persuaded to apply, did not qualify. Both Midlands and Scotland are represented in addition to London and the South.

The criteria for selection is getting stronger each year, as Seedcamp is no longer restricted to UK, and even the Mini Seedcamp London is opened to teams from anywhere in the world.

Based on the information at my disposal, I prepared following two mindmaps to help me get through tomorrow.

First one shows approximately 25 venture capital firms confirmed to take part as mentors, and the second mindmap shows the tech companies taking part. My mentoring team includes two familiar faces, one of whom is an alum of webmission08. The teams allocated for us are highlighted with number one on the second mindmap.

Let’s hope we could organise something similar to Seedcamp or Difference Engine in the north west sooner rather than later.

The Inspiration

Saul Klein has been a great inspiration for me since I came to know him in 2007, mostly through OpenCoffee, a great investment (sales) funnel to identify the hottest startups and tech entrepreneurs. Later, he introduced Seedcamp to add a second level of filtration and de-risk his investments as much as possible. Some of this learning has been applied by Imran Hakim and the team (perhaps not directly taking from Saul) in Manchester through Envestors and RAW2010, in terms of de-risking. But that’s another story for another day.

The Motivation (best to come clean upfront!)

At Techcelerate, we need to find a funnel for budding entrepreneurs, as well as find a low cost channel for Member products, where conversation will achieve sales, without selling. I have been toying with the idea of Techcelerate Coffee for a while, but I believe I managed to convince few people, which is enough for me to give it a damn good try.

What is TekCoffee (and why not TechCoffee)

Ok. TechCoffe has gone. Yes, that’s right, someone got the Twitter username, so I had to settle for TekCoffee. Personally, I dislike “k” in TekCoffee, but let’s go with it for the time being, eventhough I am big on brand identities.

TekCoffee would be very similar to OpenCoffee, except that it is not about a funnel for investment, but a funnel for sales and partnerships for our Member products and Techcelerate ecosystem.

Self-Management of TekCoffee

All events are local (initially around Stockport) and organised through private messaging on Twitter and PlanCast .

How To Join This Group: Go to http://www.twitter.com/TekCoffee and click on the “send request” button. We will approve new members before they are permitted to post or receive messages from the Group.

How To Post: At the beginning of your Tweet type “d TekCoffee”. This will send a private message to the group, which will be automatically forwarded to everyone else who is following.  If you use @ the message will be public to everyone. I need to test this out bit more to understand.

How to arrange a meeting: Some need to create the meeting on PlanCast first and then use the Twitter Group to invite others.

What is the format

1. One person from each local community create an event on PlanCast (we can create sub groups within Twitter later on) and send out an invite through twitter group and other available channels.

2. Those who wish to attend join the plancast event. Bring your laptops, so if no one turns up, you can still get two hours work done, so there is no real lost to your productivity.

3. Meet up for up to a maximum of 2 hours between 10:00 to 12:00pm or any other time slot as agreed, as long as it is restricted to 2 hours. Ideally these ought to be monthly meetings on regular intervals and arranged such that they do not clash with another TekCoffee event.

4. Organisers can change from month to month, and Techcelerate will provide as much support as possible

5. You can discuss any aspect of business, and we will try our best to expose new products to you through inviting tech CEOs from companies such as Yuuguu, edocr.com, CapsuleCRM, etc.

This is just a start and we can refine above as we go along. What’s left now is to prove the communication channels around the first event. Join the twitter group now to find out more.

Annual NW Business Pitch (Liverpool, UK)

Just returned to office from pitching both edocr.com and Techcelerate at the Annual NW Business Pitch on Digital, New Media & ICT sector at Liverpool Science Park. From more than 25 companies pitched, I noted four companies that could be considered as tech businesses, these being, edocr.com, Collabor8online, Mediatank from Skylab and bisTrack from Progressive Solutions International. Event was useful in terms of strengthening existing relationships (Skylab, STFC Innovations, How-Do, etc) and building new relationships (Liverpool Science Park, Hatimo Games, etc).

Ravensoft gaining traction with Tweets60

Crains Manchester Business reported today that Manchester based mobile software developer, Ravensoft has seen half-a-million downloads of its Tweets60 and Battery Extender apps during February and March 2010.

What would be interesting more than above statistic is to understand, how many of the downloaders, if any, decided to connect with me on Twitter simply because of the image on their website.

Ravensoft UK was established in 2007, as a subsidiary of Ravensoft OY and Nordic Software Solutions. 3 Directors; Andrew, Chris and Mark each owns 16.67 of shares.

Not sure why they want to display Google Ads on their website, if the UK company has the backing and resources of a larger, international organisation. Whilst it works for a product such as edocr.com, I am not convinced companies should add Google Ads to their websites for small revenues the adverts generate.

According to Crains Manchester Business,  Chris Byrne, managing director said: “We are delighted by the success of our applications. It’s rapidly becoming a crowded market out there in terms of mobile software, so it is pleasing to see tangible evidence of the demand for our products. We are currently working on several new applications, both in-house and third-party products. These new apps will be available on Nokia, Blackberry, Android and Apple platforms. As a result of our continued success, we are also looking to grow the business by taking on new staff towards the second half of the year.”

Thinking aloud, would Ravensoft attract the attention of Greater Manchester based 2ergo, which has appetite for acquisitions?

Venture Capital Fundraising is up in the US

On 6th April, Dow Jones reported 41% increase in US venture capital fundraising, raising $4.1 billion across 34 funds in the first quarter of 2010. 

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers setup fund for iPad developers

The New York Times reported on 31st March 2010 (not quite last week!), Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, who invested in Google and Amazon.com early on, has double its $100 million iFund set up in 2008 and managed by Matt Murphy for application development to $200 million to support iPad application development. The iFund has invested in 14 iPhone applications including

All my businesses follow a model where it is split into 10 categories (opportunity, product, market, sales, operations, service, finance, legal, HR and other). The thinking comes from Michael Porters Value Chain framework. Today, I have started to look at this from a slightly different angel with respect to edocr.com.

Financial Profit and Valuation

Whilst a business should not be an accounting exercise, without a true picture of your finances, you have no business. I would argue, that the point of finances is to generate a profit and increase the valuation of your business. If we expand the profit further, its about growing your revenues, whilst improving working capital and cost efficiencies. Control of cost is vital in achieving a competitive advantage in the long run. Working capital in one sense is making sure the business has sufficient cash to operate, which is either funded by the cash flow arising from revenues or external funding in the form of debt or equity finance. Let’s not get bogged down in other exotic finances such as invoice discounting, asset financing, etc.

Product vs. Market Fit

You could design the most beautiful product in the world, but if there is no readily available market, you will struggle to achieve a meaningful traction. Creating new market is not without casualties. Entering an established market with a killer proposition with an aggressive sales and marketing plan can achieve wonders instead of focusing on the first mover advantage.

Value Proposition

Value proposition is as good as the paper its written on (or the web page), as long as it is understood and there are sufficient number of people willing to pay a price above your cost point. Having a product that fits the market requirements improves your chances, but you need to be able to articulate in a manner that puts you ahead of the competition. It was only this evening I was speaking to an early stage technology business with an email marketing tool. They have decided that it is not worth competing for the end client head on due to the sheer number of well established brands in a crowded market place, instead they are attempting to sell to middlemen who could dress the product in their branding and take it to the market. In this case, the product not just has to be fit for the market, but it needs to be now fit for both the end client and the middle man. So getting your value proposition right is crucial. One company that adopted this strategy successfully is BT, sell-to and sell-through strategy.

Operational Efficiency

None of above can be achieved without adequate resources in place, both in terms of numbers and level of skills, experience and competency. In addition, you need to achieve higher efficiency of resources with continuous improvements to have a chance of beating your competition.

So how does edocr.com fares with above four crucial elements? In terms of financial profit and valuation, we have bootstrapped the company so far generating modest revenues. We have a product that works, which was achieved through hard work with low investment. We have an acceptable cost efficiency, but need external capital to make a bigger impact. I am dwelling on this, especially with respect to the forthcoming sales seminar co-sponsored by Microsoft next week

In terms of product fit vs. market, we and a bunch of other early stage companies have created a new market which is now about 3 years old, but I would argue that the market is not quite there yet. In terms of value proposition, we have bet on that the customer will soon demand real tangible benefits from their social media engagements. In this respect they will be looking for hard numbers, and the best anyone can offer is sales leads, and this is exactly where our focus is right now. In terms of operational efficiency, we are not faring well suffering significantly due to resource constraints. This has created three options for us, (1) grow at current pace reinvesting revenues back into business, which is not ideal by any means, (2) take external equity investment and dilute the shareholding, which is not a problem as far as curent investors are concerned, and (3), a compromise between (1) and (2) with minimum dilution. I will be going into the weekend thinking about which direction we ought to focus on. Your thoughts on a postcard please!

Image source: Problogger.net

This article is inspired by a private tweet I received just now, which simply said “Can’t see the value…” when I queried a prospective customer “What’s stopping you use edocr.com for your group and the subsidiaries?”.

I am the first to acknowledge that not everyone will buy a product irrespective of how good it is. But I like a challenge. Let me know by the end of this short article, whether you agree or disagree with me.

Value of Social Networking

Do you see the value of Twitter, Facebook and Youtube? I assume you do. Each of these channels allow you to collaborate in slightly different ways, but with the same end point in mind, i.e. spread knowledge, improve your products and services, and ultimately generate new business.

1. Twitter – short messages for real-time collaboration.
2. Facebook – conversations through multiple objects from messages to pictures and video, almost a final destination, aggregating conversations from elsewhere.
3. Youtube – conversations around video.

Of course, there are many other channels offering conversations around a different object, e.g. Flickr around images.

edocr.com is about conversations around documents/pdfs. We do not discrimate what type of documents you upload from brochures, case studies and whitepapers to operating manuals and annual reports. As long as they are not confidential, edocr.com is the place for document related conversations.

Document Distribution

You could get a document distributed through limited number of ways, irrespective of how hard you try:

1. Printed – post or hand over at meetings, exhibitions and seminars.
2. Email to a known list of recipients.
3. Make it available through your website.

We like to be the 4th way of distributing a document. Let’s take a look at a document on your website. This is most likely to be a link on a web page.

Lets say that you tweeted the url to the web page where the document link exists. Let’s track my actions (and most likely yours):

1. I saw the link
2. Clicked and visited the web page
3. Found the document link among others and down loaded the document

This is probably where a typical visit would end. Let’s explore the same scenario on edocr.com

1. I saw your tweet and the link
2. Clicked and visited the web page which has the document displayed prominently and no other documents or non related text.
3. I can now read on line (use full screen if I wished), download, book mark to over 200 social networks, email to a list of addresses, leave a comment, rate, add my own tags to make it easier to find next time, or simply drop a private message to you (the publisher).

Item (3) makes it much easier to distribute and have a conversation, all without leaving the link I clicked from Twitter. At the same time, search engines starts indexing your document, which means the document is now found through search engines, social networks and edocr.com through tags, document directory and business pages (the document can be listed against your company profile among all your other documents, fully categorised).

If you like us even more, you could simply use us as your main hosting provider for documents, and embed them on your website (thumbnail), blog or e-newsletters.

Beyond the Value of Exposure

In addition, we could provide leads of who actually look at the document. Email addresses will only be released with user consent. You can determine how you would like to expose your documents, e.g. top documents available only to those giving consent.

Ranking of documents on edocr.com is determined by the level of user interactivity. See how your document performs against your competitors. Let others know that they can track your new documents through RSS feeds.

Do you still think there is no value in our service? We are very happy to receive your constructive criticism.

Image source: biojobblog.com

Below is a list of tips to improve your document being found through search engines, third party sites such as social networks and on edocr.com

1. Document Title: Ensure document title is more than two words, descriptive enough to justify content, and without hyphens or underscores (SEO)
2. Twitter: Set your twitter details for auto-tweeting (distribution)
3. Source URL: Edit document page to add your source URL (distribution)
4. Duplicates: Remove any duplicate documents to improve indexing by search engines (SEO)
5. Tags: Add all relevant keywords as tags to improve being found on edocr.com (distribution)
6. Category: Select the most appropriate document category. Request new categories to suit your needs (distribution)
7. Bookmark: Bookmark to as many social networks as possible, and request your colleagues and friends to do the same (distribution)
8. Email this: Send document link to relevant colleagues and friends by adding their email addresses. Upgrade to edocr Essential to email to large lists (distribution)
9. Rate: Rate your own documents and request your colleagues and friends to do the same.

These are simple to implement. If you want traction for your documents, make sure you implement the above 9 points. Give us a shout if you need more information on any of the above points.

The general belief is that this year’s election will be won by TV debate, but the impact the Internet will make should not be underestimated after the successful campaign run by Barak Obama during the last US presidential election. On the forefront of Internet campaigns, you find YouTube, Twitter and Facebook used by each of the main political parties to complement their own websites. Given that these are US products, one wonders why no British technology company has emerged as a key contender for social debate during the UK elections, which started today.

We are proud to bring your attention to edocr.com, a British tech company run from one of the two key campuses for science in the country, i.e. Daresbury Science and Innovation Campus, which has also emerged as a favourite drop-in location for campaigning politicians. edocr.com allows knowledge to be shared easily across the Internet through documents/pdfs. As we do not compete with YouTube, Twitter or Facebook, we would like all the contending political parties to consider us in their campaigns to spread their policies across the Internet. After all, documents/pdfs remain the main instrument in capturing details from one page to hundreds of pages, we believe strongly that we could provide a significant input to educating the UK electorate on what each party stands for during this election.

To kick start, we have setup a profile for each of the three main parties; at Labour Party, Conservative Party and Liberal Democrats, and have started a dialogue to handover these accounts. Tune to #UKElection2010 for new documents or set your reader for RSS Feed.

May you have the best information possible to make an informed voting decision!

Next Generation Broadband Access – Building the Case for Regional Investment took place on 22nd Feb 2010 in Manchester, co-hosted by Techcelerate on behalf of DC-KTN. Click on the thumbnail to access event leaflet.

Event was chaired by Philip Hargrave, CEO DC-KTN

• Speaker 1: How to deliver 10Gbit/s…or perhaps not? by Ian Vance, Amazing Communications; Chair of the UK Government’s Photonics Leadership Group
• Speaker 2: United Digital City by Shaun Fensom, Chairman Manchester Digital and Consultant to Manchester City Council
• Speaker 3: “Rising the Alert” losing and making money, the opportunity for Next Generation Networks and the region by NWIX Group Ltd

Outcome of the 3 break-out sessions were summarised by:

• Demand and benefits – Richard Spragg of AIMES
• Commercial by David Ashmore, Chairman Metronet
• Performance by James Blessing of  ISPA

All above videos were filmed by Flip Ultra HD camera (courtesy of salesforce.com). One film clip was corrupted, and the latter sessions were not fully filmed to preserve battery power, which eventually ran out before the event end.