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.

Have you ever tried to upload a movie file longer than 10 minutes to Youtube only to find out that they would reject it after upload is completed? Well I have. You cannot really blame Youtube for thier decision given that it is a free service. So the answer is to split the movie to files, each shorter than 10 minutes and upload.

If you are looking for a tool to split your movie, suggest you try SimpleMovieX for Mac. I downloaded the trial version, and it works.

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!).

Last night (12th Nov 2009), Manchester hosted the Insider Dealmakers Awards 2009, which I could not attend due to clashing with Northern StartUp 2.0 – Managing Growth event I hosted. Below is a list of the winners taken from Insidernews without any amendment.

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Daisy scoops Deal of the Year
The reverse takeover and AIM flotation of Nelson-based Daisy Communications was last night named Deal of the Year at the Insider Dealmakers Awards 2009 held at Manchester Central. The Lancashire company also took home the AIM Deal of the Year award for the £204m reverse takeover of Freedom4 Group in July. Corporate development director Steve Smith said the deal has enabled it to continue to eat into BT’s share of the telecoms market. “This award has been given for the float; but that has enabled us to go on and do four more deals, which have really enabled us to establish a platform and move ahead of the competition,” he said. “There is room for someone to become a competitor of BT and I think that’s us.” Also shortlisted for the Deal of the Year award was the management buyout of Air Energi; the sale of Garic to Bibby; Inflexion’s exit of Viking Moorings; and the management buyout of Formation Group. The award was sponsored by The Co-operative Bank.

Dealmaker of the Year
Winner Jonathan Boyers, KPMG
Shortlisted Jonathan Boyers, KPMG; Nick Davenport, Turner Parkinson; Paul Stringer, Cowgill Holloway; Andy Westbrook, Deloitte
The highly-coveted Dealmaker of the Year award is given to the corporate finance professional that has made the biggest impression on the community over the past year. Boyers has acted on number of deals, including the disposal of Pilkington France SAS and Pilkington (Schweiz) AG by Japanese giant Nippon Sheet Glass. He also advised the vendor on the sale of Lancashire-based security business Legion Group to AIM-quoted rival SectorGuard for £1.
Sponsored by Watson Moore
 
Turnaround Deal of the Year
Winner Styles & Wood – refinancing
Shortlisted Styles & Wood – refinancing; Focus DIY – company voluntary arrangement; Canterbury – acquired by JD Sports
Styles and Wood announced the bold plans in May, which involved raising £34.91m through share placings and debt for equity swaps. Chief executive Ivan McKeever said the move would provide the company with the funds to secure its position.
Sponsored by KBC Business Capital
 
New Technology Deal of the Year
Winner DXS – sale to Qiagen
Shortlisted Ascribe – public to private deal; Nanoco – reverse takeover; DXS – sale to Qiagen
Insider is always excited about technology deals and new technologies that can change how we live and work. This deal saw Manchester pharmaceuticals business DxS sold to European buyer Qiagen. The investment syndicate led by NVM Private Equity achieved a record return from the sale.
Sponsored by Citypress
 
Fund of the Year
Winner YFM Group – North West Business Investment Scheme
Shortlisted YFM Group – North West Business Investment Scheme; Enterprise Ventures – for Rising Stars Technology Fund; Alliance Fund Managers – Merseyside Special Investment Fund
The winning fund was launched in April 2003 to meet a need identified by the North West Regional Development Agency for a flexible fund to invest in high-growth businesses across the North West. It has had an exceptionally good year, achieving good returns for businesses like DxS.
Sponsored by North West Regional Development Agency
 
AIM Deal of the Year
Winner Daisy Communications
Shortlisted Formation Group – acquisition of divisions by Gresham; Nanoco – reverse takeover to achieve listing; Daisy Communications – flotation; Ascribe Software – public to private
Insider expected a quiet year for AIM deals, but there have been companies leaving the market as well as floating. Daisy’s audacious move to consolidate the telecoms reseller market marks an incredible run by the Nelson-based company.
Sponsored by WH Ireland
 
Small Deal of the Year
Winner Terraconsult
Shortlisted Individual Restaurant Company – fundraising; The Hut – acquisition of the assets of Zavvi; Terraconsult – management buyout
This deal, brokered by Nick Hulme Corporate Finance, had some complex issues to resolve despite being at the smaller end of the market. It saw a young quartet of shareholders to take over this Warrington-based environmental consultancy.
Sponsored by Handlesbanken
 
Private Equity Team of the Year
Winner LDC
Shortlisted LDC, Endless, ECI Partners, Gresham Private Equity, Inflexion Private Equity, Zeus Private Equity
Despite the tough market, LDC has continued buying, selling and backing businesses. In the North West, it has worked on the £20m management buyout (MBO) of Ansa Holdings and Independent Inspection Holdings from parent company Mavinwood, and backed the £5.9m MBO of Manchester-based retailer Modelzone.
Sponsored by Cobbetts
 
Banking Team of the Year
Winner Yorkshire Bank
Shortlisted The Co-operative Bank, Yorkshire Bank, Lloyds TSB, The Royal Bank of Scotland
It’s been easy to knock the banks, but this award recognises the solid teams of bankers and deal doers that exist in the region. Yorkshire Bank has backed such buyouts as ANSA Holdings, provided funding for marine services provider James Fisher and Sons, and arranged the debt for the buyout of health software group Ascribe.
Sponsored by MC2
 
Corporate Finance Advisory Team of the Year
Winner Cowgill Holloway
Shortlisted Clearwater Corporate Finance, KPMG, Deloitte, Rickitt Mitchell, Cowgill Holloway
Cowgill Holloway was one of the big winners at Insider’s Lancashire Dealamakers Awards and has continued that success at the North West ceremony. The firm really caught the eye with its work on the sale of Bury construction services business Garic to Liverpool-based Bibby Line Group.
Sponsored by Venture Finance
 
Corporate Law Firm of the Year
Winner Turner Parkinson
Shortlisted Addleshaw Goddard, DLA Piper, Cobbetts, Turner Parkinson, Eversheds
Nick Davenport’s team at Turner Parkinson have quietly built a reputation as fleet of foot players in the legal market and have also done well to launch a new online service called TP Deals, a weekly email update detailing new opportunities, which is sent to more than 4,000 business owners and professionals.
Sponsored by Merrill DataSite
 
Asset-Based Lender of the Year
Winner KBC Business Capital
Shortlisted Barclays, Lloyds TSB Commercial Finance, KBC Business Capital, Venture Finance
At a time when banks are demanding the toughest of guarantees, KBC regional director Mark Shackleton and his team have been active in the market this year. The firm provided an £8.8m asset finance line to North Wales firelighter and barbeque ignition product manufacturer Tiger Tim Products, and a £3.5m facility to Manchester-based distributor of kitchens and white goods Appliance 365.
Sponsored by Manchester Central
 
Transaction Services Team of the Year
Winner Deloitte
Shortlisted PKF, Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers, KPMG
Richard Bell’s 14-strong transaction services team at Deloitte has completed 11 transactions in the past 12 months, with a total deal value of £2.1bn. Completed transactions include the £10m acquisition of NGSS by NCC Group, and the £1.6bn acquisition of Somerfield by the Co-operative Group.
Sponsored by Centric Commercial Finance

This is a strange blog post, so please bear with me until I get going.

RAW2010, brain child of Mike Perls, the man known simply as “Perls of Wisdom” or the man who would bare all for a publicity stunt, or simply the CEO of MC2, was interested in adding few more speakers of my choice to his celebrity A-list to be heard by the North West’s top 350 entrepreneurs on 20th January 2010.

Further to my ramblings on Twitter today, I thought of blogging my top 10 choices. Before that, here is a brief about the event.

20 January 2010 will change the face of business in the North West forever. RAW 2010 will bring together the region’s top 350 entrepreneurs with 15 of the world’s best speakers. Open and frank discussion and debate will challenge received opinion on the issues that matter. The event marks the beginning of an ambitious and bold concept to create the most powerful entrepreneurial community in the UK to grow together over the following 12 months. RAW has already garnered the support of a number of key speakers including Theo Paphitis, Kanya King, Doug Richards, Shaa Wasmund and Imran Hakim. RAW is about a change in thinking, there will be no professional advisers, no hidden agenda and no tired opinions. The event will be held on 20 January 2010 at the Lowry, Salford Quays from 9:00am.

Here goes (not in any particular order, and locals and confirmed speakers excluded):

1. Michael Birch – Michael knows the ups and downs of tech entrepreneurship and I was inspired by his knowledge and experience gained through setting up and selling Bebo. Michael spent 8 hours with us at Tech Mission London 09 I organised in June 2009 and is the brain child behind ProFounders Capital.
2. Brent Hoberman – I am yet to meet Brent face to face, but have met regularly through twitter and emails. Brent is also an investment partner at ProFounders Capital and successfully exited from lastminute.com. ProFounders first investment is TweetDeck, a great product used by me and many thousands every day. Brent is well experienced in commercialisation of internet businesses and would be a valuable speaker to listen to.
3. Saul Klein – Saul has been instrumental in changing access to venture capital in the UK (and Europe). He has found the perfect filtration system through OpenCoffee and then through SeedCamp, which ensure that he has access to latest innovation without having to spend money looking for it. A clever guy indeed!
4. JP Rangaswami – As the head of BT Design, JP is well travelled and spoken at many key events and has accessed to latest innovation through BT Design.
5. Marc Benioff – Marc setup Salesforce.com and has driven it to become a key service platform for many technologies. Marc probably knows more than anyone else in commercialising Software-as-a-Service model right now.
6. John Chambers – As the CEO of Cisco, John is a well respected individual in Mergers & Acquisitions and have grown Cisco to become a commercial giant, touching everyone today through broadband revolution.
7. Larry Ellison – No one perhaps knows how better to crush the competition better than Larry. Founded and still leading Oracle to be No.1 in any market they operate is a mammoth achievment.
8. Biz Stone/Jack Dorsey – Founders of Twitter for creating a tool that makes a difference every day! The greatest internet product right now!
9. Reid Hoffman – As the founder of LinkedIn, Reid has created a product that break barriers in reaching executives of any organisation. Those who know, can find out emai addresses of anyone if they have a profile on LinkedIn. A great becoming bit fuzzy right now, but certainly will be there tomorrow forming part of the productivity suit.
10. Tony Blair – Irrespective of Gulf War, Tony was a great charismatic leader.

I am sure there are few others I would like to squeeze into the top 10. Do share who your top 10 is and let us know whether you plan to attend RAW2010

On behalf of Northern StartUp 2.0‘s StartUpOftheWeek programme, I caught up with Ben Hookway, CEO of Vidiactive to find out about his latest tech startup.

Manoj: What made you launch your company? Briefly, tell us about the company history and the management team.

Ben: EV Group (previously Enterprise Ventures) were already looking at the Vidiactive project before I came on board. EV had invested in Next Device, a company I had co-founded and sold to Mentor Graphics. I had kept in touch with EV and talked about a few ideas when Vidiactive came up. Having been primarily involved in the mobile industry, I saw the emerging trends in web TV as being an area of high potential – not unlike the mobile industry a few years ago. I felt that there was the opportunity to bring some innovative thinking into the space, while also being aware of the complexities of the value chain. Ken Tindell, the CTO, was already there as was Iolo Jones, the chairman. Ken and Iolo are both really strong talents in their space. Ken has founded and exited companies and brings great perspectives on opportunities. He never does things just because that’s the way the industry has always done it – he continually challenges assumptions and brings the best, freshest thinking to a problem. Iolo has been involved with the TV industry all his career and brings a wealth of contacts and a fast track to navigating the main players we encounter. He’s been instrumental in making sure we don’t solve the wrong problem really well! Having had a good experience with EV as an investor, and seeing the strength of the team and the potential of the space I made the decision to go all in with Vidiactive.

Manoj: What problem(s) do Vidiactive solve? Why do you think Vidiactive solve the problem better than others?

Ben: We solve 2 problems:

1. Wouldn’t it be great if you could browse for and find web video on your browser, but then watch it full screen on your TV in a full TV experience?  We allow you to watch almost any web video on your TV in a full screen viewing experience. Examples here are the obvious catch up services like iPlayer, 4OD, ITV viewer and so on. We also enable the large video sites like YouTube, but crucially we also easily enable more niche sites. So if you are into cycling tv, sailing tv, angling tv, or whatever, you can now watch it in a full screen experience on your TV rather than being hunched over the lap top. As an example, our development team watched the recent England game online – only they watched it in great quality on a 42″ plasma screen TV drinking beer and eating pizza, not huddled around a laptop.

2. Wouldn’t it be great if you could manage all your the web video on your own portal on your laptop or PC browser and have your preferences reflected on the TV screen automatically? There is a lot of video content available, and its growing fast. We allow people to watch all of this on TV, but we know that managing all of this with a TV remote is impossible. We link personal video management portals with TVs. This allows you to search, forward, mark, create playlists, receive recommendations, and so on using your browser. This is how people already behave – we don’t try and change that by getting them to do complex things with a TV. You manage from your browser and your choices appear on TV UI when you switch it on. For example, at work in your lunchtime you might come across 4 pieces of web video that you want to watch. You can mark them with the Vidiactive solution and when you get home and switch on your TV you have a notification that there are 4 new pieces of video for you to watch. You then use a simple remote to select the video and watch in full screen.

Manoj: Who are your key competitors? How do you differentiate from them?

Ben: We don’t believe there is anyone else implementing a solution like ours. There is however a lot of activity in the web video space. Most suffer from limitations. Many of them focus on a restricted set of video content creating a poor selection for users. The reasons for this vary, but we have unique web video playing technology which allows us to show just about anything in a proper TV format. So for example with competitive approaches, you might be able to see iPlayer, but not 4OD or YouTube or Hulu. With Vidiactive, you can see it all.  A lot of other solutions are focussed on cramming more and more interactivity and options onto the TV screen. My view is that this is the path of least resistance when you get 2 industries getting together. Internet + TV = desktop type experience on a TV screen. But this type of approach ignores 2 things;

a) The TV is a lean back experience. in the US, 50% of people who record programming on their DVR don’t skip the ads. TV is not inherently interactive.
b) TV screens are shared screens. When you share a screen you can’t a personal interaction experience

Its by understanding the above 2 points that we have come to what we believe is the most elegant solution.

Manoj: What stage are you in, in terms of execution of your plans? What are your plans for the next 12 to 18 months? What are the key challenges you are facing right now? What help do you need if any?

Ben: We’ve been going since the beginning of the year and are about to release the beta solution. We are in discussion with some major telecom and TV service suppliers about the solution, in addition to some very well known hardware companies.  We are also planning on co-exhibiting at CES in Las Vegas in January with a major technology company (to be announced!). Plans for the next 12 to 18 months are trial and then production roll-outs of the service. We are also looking at a further round of funding to accelerate the penetration into the market.

This week, I caught up with John Bickley to hear about the recent launch of Whamoosh! A new player in the personalisation business. Applying new technology to revolutionise an established market………

Manoj: What made you launch your company? Briefly, tell us about the company history and the management team

John: FaceTec (owned by me) has a patented facial recognition personalisation platform which enables a face in an uploaded image to be recognised & automatically (i) extracted and placed in another image (i.e. replacing the face of the character in the recipient image) & (ii) to add assets e.g. face paint, make-up, glasses etc to the donor image. FaceTec was approached by Moonpig 18 months ago and the two companies were close to signing a licensing deal for the platform, however my co-founder of Whamoosh! (Alan Oliver, who used to own his own greeting cards publishing company, Kamrok) and I decided a year last October that the market opportunity was good enough to launch our own web based online ‘print to demand’ personalised greeting card company. The business was launched 2 weeks ago.

The UK market is the largest in the world per capita (£1.5billion). Online personalised cards account for less than 1% of the market; Moonpig has c.90% of this market. The market does little consumer marketing, relying mainly on the vast no of distribution channels to drive sales. The market is mature, staid and ripe for innovation (especially in respect of the internet). Moonpig have validated the market opportunity and evangelised the personalising of greeting cards; they recently posted £20m t/o & £6.7m profit. Our own forecasts project this level of profitability.

My background started in the ‘80’s as managing director of CIC Video (a Paramount Pictures & Universal Studios JV) which I grew from £5>65m in 3 years. In the ‘90’s I came back North and joined the founders of Psygnosis a Liverpool based video games company which Sony bought for c£30m in 1993, the year after I joined. I went onto run the Worldwide publishing business with offices in eight countries and after backing the business into Sony PlayStation in the late ‘90’s became publishing exec for Sony PlayStation Europe. Since 2001 I have been involved in two University spin-outs, (i) Celoxica (Oxford University) where the management team raised £33million before it became an AIM listed company and (ii) in 2003 Genemation (The University of Manchester) where I raised £1.5 million. FaceTec acquired the IP and assets of Genemation in early 2008

Manoj: What problem(s) do your company solve? Why do you think your company solve the problem better than others?

John: It’s not so much a problem as an enabling solution. Like Moonpig we are giving customers the opportunity to personalise physical merchandise and deliver a service that supports and enhances that process. We have set out to make the Whamoosh! platform a superior customer experience than our competitors not only in terms of our USP but the way we deliver it and the service allied to it. Our USP is the Face-it! personalisation platform which we have licensed from FaceTec. It takes what Moonpig started to the next level i.e. the user who’s face is uploaded becomes the character in the greeting card. Moonpig are trying to emulate what we can do but frankly it’s very poor and I don’t think customers will be very impressed when they see what they can do with Face-it! cards. There are three patents behind the personalisation platform which in terms of the core algorithms and the platform itself have taken twelve years of University research and commercial development to evolve into what supports the Face-it! range. It means that there’s a very high barrier to entry.

Manoj: Who are your key competitors? How do you differentiate from them?

John: Moonpig; there are three others but they tend to be Moonpig-lite. Our main USP is the Face-it! platform, which we believe takes personalisation to the next level. We create our own designs; Moonpig relies heavily on licensing 3rd party designs. We have put a lot of effort in making user functionality and the user journey more intuitive and rewarding than our competitors e.g. users can access from within the site their images stored on Facebook & Flickr. Users can also store their favourite images on Whamoosh! and we have given the majority of our cards editable verses

Manoj: What stage are you in, in terms of execution of your plans? What are your plans for the next 12 to 18 months? What are the key challenges you are facing right now? What help do you need if any?

John:The web platform and print/fulfilment pipeline is live, so we already match what Moonpig and our other competitors can do as an end to end solution. We are focused on marketing; creating awareness and driving traffic to the site. We’re working with Weber Shandwick on PR and WebComms (a fellow Daresbury Science Park tenant) on SEO optimisation and PPC

As previously stated the focus is now on marketing the offer and driving traffic to the website; this will remain our major activity for the foreseeable future. As cash flow increases we’ll expand the art team and launch new greeting card ranges and product lines e.g. mugs, posters and calendars We may bring in investors in two stages, (i) early next year to pump prime the initial marketing push & (ii) in 18>24mths time to raise the investment in marketing & bring the printing/fulfilment pipeline in-house (probably based out of Guernsey) ready for a likely trade sale in 3>4 years. We believe Moonpig will be in play as an acquisition target within the next 18>24mths and that will trigger interest from any acquirer’s competitors in the sector and will then put Whamoosh! in play

Register at http://www.nwstartup20.co.uk/nov09

High growth technology companies go through many phases; in the case of edocr.com, we recognise five phases in our road map; development, commercial trials, launch, growth and dominance. Each phase present a challenge; from many options open, which one (or few) should be pursued to achieve the end market dominance and increase exit multiples. Getting this wrong could result in your business becoming mediocre and loose the competitive advantage it was seeking to establish.

We are lucky to have two of the most successful tech entrepreneurs to emerge from the North West over the last decade, sharing how they managed growth of their respective tech companies, and then led to successful exits.

Chris Allen co-founded laterooms.com, an on-line hotel booking site in 1999, which allowed web users to access top hotels at low prices ensuring that hotels can dispose their excess stock without overtly advertising they had empty rooms. The company was sold in 2007 to First Choice for £120 million in 2007, two years after a MBO.

In 1996, Steve Purdham co-founded Surf Control, a global provider of internet filtering software and listed the company on AIM two years after raising $13 million. The company was sold to US rival Websense in 2007 for a staggering £201 million. In 2007, Steve co-founded we7.com teaming up with Genesis front-man Peter Gabriel.

		Chris Allen – £108m exit Laterooms.com Co-founder of successful and highly profitable internet business startup LateRooms.com; finalist NW Entrepreneur of the year 2006; M.E.N. Small business of the year winner 2006; Sunday Times Tech Track 100 company (2005 number 16); lead £21 million MBO of LateRooms to develop for future sale and within 2 years the company was sold to First Choice for £108 million
		Steve Purdham – £201m exit SurfControl & CEO We7.com Founder & CEO of Surfcontrol; sold SurfControl to Websense for £201 m in 2007; latest venture is We7, a music download business that was set up with musician Peter Gabriel; Awards include IOD Director of the Year, Technology CEO of the Year, Technology Entrepreneur of the Year, and Techmark Personality of the Year.

Get in touch if you wish to sponsor this event or take up the single 20-minute Start4Slaughter slot

I just got back from the inaugural event of UK India Business Council Next Gen North West, which Imran Hakim arranged on behalf of the Board on the textile industry at the University of Bolton. The event was well attended, and included some of the hottest names in the textile industry in the north west of England, including Tariq Marfani (Tarameen #850 staff), Neeraj Takiar (Eternity Clothing), Charles Wood (Baltex), Adrian Tracey (Future Textiles), Ashok Kallumpram (Premier Textiles), Andrew Borman (Helston Forensics) and Mark Pedley (Smartlife Technology). Notably absent was Raj Ruia, but he was represented by the General Manager of Richard Haworth. Vikas Shah (Swiscot) also missed the event.

The event covered the subject in detail from history to new opportunities. Mark Pedley introduced smart cloths, whilst prof Subhash Anand entertained the audience.

The event was organised in association with number of other organisations and included an exhibition.

I believe I was the only one to tweet the event. Click on the thumbnail to access my tweets. Please do ignore the tweets of others, as their conversation was not relevant to this event.

You can also access the full document below:

Once in a while I come across an application which is so simplistic, you almost get the value proposition immediately. Posterous is such an application. The other application is of course Twitter.

Most of us who operate closer to leading edge and open in terms of sharing knowledge tends to sign up to most of the new services that become popular. Then we move on unless they are applications worth sticking with.

If I explore my social map (excluding edocr.com for this discussion), in order of usage right now:

1. Twitter with multiple clients, so they are worth noting:

a. TweetDeck – multiple distribution and competitor analysis – I am less of a fan of the latest release, which seem to loose panels/columns upon reboot
b. Tweetie – managing channels
c. Power Twitter – see pics and videos, etc
d. Co-Tweet – see who follows which of my accounts, and all tweets in one place

2. Posterous – it’s easy to dump anything that comes across my way
3. Facebook – because people comments on my tweets distributed through FB
4. Linkedin – because people wants to connect with me – it used to be the other way round few years back
5. YouTube – embedding videos against company profiles on edocr

So, if I use posterous, what’s the purpose of this blog? If I discipline myself, posterous will be a dumping ground and this blog would capture my thoughts in detail. Twitter is used entirely different way to any other application I have come across, and therefore worth covering in detail some other time.

In terms of finding a purpose for this blog, should I speak about building edocr.com; or startup 2.0, the ecosystem for tech startups or something else? I wish I know the answer. The answer will become evident, if I, once again start blogging.