Category Archives: Techcelerate

Mini Seedcamp London – Where are the northerners?

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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.

2010 London Mini seedcamp investor mentors 2010 London Mini Seedcamp CompaniesFirst 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.

Videos of DC-KTN Next Generation Broadband Access – Building the Case for Regional Investment

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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.

Next Generation Broadband Access - Building the Case for Regional Investment - 22 Feb 2010 Manchester eOffice

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.

Strategy for maintaining multiple calendars

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Life was easier when you had only one calendar to deal with. If you are like me, then you have made your life difficult by having too many unconnected calendars, causing misery! Here are a list of my calendars:

  1. iCal (MacBook)
  2. Google
  3. iPhone
  4. Salesforce.com
  5. Tungle.com

I have added Tungle.com today, so that others who want to schedule a meeting with me could do so by finding out my availability. My tungle account is at http://tungle.me/manojranaweera

The trick to all this is being able to sync. Tungle failed to sync with my iCal after many attempts even after Tungle crew came to my aid. My way round this is to sync with my personal Google Calendar, which syncs with my iCal. I still like to think iCal is the master calendar, as it syncs well with my iPhone.

I am yet to sync with my salesforce.com account. Here is my thought process when I am adding an event or an appointment to my calendars.

  1. Add it to my personal iCal Calendar, which has three calendars splitting my interests: edocr, Techcelerate and Personal.
  2. Copy all relevant ones to my Google personal calendar (not shared) on iCal which syncs with Google and then with Tungle
  3. Copy relevant ones to two public Google calendars, these being, UK Tech Biz Events and NWDC Calendar

An event such as the one planned for 24th Feb will have four entries on my iCal as it shows the same (copied 3 times) against my iCal master, Google personal, NWDC calendar and UK Tech Biz Events. Irrespective of the clutter, it works.

What this shows is that life is full of mini strategies and plans. Who thought I would need a strategy for maintaining my calendars? Next is to think about integrating Salesforce.com for edocr.com. In this process I must thank Google, which provides the means for achieving synchronisation across many different platforms.

Update 1:

Just realised that I can simplify the process by changing my Google Personal Calendar to be the master. There is no longer a need for own calendar within iCal. Just wondering whether this can be further simplified.

Why am I rebranding Northern StartUp 2.0?

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Northern StartUp 2.0 has come a long way since our humble start in November 2006. Whilst I enjoy running it, it has strained my resources heavily. Unless something is done, it’s sustainability is questionable in the medium to long run.

So here are my reasons for repositioning:
1. It must generate income to compensate effort.
2. Lacks the collaboration between new and established technology companies:
- Customers of early technology products are technology companies
- Opportunities in joint ventures
- Opportunities in acquisitions
3. It does not provide a mechanism for southern and overseas tech companies to break into the north west
4. No attention given to key segments such as mobile or SaaS through out the year
5. Insufficient knowledge transfer from established to new
6. No staff

Above will be addressed through:
1. Membership based on revenues.
2. Two strands, below £5m revenues and above. More opportunities for collaboration, setup joint ventures and help with acquisitions
3. Bespoke events and initiatives for southern and overseas companies to break in to the region
4. Focus groups with activities through out the year for technology segments
5. Active programs of match making for knowledge transfer
6. Membership income will eventually support number of full time employees.

The rebranded and repositioned organisation (techcelerate) will be focusing on both small and large technology companies. At the bottom end, the focus will remain on the needs of tech entrepreneurs. At the top end, the focus would be on accelerating the growth.

Lot to work out, but the future looks exciting. Come and join the ride!

Rebranding – Budget vs no budget, freedom vs. constraints

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It is no surprise to my regular readers that Northern StartUp 2.0 is currently going through a rebranding and repositioning exercise. Whilst there is a lot to talk about why this is taking place, I thought of highlighting few discussions I had on Twitter about rebranding and repositioning with an international software house which has also gone through a rebranding exercise recently.

Here is my situation: no budget but total freedom.
Here is the situation of the software house: large budget (assumption) but constraints due to history and stakeholders.

With my total freedom, and given I am lazy (or clever, depending on your viewpoint), I sought the answer from Twittersphere. What should our brand be, both in terms of name, logo and strap line.

After some deliberations, Katrina Delargy (tech entrepreneur) came up with the winner which was then refined by Tim Dempsey (investor cum service provider). A new brand was born, Techcelerate. The logo concept was forwarded by Ed French (venture capitalist), which is now going through few changes to make it look liked it has been designed by WPP. Strapline will almost be “Tech Business: Accelerated”. Final change for strapline came through email via James Crawford (service provider). All those who were involved in this process were our customers. Techcelerate is a brand that could be easily understood by a first timer without knowing what services we actually delivered. A real winner, in my humble opinion!

In the case of the software house with euro 394 million revenues and 3500 employees, it was not straight forward as tapping into the wisdom of Twittersphere. They have adopted a similar line to most large brands, that is, the name does not mean anything unless the brand is built. Take Apple for example, who would know it is about a computer unless you have come across the product before. Part of the large budget can be spent on communicating and establishing the new brand and its values.

It is important that whether you intend to enable people to buy gold, computers, phones, houses or food, that your brand sits well with your target demographic. Eventually the ability of a company to have people recognise the brand without even having to think is going to benefit them in the long run, but this is crucially based on ensuring that the brand itself is accessible, memorable and geared towards the sort of people who will attach themselves to it in an act of brand loyalty. “Microsoft” is quite a straightforward, no-nonsense name, but “Apple” says casual, cool and fun-loving, and this style is reflected in their product range, a better fit than Microsoft’s overly serious branding which Apple themselves have riffed on in adverts in recent years.

This article is not about showing who is clever, but it is to show that above scenario is a fact of life. It is usual for big companies to spend significant resources in rebranding, but tools like Twitter makes the smaller companies come up with winners with no budget! Just like large companies test the brand with its customers (again at cost), Twitter allows us to do it whilst the brand is being designed.

The power of social media is immense, if you learn how to tame it…

Rebranding - Budget vs no budget, freedom vs. constraints

Next Generation Broadband Access – Building the Case for Regional Investment

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On 15th Jan, I attended an Insider Breakfast event held at Bridgewater Hall hosted by Michael Taylor and his team. Read Insider – Morning with who’s who of Manchester Corporate Sector for my coverage of the event. Following on from there, I am running an event on the Next Generation Broadband Access jointly with DC-KTN. Event details are below and I hope you will be able to join us on the 22nd Feb at eOffice Manchester. Please visit DC-KTN to register for this free event.

This event gives you the opportunity to have your say on what the future of Broadband services should be in the north west, a highly topical subject at the moment in the light of the “Digital Britain” report. Whether provider or potential user of this new level of broadband service, we would very much welcome your views and feel that you could contribute greatly to the success of the event. At the same time, this provides you with the opportunity to shape the future of broadband to meet the needs of your business

BACKGROUND

As the speed of broadband has risen over the past ten years, services available have also kept pace, with email and web browsing giving way in bandwidth terms to music downloads, live TV, interactive gaming and peer-to-peer services. In turn, it’s these new services that have also placed higher demands on broadband access for higher download speeds and increased mobility. It is becoming clear that current mainstream access speeds, whatever the operator or technology, are unlikely to be able to provide the variety and quality of service that consumers will require in the future. A number of operators are beginning to invest in improved access technologies (fibre to the home and WiMax, for example) but there is not yet a clear business case either for a particular technology or for investment overall, nor is there a clear view of the services that users will require once the higher speeds are available.

THE FORUM

With 73% of people now feeling that broadband is as important a utility as electricity or water the views of users about future services are important. This forum provides broadband users the opportunity to hear about the future for broadband access and services and to give input on their interests and needs. This event is one of several being held in regions of the UK and the output will be used to inform service providers, government and regulators about the services and packages that people will want as higher-speed access becomes generally available. Our presenters will set out their view of the future for broadband technology and services. Participants will then be invited to join the debate to help to formulate a view of the future landscape of services by joining one of three facilitated workshop groups. The information recorded from these groups will be combined with output from other regions and will be used to inform the industry debate on the technologies, architectures and industry structures needed to deliver future services.

Programme: 

Chair: Philip Hargrave, CEO DC-KTN

12:30-12:45 Registration | tea and coffee
12:45-13:30 Lunch and networking
13:30-13:40 Introduction | Philip Hargrave, CEO DC-KTN
13:40-14:10 How to deliver 10Gbit/s…or perhaps not? | Ian Vance, Amazing Communications; Chair of the UK Government’s Photonics Leadership Group
14:10-14.30 Manchester: United Digital City | Shaun Fensom, Chairman Manchester Digital and Consultant to Manchester City Council
14:30-14.45 Policy changes we need – John Ridd (yet to confirm)
14:45-14:00 Refreshments
15:00-15:45 Facilitated Workshop groups: Benefits (Dennis Kehoe – AIMES) | Commercial (David Ashmore – Metronet) | Performance (James Blessing – ISPA)
15.50-16.30 Reports back, plenary discussion & close
16:30 Close

The DCKTN and Northern StartUp 2.0 are jointly hosting this event in Manchester

Northern StartUp 2.0 Website is Under Attack!

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For the last five weeks, Northern StartUp 2.0 website has been under attack by spammers. The spamming was related to opening accounts, about 5 every hour, which has resulted in over 1000 new accounts. Less than 1% of these accounts have actually added any comments, but if they all did, the site will be overwhelmed by spammed comments.

Here are some facts about the site:

  • Drupal 5.3
  • Accounts are needed to comment

Based on various suggestions via Twitter and from Ixis IT (previous website development team) and CTISN (current website development team), following changes were made:

  • Captcha
  • Recaptcha
  • Mollow
  • Akismet
  • Must complete all 12 fields to register with tricky new feild to catch the spammers
  • Admin must approve account creation – all new accounts are blocked but this activity creates additional emails for me to address

None of the above had any impact on spam account creation! All of us are running out of ideas and wonder whether you have any further thoughts on this issue. All help is most welcome.

Don’t forget, the issue is not to identify which is spam and which is real, but to stop this happening altogether.

Update 1:

With an immediate effect, account creation has been suspended. If you wish an account, please get in touch with your phone no. and email address.

Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience

Best regards
Manoj

Tech CEO Round Table Discussion

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I (NS20) hosted a round table discussion yesterday at Horwath Clark Whitehill’s offices in Manchester. This was an by invitation only session with no none tech CEOs. Prior to the kick off, Ed French of EV Group (venture capitalist) dropped in to have coffee, and later on, Steve Livingston from HorwathCW dropped into join the conversation.

The participants were:

  1. Duncan Stockdill – Javelin CRM
  2. Katrina Delargy – Tiyga
  3. Craig Taylor – Thingymail
  4. Richard Francis – Makeurmove.com
  5. Manoj Ranaweera – edocr.com
  6. John Brickley – Whamoosh.com

Whilst the contents of what was discussed remains confidential, there are few issues worth bringing out in summary form:

  • Venture capital – one company is actively looking for capital, one do not want capital and others do, but feeling not ready to pitch.
  • Invstment readiness – everyone except the company who does not want capital, felt that an investment readiness programme would help them give the confidence to pitch and take venture capital seriously
  • Boot strapping – it came out some of us are experts at boot-strapping. There were lot of ideas exchanged including how to survive with small grants
  • Tool kits – More and more of us were using free and low cost  SaaS products to increase operational efficiency
  • Cash collection – paypal was seen as the worst solution for cash collection. Credit card payment seem to be the way forward, but recurring payments seem to be causing problems for some.
  • Everyone was willing to help each other.
  • Lack of a full management team seem to be a problem for most except in the case of one.
  • Some felt survival was the first objective, but all agreed that the focus this year is revenue growth.
  • All agreed the opportunity was worthwhile repeating

I (NS20) will be looking to host another simiar event in April. If you are interested in attending, drop me a line for consideration. Rules, if you are looking for them, here goes…

  • My decision is absolute, but I can be bribed – beer is not sufficient!
  • You must be generating revenues (that means clients and not advertising) and have a commercially available product
  • No NDA will be signed
  • What is discussed will remain confidential except a summary output such as above
  • It will help if you are a paying member of NS20

Insider – Morning with who’s who of Manchester Corporate Sector

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As Michael Taylor, Editor of the North West Insider introduced me at the yesterday’s Insider Breakfast event, “where’s Manoj, a short chap, ah there he is”. Luckily, Sean Fensom, Chairman and Digital Veteren of Manchester Digital later came to my rescue as he is shorter than me. At this point, I felt a whole lot better, having cocked up my earlier question to the panel, which Dave Carter, Head of Manchester Digital Development Agency responded by saying that if we want help, talk to the VCs. Unfortunately, there are only two VCs in town (EV Group and YFM Private Equity). They are as risk-averse as hell, unless its their ideas (sorry guys – bit unfair I know! Julian, loves your rough 2010 look!). Later, Michael tweeted the following, perhaps thinking he offended me (no chance there, Mike)

@manojranaweera #ff top chap. Loads of energy, ideas and charming eccentricity

At least, Michael has been consistent in there. This is the second time, and the only person to my knowledge to call me eccentric. As you can see from the thumbnail (first one), at least I am with good company (2nd paragraph right hand).

The North West Insider May 2009 - Editorial - A Special Plea Insider Digital Event Report 15 Jan 10 Manchester Vanguard House Brochure

Ok, those who were misfortunate enough to miss the excellent event organised by Insider Digital Team, which was well attended, here (second above) is a Twitter Report courtesy of moi!

What I also realised is that there are some hard networkers in Manchester, whom you would see attending many of the city’s key events. Here is a list in no particular order:

  • Phil Jones – UK Managing Director, Brother – a man who thinks we still need a printer (actually I own two)
  • Awan Moneeb – a man in demand – Chairman of Manchester Chamber of Commerce
  • Graham Bond – Baker Tilly – must find a way to do business with Graham as he is everywhere!
  • Steve Bennett – ex IoD – nice chap!
  • Tom Cheesewright – a man who keeps changing brands, And Digital

I would like to share some of the discussions I was part of, if that’s OK with you:

  1. Manchester Digital – has a desire to connect with all the technology based groups in the city. This aspect is currently managed by NWDC (chaired by Andrew Disley), which I am a member of. Other than NS20 and Manchester Digital all other members of NWDC run software user groups except for GeekUp (Andrew’s baby!), which is a collective of software developers (and friends).
  2. Sharp Project – I am yet to have a proper chat with Sue Webster who runs Sharp project, but question remains whether she has ambitions to open up her well-funded facilities to product-based technology companies that NS20 champions.
  3. Creatives and NS20 – This year, NS20 will put effort into building stronger relationships with other organisations. RedVision promised to give me an insight to digital media – I must follow this up!
  4. Broadband issue – This is currently a hot issue in Manchester, and it would not be right, if I do not poke my nose into this discussion. In addition, being a partner and a tenant of Daresbury Science and Innovation Campus (DSIC), I would like DSIC to be a major stakeholder in this discussion, due to DSIC hosting a Media Access Point, the forthcoming Vanguard House (third thumbnail), and current 85 or so high-tech tenants. I also believe that Northernnet and other stakeholders have not engaged with the business community in sufficient context to understand their needs. I have been promised through twitter that marketing of Media Access Points will commence next month.
  5. Insider and NS20 – There is a desire to do something together. I just wish that respective parties (one being me!) sit down and firm up what, when and where? Talk is cheap, only actions matter! (Take the hint Mr. Taylor!)

Based on some further discussions outside the Insider Breakfast (I enjoyed it, let me in next time as well Michael!), there are few other areas I need to poke my nose at (when would someone pay for all these nose poking is not clear):

  1. Building a VC culture. It seems the city has ambitions to attract VCs from elsewhere to setup base here. Did you know that NS20 brought VCs from Internet Capital (New York, USA), Advent Partners, DFJ Esprit (twice), Eden Ventures, Seedcamp, Difference Engine/North East Finance, Doughty Hanson to Manchester without any public sector spending? The responsibility for this activity seems to be given to a specific body (not sure which part of this was confidential so better not spill out the beans in case they did not know it themselves). Plus they wish to make existing VCs less risk-averse! According to Steve Livingston, most of the VCs that comes through his accountancy practice are not interested in technology companies. If Manchester wants NS20′s help, we will be happy to help in educating the VC sector.
  2. Businesses and IT. It seems that some non IT businesses are bit fedup of hearing too much about the city’s focus on creative media. And they seem to be in the dark about how to take advantage of new technologies to improve their bottom line. Sounds like an opportunity for NS20. I think there is a way we could address this whilst helping our budding tech entrepreneurs. More to come later.

As usual, drop your thoughts here please.