EIPP (e-invoicing) and StartUp World

Just a quick additional note to introduce the speakers and panel for the event taking place on 14th May at KPMG Manchester. I am still awaiting for potentially 2 more speakers and panel members. They would be a bonus to the exceptional people speaking on the 14th. The event has two focus areas, these being: the relevance of Silicon Valley and Investment Readiness. Philip Hemstead, co-Founder of Yuuguu, Scott Leonard-Morgan, Partner at Heller Ehrman based in San Francisco and London and I will share our thoughts and experience on the relevance of Silicon Valley.

In addition to PhilipH and ScottLM, the panel discussions will be joined by Scott Fletcher, Founder and CEO of Plus market listed ANS Group, and Malcolm Stewart, Managing Director of Liverpool Ventures.

Click on each image to view the profile of each speaker and panel member:

Sign up today to avoid disappointment later.

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Last year, I attended a number of sessions organised by Lee Strafford to learn and if possible engage with his project NetStart (previously called Project Sahara). Today, I learned that after much time investment in engaging with Regional Development Agencies, Universities, Developers and other like minded individuals, Lee has come to the conclusion, that no one is willing to look at the bigger picture of creating an ecosystem and radically change. Let’s take a step back. My understanding of Project Sahara was:

• Create an environment where multiple startups can thrive within an ecosystem.
• The ecosystem will include, entrepreneurs, investors, deal makers and service providers including mentors.
• There will be a fund set aside to invest in startups similar to Y-Combinator or Seedcamp
• NetStart will take a small shareholding as of the case with above two entities
• A web services platform will be developed to help startups overcome scalability and back-up issues.

I had a problem with above, as Lee’s strategy involved in changing the mindsets of RDAs, Universities, etc before working with startups. Too ambitious and cloudy in my mind. Lee also perhaps believed that having undergone the pain of starting up, growing and exiting, he understood the startup requirements. I cannot recall Lee ever asking what I need for edocr. Bit like Oracle saying how great they are without asking how Oracle can help edocr or anyone it is speaking to. This is something I discussed with StewartT from Sun Microsystems many times. SunM been an enterprising player, the programme was about selling to startups. Through dialogue Stewart changed his engagement to resolving problems startups have. By doing so, the community has accepted him and is engaging with SunM in a positive manner. edocr is no different to any other startup in the web 2.0 domain. So, if I am Lee, these would be the services that would make the most impact:

• Funding - provide seedcorn funding or work with the startup to secure seedcorn funding.
• Team - provide mentors, interim managers or staff to strengthen the senior team
• Product - provide a mechanism to validate and improve product
• Go-to-market strategy - help fine tune strategy as well as make vital first introductions

Last thing in my mind is a web services platform, which may relieve my back-office pains. If I can have expertise that help me generate revenues quicker and more, that would be where I would put my concentration. Yes, back-office functions are important, but startups can live with these problems until traction is achieved.

I also believe that Lee and other must have known that it is damn hard to change the RDAs and Universities. It would have been much easier to help number of startups achieve traction and then use them as case studies to lure RDAs and Universities. This is exactly what Lee hopes to do in the future. But I also felt from Day 1, this was all about building the web services platform. And guess what? This is exactly what Lee is working on! Do I need this platform? Perhaps not! Lee has telcos and other large players in mind as clients.

To conclude, NetStart is becoming a product company - quite a difference from the initial discussions. Lee has significant experience of taking a startup and building it to a UK brand. I wish Lee best wishes with NetStart, which is strangely enough another startup.

I hope above does not come out as criticism of Lee and NetStart. I like Lee and both of us love to see the region developing an ecosystem for digital startups. My contribution to this is through Northern StartUp 2.0, where incremental change is achieved. I have no vision of changing the region to become another Silicon Valley. All I am trying to do is get few people together once a month and allow them to talk to each other, so that great startups such as edocr can be born!

References:

• Project Sahara # 1 - Kick off meeting

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My brain was in an explosion this afternoon, whilst accompanying my family and a friend on a shopping trip to Ellesmere Port, off M56. This all started due to two conversations I had yesterday. I linked the two conversations with my experience of ebdex and edocr and devised a methodology for launching a new business for £25,000. For this to work, I need two ingredients:

1. The domain expertise must be present in-house. Ideally, the proposed startup CEO must have this expertise and must be passionate about it.
2. It must be easy for me to understand quickly and relate to a pain I have, so that I become the customer.

Then it is my task to quickly evaluate the possibility of its potential:

1. It must appeal to viral marketing
2. It must be suitable for a free and fee charging pro model
3. It must be simple to understand, if not, then find a way to simplify it
4. It must be suitable for web 2.0 treatment, if not, then find a way

Having done that, then quickly sketch out the proposition - real fag packet stuff, complete contradiction to MBA strategising. The next stage is to work out whether it will meet the following criteria:

1. Can the alpha product be developed for under £10,000? Alpha would be the product that will be offered free forever.
2. Can the beta product be developed for under £10,000? Beta would be the pro version offered at a no-brainer fee, allowing revenue generation.

Allocate further £5,000 for evangelising and administration. The £20,000 development budget does not allow all bells and whistles product, but a product that works and able to attract revenues. The bells and whistles can come second after concept is proven with Alpha and Beta. So the total cost to launch is £25,000.

As a new entity the business will have zero value, but taking future growth potentials into consideration, it is not unfair to assume a valuation of £100,000. This gives the investor a 25% stake of the business and possible role of Non Executive Director or Non Executive Chairman. The business must be able to generate significant value within 2 years to provide an exit for investor. What return the investor would get is anybody’s guess, but expects to be far higher than an average investment. Of course the whole thing could go flop which applies to any investment whether you invest into a startup of a FTSE100 company.

In this scenario, I see my role as Doer and never as the CEO. As the Doer, the role of COO is more appropriate with 9 to 12 months part-time role. I would also develop the product through my new company evigon, which in turn will manage resources from my ever growing Northern StartUp 2.0 community. Or yes, for this service, I would also demand 25% of the company. The CEO would be given 50% of the company, perhaps mixture of options and equity.

What is the downside to all this? Yes, the investor could loose £25,000. I will not be able to recover my investment (time and energy) through sale of 25% equity. The same could apply to the CEO.

Above is given for guidance only, as no two circumstances are the same. Could above be applied to e-invoicing/EIPP? Yeap! Don’t be silly, when OB10 spent $30 million, how could you launch for £25,000? Yes, it is possible. Of course, you should not compare like for like, but this can be done. If you are a developer, you can in fact do this with zero cost as you would be developing it. But what I stated here include paying for development time.

Anyone out there got multiple of £25,000 to test the model? Here is a real test for you - the cost of development and running of edocr to date, excluding time costs is less than £1000. This was achieved mainly due to in-house development capability. If the model described here was applied, it would certainly come within the £25,000.

In case you are wondering, there are others out there thinking the same. And all this work could be done in the UK without having to outsource to India, Russia or anywhere else.

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Currently, I am inspired by two individuals:

Rhys Jones of Accountis, sanoodi and edocr

I like his concept of having a pipeline of companies. His sweet spot is in setting up and nurturing a startup to revenue generation. He acknowledges that others are better experienced to turn these startups in to high growth companies. He has so far exited from two companies successfully. With number of other startups under his belt, his game now is to accelerate this process.

Whilst I cannot demonstrate the same level of success, I have now setup three complementary businesses; edocr (document interactivity platform), eveo (event management using edocr for event collaboration) and evigon (consultancy and advisory services providing number of services using eveo and edocr, where possible).

Simon Grice of ideas.org and mashupevents

For some weird reason, Simon’s strategy makes sense. He has now consolidated his interests into a single organisation, ideas.org. This company services all of his other interests - the core team and therefore core competencies reside with a single organisation - a simple yet a very powerful concept. Unfortunately, I am behind in replicating this strategy.

edocr, eveo and evigon are three separate entities with different people involved. If the deal (currently in discussion with key member) goes through with evigon, evigon can provide accountancy services for all three entities. All three entities uses the same legal counsel. What is missing is development capabilities Simon has in-house.

My friendly development team is Ixis IT, who are inundated with projects. There is no way for me to bring them on board, as they are very successfull in their own right. So, the game plan has to be to develop this expertise over time. Outsourcing will never work unless resources are dedicated to serve my interests. One draw back with this strategy is that unlike for Simon, software development is an alien process for me. Looks like it will take a while for me to work this one out! Any suggestions

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It has become very easy to setup a legal entity, and I thought of sharing some of the activities you need to undertake if you are thinking of starting a business. Here goes:

1. Decide on company name.
2. Check companies house to ensure the availability of the company name.
3. Make sure the URL is available.
4. Register the company - I used Company4less, which costs £20
5. Register the URL - I used 123reg
6. Register for VAT - takes about a month
7. Open bank account - takes an hour with HSBC - it helps if they know you
8. Find an accountant - this will be a service that evigon will provide - watch the space
9. Find a legal adviser - can help if you are in the North West
10. Find an office - if you are a digital startup in the North West, I recommend Daresbury Innovation Centre. If you wish an office in Manchester, I recommend eOffice
11. Design a logo - plan to use logomaker. Any suggestions?
12. Get the website up quickly - recommend Ixis IT, if you want a great site using Drupal CMS.
13. Find a hosting partner for your website - again, recommend Ixis IT

Nothing new there, but the process is quite simple. What is harder is choosing a company name! It is most likely, the URL associated with your first choice will not be available. Be prepared to burn several hours in finding a URL that exists. My constraints were:

1. Company name must start with an “e”
2. Must be a cracking name

The lesser the constraints, the easier your job will be.

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I created evigon with two thoughts in mind, these being:

• Provide a vehicle for my advisory and consultancy activities
• Allow other services to be provided through a flexible entity

It is very early days to write too much about evigon, but I hope I will have some news to share shortly. Until then…

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ebdex was formed on 25th Nov 2004 with the idea of disrupting the EIPP market dominated by Accountis and OB10. To be fair, OB10 and Accountis had very low market penetration then (and same is true now). But they were the best examples an ambitious startup could look upon. Causeway’s Tradex and Burns e-Commerce’s Bex were ignored due to various reasons. Number of other models were studied including Ariba, Xign, Harbour Payments, Esker, etc.

At the time, the idea was to develop a product that harnessed the best of Accountis and OB10. The key ingredient taken from OB10 was the hub based architecture. From Accountis, it was the purchase-to-pay and supply-to-cash documents with built-in BACStel-IP payment engine. Accountis was really helpful in guiding us to understand how to build the ebdex Document Exchange. And they did not even know they were helping us.

But fundamental to all this is Mr. Mark Morahan of Morahan UK Ltd (plus Morahan International, etc). I bought in to Mark’s vision of the electronic document exchange concept whilst completing my Executive MBA at Manchester Business School. Mark’s vision was to develop an exchange (he called this MI Document Network) that was simple to use and understand. The idea was to charge both parties of a transaction (supplier and buyer) 25p with no set-up fees or annual maintenance fees. Quite the opposite to Accountis and OB10, not to mention the rest of the market! However, whilst it sounds great on paper, delivery was quite a different story. And this remains the fundamental problem with the concept of e-invoicing to date!

Having studied the incumbents’ models, ebdex looked at ways to innovate and therefore differentiate from the rest with the idea of achieving a sustainable competitive advantage over time. I believe we found a way, which I have not yet seen in any of the products in the market today. Unfortunately, just like Morahan UK Ltd, the company I outsourced to developed ebdex Document Exchange, Affno, could not deliver the technology! Whilst nothing good can be said about Suren and his Affno, various software associations in Sri Lanka continue to promote their works by granting them prestigious awards! How ironical is that?

At the end of 2006, it was the crunch time for ebdex. Do I accept £250,000 debt finance and continue to burn cash hoping Affno will eventually deliver or cut the losses and walk away? At the end, I took the wise decision and accepted that its time to stop beating a dead horse.

In 2007, I attempted to turnaround ebdex into a niche consultancy, but found this extremely difficult due to the past finances of ebdex. What I should have done was to terminate ebdex at the end of 2006 and create a new entity to exploit advisory opportunities. I was emotionally attached to the ebdex brand - with the hope that one day, I will be able to rebuild ebdex document exchange. Letting go was hard. But recently, someone has forced me to make this decision. So it is time to say good bye to ebdex. In the short term, ebdex will remain as a dormant company.

Looking back, I learnt a tremendous amount from ebdex, especially to do with outsourcing. It’s time to let go…Goodbye ebdex…

Technorati Tags: Mark Morahan, Ariba, Xign, JP Morgan Chase, American Express, Esker, Accountis, OB10, ebdex Document Exchange, ebdex, Rhys Jones, Affno, Suren Kannangara

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Are you a startup or early stage digital technology company? Or have you got a killer idea with some early code you want to tell others about? Are you looking for seedcorn or second round of funding, team members, mentors, partners, and/or ideas to commercialise your product? Do you need help writing the business plan? Or do you just like to hang out with startups? Have you got loads of money and love to invest in startups? Do you provide support services (e.g. PR)? Are you a blogger or journalist looking for breaking news? If so, register now to secure a place at NW StartUp 2.0 DEMO.

It’s a free event run back-to-back with Mashup Manchester, giving opportunity for Northern startup and early stage software companies as well as those individuals who might have early stage prototype or an idea they want to demonstrate and/or share with other attendees.

Programme: 5pm to 6:15pm on 6th December 2007
Venue: Sun Microsystems, City Gate, Cross Street, Sale, M33 7JF (click here for map)
Condition: Must vacate premises by 6:30pm unless you have registered for catered Mashup Manchester event on Content 2.0. Failure to honour this condition will result in requesting immediate payment. A White Knight has stepped in to sponsor few individuals. If interested e-mail manoj@ranaweera.name.

Companies accepted so far for DEMO:

1. Yuuguu - also presenting at Mashup Manchester same night
2. ShareNow - also presenting at Mashup Manchester same night
3. edocr - Update since presenting at Mashup Manchester 1
4. NetRecords
5. Vagueware
6. Meecard - Update since presenting at Mashup Manchester 1

Programme for Mashup Manchester - Content 2.0 from 6:30pm onwards:

1. Moderators: Manoj Ranaweera and Simon Grice
2. Speaker 1: Sam Sethi of Blognation
3. Speaker 2: Awaiting confirmation
4. Company Presentation 1: Yuuguu
5. Company Presentation 2: Sharenow
6. Company Presentation 3: Up for grabs

You must register for Mashup Manchester on Mashup Site if you intent to attend the evening event.

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As you can imagine, I get to know quite a number of start up and early stage EIPP (and related) vendors, both here and across the pond. At the same time, I have also attracted a number of potential investors and acquirers seeking startup and early stage EIPP vendors. In these cases, with permission from both parties, I am able to make the necessary introductions.

More recently, due to my involvement in the technology startups through OpenCoffee, NW StartUp 2.0 and Mashup Manchester, the requests from investor community have broaden to include telecom companies.

Are you a startup or early stage company looking for seed corn, second or third round of funding? If so, it makes sense to get in touch privately so that I have a better understanding of your funding needs. As always, the information will remain confidential.

Whilst you may think that only start up and early stage companies require funding, I am aware of mature companies who have been in discussions with investment community in order to seek funding for growth. In these cases, funding is generally needed for geographical expansion. It is much easier for mature companies to raise funding than startups or early stage companies. While this is the general acceptance, courting potential investors for 8 to 12 months without closing the deal quickly, do put a significant strain on the business.

Given that EIPP is a growth market, almost every company continue to make losses year after year. Yes, I accept the cash flows are beginning to improve for companies such as OB10. Except those acquired by the banking and card sector, without further funding, their aggressive growth cannot be sustainable simply through cash flow generated. So how do they satisfy their funding needs? It then becomes a question of debt to equity ratio. Bank debt usually supports for short term working capital needs and not geared for high growth requirements. As one expect, these companies are significantly shy to mention their funding needs, as they believe that the need for additional capital will be badly reflected in the market place.

At the same time, the world continue to become a smaller place due to daily improving communications, both in terms of speed of communications and level of collaborative tools being launched. This environment makes competitors to meet each other and collaborate easily than ever before. Good examples are Facebook and LinkedIn. Whilst the LinkedIn functionality is somewhat limited and their Groups do not offer any functional support, most companies are using these on-line environments to seek potential partners and investors in addition to new customers.

In one occasion, whilst I was safeguarding a confidential discussion I had with one of the mature (simple rule of thumb: been around for more than 5 yrs) vendors, the market knew more or less of their funding needs. How is this possible? Do companies or advisers working on behalf of these companies leak limited information intentionally to test the market reaction? Surely, an advisor will not leak such information without the consent of their client, if they are to do breach confidentiality, they would not have clients for long. Damaged credibility is very hard to repair.

If you are a startup, early stage business or mature company, you might be interested in having a confidential discussion so that I might be able to introduce you to potential investors. At the same time, if you are a potential investor and seek investment opportunity into this segment including telecom, please get in touch. I love to see EIPP market segment flourish with more vendors in the market place.

Disclaimer: Whilst I used the name of OB10, none of the content is written with OB10 in mind, except the sentence in which OB10 was mentioned.

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Here is the slide pack for tomorrow’s 3 minute presentation at Mashup* Demo. Have fun!

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As you probably know I will be at Future of Web Applications event on 3rd October 2007. I also have a Conference Pass worth �245 + VAT to give away. Here is the criteria for selection:

1. Make sure you can attend the event.
2. Respond by 15:00 hrs on 01 October 2007.
3. State clearly why you deserve the free pass.

Whoever come up with the best response will win. Please remember to leave the correct e-mail address.

Update 1:

Both people who have commented cannot attend the event. This means the ticket is available to whoever first reply. What a shame nobody wants this ticket?

Technorati Tags: FOWA, Sun Microsystems, Stewart Townsend

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I attended the Project Sahara kick off meeting held at Sheffield Halam University last Saturday.

The concept was put together by Lee Strafford, Founder and ex-CEO of plus.net with the support from his fellow team mate Marco Potesta and Ian Spence, who Lee has worked with in the past. Having sold Plus.Net to BT and then getting the sack, Lee had plenty of time to think of what to do next. He also realised how stressed he has been in nurturing and growing plus.net since its incorporation, dealing with various stakeholders including Sarbanes Oxley compliance. As Lee said it, he does not want to run another company at the same speed, instead he is looking to diversify risk through working with number of startups. He was faced with two options, these being:

1. Set-up a company that will nurture startups, raise funding and offer a technology platform on which the startups can build their web based products and services. This is no difference to running a medium size fast growth company.
2. Do the same but with a community, diversifying the risk and creating opportunities for all involved. The preferred option.

So the intention of the kick off meeting was to explain the concept and decide on which of the above two options to take. I am happy to announce that agreement has been reached with Option 2. I and Imran Ali took upon us to spread the word into our startup communities through blogging and events. Three people took upon themselves to develop the community site. Lee is also looking for software architects to start conceptualising the technology platform. Everyone is a volunteer. Costs will be covered by Lee through an Administrative Vehicle that need setting up with legal frameworks drawn.

The community is currently split into three segments:

1. Administrators - Lee, Marco and Ian
2. Stakeholders (potential investors) - Ajaz Ahmed of Freeserve fame, Ed French of Rising Stars, Paul Cusack of ebuyer fame, Saul Klein of Seedcamp, OpenCoffeeClub and Index Ventures. There are others that I am not familiar with. Paul was there to provide support to Lee. Paul could also be speaking at the next NW StartUp 2.0 event.
3. Affiliates - Volunteers that satisfy many needs of the community. I also call this bunch business enablers. There are lot more technical people in this pot at present than business people. I am hoping this ratio will balance over time.

In order for this to work, there need to be four types of inviduals:

1. Entrepreneurs - people who are ready to commit to good commercial ideas.
2. Investors - people who have or have access to necessary cash to realise commercial ideas.
3. Business Enablers - those who can provide services to Entrepreneurs in terms of mentoring, business development, etc
4. Administrators - people who manages the interactivity among the first three under a legal and commercial framework with full compliance in mind.

In terms of tangibles, there need to be:

1. A community site for everyone to interact
2. An idea bank
3. A technology platform on which ideas can be reaslised with ease

Extract from Lee’s recent thread on Facebook:

Looking forward we now need to finalise the thinking / start taking action on the three components:-

[1] Community site for Web start-ups (idea development and deal making)
[a] who to engage to run and driving the community through participation [b] how to build the website
[c] how to interface to other community resources

[2] Web Business Incubator infrastructure (hands on help and mentoring)
[a] defining the relationships with leading universities in the north
[b] defining the relationships with the RDA
[c] establishing relationships with other incubators

[3] App Dev platform (web start-ups in a box)
[a] engaging with the architectural talent pool in order to design and spec
[b] Identify the methodology and resources to build it

So, if you want to be involved, start interacting through Facebook. If you need an introduction to Lee or anyone else, let me know through here or by e-mail.

Personally, I would love to run [1] but faced with significant time constraints. Unless time can be justified by financial reward. This may be against the voluntary nature of the project. Well there is nothing to loose by having a chat as this fits with the services ebdex provides.

This is only the start, if you want further insight to this exciting project, here is a list of publicly available documents:

Further information can be accessed through following sites:

• Project Sahara Basecamp
• Facebook Group

References:

• NW StartUp 2.0 - 5th Event on 17 Jan 08 at KPMG Manchester
• Angel of the North Aims To Create New Northern Stars

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OpenCoffee Manchester 6th event took place yesterday at the usual venue. Here are three stories:

1. Paul Robinson of Vagueware - Paul has been developing Vagueware for number of months (feel like years) whilst competition is getting products out to the market. After much debate, I hope I convinced Paul to release Vagueware, which will now be available from 1st October 2007. It’s an idea bank without the strict conditions attached to many such services. It’s free - it’s fluid - it’s simple - it’s no brainer. In fact, can be used as a brain dump and allow the social network to interact with your thoughts - the ideas - to form products and businesses. Paul is more interested in products than businesses, so Vagueware can begin to differentiate as almost all services of such are commercially driven including Project Sahara.
2. David Hawdale (Hawdale Associates) - David will be launching a new business in Q1 08 based on an idea discussed at the very first OpenCoffee Manchester, a social networking spin on freecycling, if I remember correctly.
3. Roderrick Kennedy of Simul - I met Rod first time at OpenCoffee Liverpool held at Daresbury Innovation Centre last week. Since then, this was the third time I met him. Rod is into simulations and games, recently exiting from Evolution Studios which was sold to Sony last week. He has retained the IPR, which has since then transferred to Simul. He is looking for an office, a team and starting to develop his prototype into a commercial product. I spoke to him about changing the model to offer it as a Software-as-a-Service model if its all possible. We also discussed how to write a business plan and what it needs to contain and the thinking process that needs to go into produce such a vital document. Rod has also created a sensation at Daresbury Innovation Centre, especially with Paul Treloar and RealTimeRace.

References:

• OpenCoffee Manchester - 5th Event
• OpenCoffee Manchester - 4th Event
• OpenCoffee Manchester is moving in the right direction
• OpenCoffee Manchester - 2nd Event
• First OpenCoffee Manchester

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I attended the Second Chance Tuesday run by Judith Clegg and Michael Smith at Royal College of Physicians last night in London. A superb networking event except for poor catering. Then again, I set the bar high with NW StartUp 2.0, which any event organiser will find hard to beat. Northerners are much better at hospitality than Londerners, but Londerners continue to pull the crowd putting Northerners (especially me) to shame. Enough of comparisons, let’s get back to the story..

It was an exceptional opportunity to hear the story of two classic web 2.0 entrepreneurs Felix Miller and Martin Stiksel, CEO and CCO of Last.fm respectively, interviewed by Rory Cellan-Jones of BBC. I am not going to repeat the story here, as it is very well documented and it will not take long for a business school to produce a detail case study. When you do, please remember to upload to www.edocr.com for interaction.

However, I will say the following. The founder duo sold the company to CBS for US$280 million, and does not plan to invest that money into startups founded by others. They are entertaining many ideas they had whilst setting up and running the company, and may pursue those ideas in addition to growing Last.fm.

Among the crowd, there were few known faces: Stephen Morrisey from Clipstar from Daresbury Innovation Centre (I would not have been there, if Stephen did not happen to mention about the event last week), Mike Butcher from TechCrunch UK (hey, Mike got the exclusivity for next NW StartUp 2.0 - its up to him to write about it though), Simon Grice of Mashups (I will talk about edocr at Mashup Demos), Daniel Waterhouse of 3i (met first time but known him through e-mails).

In addition, I met bunch of new people, some known through the web and e-mails, these being: Richard Marsh of Oxford Capital Partners, Ben Holmes of Index Ventures, James Brocket of Calibre One, Andrew Romans of Georgetown Venture Partners, Jonathan Moss of Ballz.com, and James Vinall of LastMile Communications. I had to dash back as I took the last train to Manchester.

I also discussed with some of the above VCs the possibility of speaking at one of the NW StartUp 2.0 events. I used the opportunity to warm up VCs about edocr. It’s still early days for us. But I must now start thinking about producing the business plan.

Technorati Tags: Second Chance Tuesday, Last.fm. Judith Clegg

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I am proud to announce that the next NW StartUp 2.0 event will be held on 17 Jan 2008 at KPMG Manchester. The event details were published last night with one confirmed speaker. Without a doubt, it will be better than the 4th event held yesterday. Why? Simply, I am gaining confidence and experience. In addition, I am gaining a loyal attendance. And the hosts, KPMG are beginning to understand how to interact with the community they have hosted four times.

Here are some great pictures. All can be accessed through flickr.

So here is the story from the speakers:

1. Lee Strafford - Lee spoke of growing up in Sheffield, and leaving school at the tender age of 14 to join his father’s london based Structured Cabling Company. By 16, he was project managing large contracts. However, his father’s business went under when one of their large client’s business went into financial difficulty. This brought Lee back to Sheffield. Sometime after this, Lee got involved with a business, which eventually created the plus.net as we know now. Lee spoke about the pressures of operating a fast growth business with profitability targets and how he created an open transparent culture without group/divisional boundaries. In one aspect, his company was developing software for deriving significant internal efficiencies, on the other hand, it was operating in the retail dial-up and then later broadband market. Only thing they had was that it was a fast growing market, allowing them to ride the wave. Lee also spoke of hiring the wrong team and learning from that experience. Hiring Dean Sandler from Sheffield Hallam University has allowed him to tap into an immense fresh talent pool. Lee had matrices for measuring every bit of the company. This has created such a focussed team environment, that they continued to out perform the incumbents, grabbing the attention of BT. A truly remarkable and accomplished individual, I am certainly privilege to know him. He spoke of Project Sahara, which I will blog about later. In the meantime you can access seven documents on the project through here.
2. Chris Astle - Chris spoke of setting up his company 3 yrs ago. What he did was to tap into his network to find a very wealthy business angel. This has allowed them early to focus on the business without having to continually worry about capital. Now Chris has international aspirations with a three year plan. 
3. Peter Leather - Peter joined Liverpool Ventures few months ago after a successful carrier at ICDC, etc. He has worked extensively with startups, which has helped them to understand their needs.

So who attended the yesterday event and what are their stories - let’s start with the loyal attendees first:

1. Alexander Goldstone from IDINSO - third time. It seems that he has not slept for three days as he is helping my friend Anish and Philip put final touches to Yuuguu’s launch for DEMO. Its nice to hear such a successful story of a North West company. Alex seems to be doing number of things whilst also trying to get his own business off the ground. What I realised yesterday was that I know very little of Alex - well this has to be corrected, don’t you think? He might in fact be a good source to help me construct top 25 web 2.0 companies in the North West.
2. Muditha Gunatilake from Doubleclick Seychelles - Muditha is a family friend, another sleep deprived individual - 2 days this time. He is completing a MBA at Manchester Business School. Muditha and his family was at my place last Sunday - last summer BBQ. He is taking today off - going to Knowsley Safari Park.
3. Tony Bray of Version Two - second time - having exited from Version One sometime back, his new owner’s Cedar OpenAccounts are getting Tony to work 7 days a week! Poor Tony! We spoke in the past of working on my third company idea. Unfortunately I have not been able to find thinking time. So, I am afraid it has to stay that way for a while. I am interested in finding out what Tony would do under his Version Two brand.
4. Stephen Morrisey of Clipstar - second time - Stephen has an extensive network of investors and has recently put together Clipstar, a YouTube type venture he plans to launch in the City with celebrities, etc. Suppose to be the next big thing! I do not know much about Clipstar, but there is certain excitement around the company at Daresbury Innovation Centre. I wish Stephen and the team all the best.
5. Valerie De Leonibus of Inventya - Valerie plans to run Girlie Geek Dinner, possible kick start in Nov 07. Can’t wait to get an invite!
6. Mark Rahn of Enterprise Ventures - Good to see Mark - We both completed our MBAs at Manchester Business School around the same time. There was also another wannabee VC in the room, on whose behalf I asked the odd and silly question of “how does one become a VC?”.
7. Fiona Barker of Baker PR - Did not get much of a chance to speak with Fiona, but I understand from Valerie that Fiona loved the idea of Girlie Geek Dinner.
8. Roderick Kennedy of Simul - Rod has just left a full time job to concentrate on Simul and was wondering whether to move to the South East than stay in the North. Knowing the real reason, I think we probably going to loose another good brain to the South.
9. Manoj Patel and Kamlesh Shah from UES - Working on JD Edwards systems, they are looking for investment to bring a new product to market.
10. Tom Cheesewright of IO Communications and NetRecords - Nice to see Tom again. Another individual I need to spend time understanding.
11. Mick Carter of m-send
12. Dominic Wood - CEO of 15secondTV - good to see Dominic. I hope you had time to network with Stephen and m-send.
13. Steve Shinn - one of A team of Plus.Net with a new idea around URLs - building a multi million pound business. I actually owns about 8 or so URLs - three I bought to build social networks for kids on behalf of my 7 yr old daughter. Anyone out there want to get involved?

Andre Maljaars flew in from Amsterdam to attend the event, but never made it to the event at the end due to another meeting.

Big thank you to Steven Livingston of KPMG for providing the venue and catering. I also met Paula Holland from KPMG. I now need to sit down with Steven, Paula and others to work out a programme of how KPMG and others could support startups. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could put together a package of assistance from KPMG, solicitor, bank and PR. Maybe a format similar to Dragon’s Den with 3 companies winning the package. Might need a big sponsor to pull this off with using a venue such as G6 of Manchester Business School. Let’s watch the space.

Where am I going to find time to run these projects, get ebdex and edocr off the ground and also start thinking about company 3? And Andre wants me to run his UK operations, which I had to decline! And then another European buddy rang me just before midnight wanting advice on whether to sell his company to a British or Swiss buyer - very emotional affair! Life is getting crazy at the moment. Need to reduce noise and concentrate on the overall core objectives, which is simply ebdex + edocr. Everything I do must fit into these and should be revenue generative. If not, perhaps its time I hand them over to someone else. And there is also 1st Tuesday knocking on the door!

Please note that the next event will be priced at £35, but if you pay 2 weeks before, it will be £25. This should give me the ability to predict the number of attendees better and reduce the food wastage. These events need to be revenue contributing, but I do not see break even at any stage when I bring cost of my man days in to the equation. In fact, I spent too many man days organising last event due to last minute planning. So I need to be more efficient and find ways to justify return on investment. If you got any ideas of how to improve this series of events or want to become a sponsor, please do get in touch.  

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