Startup 2.0

Manoj threw another great event tonight with interesting speakers and audience alike. Stuart Scott-Goldstone of Aaron and Partners gave a thorough introduction to the range of legal issues that startups face on raising their first round of venture capital. the long list or issues seemed seems like it must be scary to any startup listening! Doug Stellman of YFM Private Equity started his presentation with a disclaimer of small print lest any of us fancied investing. Interestingly the proportion of Software and IT deals had shrunk from around 35% in 2006 to 20% in 2007, apparently due to concerns about the ease with which software companies could be established. His presentation focused on the management team as a key driver for their investment decisions. He cited that he sees applicants with a management team with a prior record of success "more often than you'd think". Paul Barraclough of TecMentor praised the Crossing the Chasm approach to getting to early sales momentum in startups. For me, Pam Holland gave the star presentation- starting off with a video (link to follow if I can persuade Pam to let me upload it) portraying how rapidly Telecity had grown pre-dotcom crash. She explained how they'd managed the spectacular growth in staff numbers and the attendant HR issues. I loved the story about how she had to persuade the founder to go home for his meal in the evening to encourage the staff to go home at night- even if he returned later each night! She explained the "competency based" recruitment approach she used, biased towards the attitude and raw capabilities of the individual rather than solely their technical skill-set. She also related that it was a "little bit disappointing" when the share price slumped from £23.00 to 2.3p, and she had to handle a new set of challenges!

NW Startup 2.0 Demo & Mashup Manchester Events

Manoj doesn't look too happy in this picture, and he didn't look too happy tonight after a string of mishaps hit these events tonight. But they weren't significant problems, and the event was a great success. The audience was full of interesting people and the presentations punchy and clear. I'm looking forward to the next one!

Startup 2.0 in Manchester

Manoj has again done a great job of preparing the next Startup 2.0 event in Manchester on Wednesday night. Annoyingly I have to be in Glasgow, but otherwise I'd be looking forward to hearing from Lee Strafford, CEO of PlusNet which was recently sold to BT for lots of money. He's got some really interesting plans to help web startups: I'm sorry I can't be there to heckle ;-)
Manoj has lined up a VC, Peter Leather, and Billa Bhandari who runs a biometrics company and has lots of tech startup experience, to complete his line-up.
It's great that KPMG continue to support this event, I'm looking forward to the next one!

NW Startup 2.0 - great line up

Manoj Ranaweera has done a great job of building on the success of the last NW Startup 2.0 event and has got a really interesting lineup of speakers for the 14th of June:

• Ajaz Ahmed - Look back at Freeserve, his current portfolio and investment opportunities that interests him including finding the next Freeserve opportunity.
• Sam Sethi - Creation of blognation, the technology scene and raising money and Commercialising blogging.
• Alain Falys - Strategy of OB10, beyond OB10 and the value Omnis Mundi brings
• David Ingram - Fund raising and market launch through bloggers in Silicon Valley.

Ajaz enjoys being rude about VC's- so that's always good fun ;-) and Sam has an encyclopedic knowledge of everything web2.0

If you fancy going along then please sign up at this page..