Month: November 2006

Are you a highly ambitious, exceptional and entrepreneurial Chief Technology Officer? If so, we want you to lead the on-going development of document exchange solutions for our clients. Your background must be in software development and solutions architecture, and you must have demonstrable experience of leading software development teams, meeting stringent quality, time and budgetary requirements. Experience of managing offshore software development teams is highly desirable. You must be passionate about the solutions your team develops and must have exceptionally good skills in project management, quality assurance and control, and technical sales. Previous exposure to document exchange (not document management)…

Imran Ali has volunteered to organise the next NW StartUp 2.0 event in Leeds on 1st Feb 2007. Do let me know if you would like me to organise another event (2nd Manchester event) in mid January in Manchester. I am also looking for a volunteer to organise similar events in Liverpool. Tags: NW StartUp 2.0

Frank Bennett of Impaq raised the following point today on AccountingWeb in response to one of John Stokdyk’s articles published sometime ago. EIPP who’s gonna pay?There is an abundance of vendors offering solutions for EIPP. So what? It is gonna boil down to: Who pays and how much? Put yourself in the role of a supplier serving 500 customers. 400 of your customers use post and fax. 85 of them use email. 15 of them have implemented electronic XML document exchange. The supplier has fully absorbed the cost of post, fax and email, it is taken for granted as a…

One of the crazy moments of last night was talking to Rhys Jones, CEO of Accountis, one of our key competitors, about partnering. Traditionally, you would keep your competitors at arms length. But is it time to change the tradition? How can any trust be developed between competitors? Is it time for a paradigm shift in thinking? And what is this got to do with web 2.0? There are number of ways we can bring benefit to each other without loosing each others competitive advantage. Its time to explore these! Simon Woodroff (Yo!) got his break when he borrowed money…

We had a very successful gig last night, thanks to Sam Sethi (TechCrunch), Ivan Pope (Snipperoo), David Terrar (D Squared C) and those who attended the event. The feedback I received has been excellent, with some suggestions for improvement. Others want to know about the next event and the event after. I encourage you to submit your suggestions here. Special thanks for KPMG for sponsoring catering, IoD for the venue (thank you very much Lisa and your team for looking after all of us – apologies for the overstay), Haliwells for badges (unfortunately, I lost the lot in the pub afterwards)…

I hooked up with Simon Grice, Founder of etribes yesterday (piggy-backing on an e-mail I received from Chris Leigh of Real Time Race). Within 24 hours, we have a dedicated web presence for the StartUp 2.0 events. A true collaborative effort. etribes also have a payment gateway, which will no doubt be handy for organising future events. Unfortunately, upcoming.org has serious limitations (e.g. it does not record sufficient details of users – no company name or designation – a nightmare when organising name tags/badges). Tags: NW Start Up 2.0, etribes, upcoming.org

I have just been sorting out the name tags for the event (shame on those who have not given me their names, company names and designations!). Here is a list of entrepreneurs who have brought or in the process of bringing products and solutions to the market (please note web developers, outsourcing experts, etc have been ignored): Anish Kapoor and Philip Hemsted  – CEO and Director (respectively) of Yuuguu – Solutions for teleworker – in private beta (first round funding by Rising Stars) Ivan Pope – CEO of Snipperoo – Widgets (seeking equity finance) Manoj Ranaweera – CEO of ebdex…

These days I speak to many Indian businessmen and I am connected to many Indian networks. Asians constitutes 2% of the British population but generates 10% its GDP. So knowing Indian community is vital to doing business in UK and globally. I even received a certificate recently from Indo British Partnership signed by Lord Karan Bilimoria. One of my mentor’s is Indian. And my new friend, Billa Bhandari of Akoura Biometrics is also an Indian (but I am sure he wish he is Sri Lankan – they all do!!). Where are the Sri Lankans? How come we are so far…

Quick update on the progress…. The event (basically catering) will be sponsored by KPMG Manchester Practise. Thanks Siddiq for your support. Venue has been sponsored by IoD. Many thanks Laura. Imran Ali, Strategy Director of Orange will be the keynote speaker. Podcasting will be provided/managed by Stuart Bruce in true web 2.0 style. Chairperson/moderator will be Sam Sethi of TechCrunch UK (previously Marketing Director of Netscape and Strategy Director for Microsoft/MSN EMEA) Panel will include: Ivan Pope of Snipperoo – on widgets, dot.com experience, web 2.0, funding, etc David Terrar of Twinfield and D Squared C – SaaS (Software as…

Congratulations to North West’s entrepreneurs Anish Kapoor and Philip Hemsted for securing funding from Rising Stars Growth Fund in Oct 06. I am one of the first users of Yuuguu and happy to recommend the service to anyone. Whilst the functionality is limited, they have a clear product road map and with an Ace Team, they will no doubt prosper. Here is the press release…… RisingStars Growth Fund II, the early stage technology fund managed by Enterprise Ventures, is delighted to announce that it has made its second investment from RisingStars Growth Fund II in software company, Yuuguu Limited. Yuuguu…