Moderator – Manoj Ranaweera – ebdex
Manoj founded ebdex in late 2004 to reduce the pains felt by organisations in dealing with their suppliers and customers with respect to exchange of structured documents. The result was ebdex Document Exchange, with ebdex EIPP (Electronic Invoice Presentment and Payment) being the first application offered to both SMEs and multinationals. Manoj made a significant error of judgment by outsourcing software development to partner, Affno, who failed miserably to deliver technology on time and to the budget. In fact, Affno was intended to provide a competitive advantage to ebdex. At the end of 2006, Manoj took the decision to withdraw ebdex EIPP from the market and now provides input to ebdex’s competitor, Causeway Technologies’s Tradex platform (similar to ebdex Document Exchange) achieve a step change in revenue growth and profitability. Manoj also runs OpenCoffee Manchester, a relaxed version of NW StartUp 2.0 events and blogs at http://www.manojranaweera.com.
Keynote Speaker – Ajaz Ahmed – Freeserve, Callserve, Tiva Services, Browzar, …
Ajaz Ahmed is the founder of Freeserve, the UK’s largest ISP at the time, now owned by Orange. His eureka moment came when he bought a PC at PC World in Leeds and nobody in the store could tell him how to get onto the Internet. After much persuasion by him, Dixons launched Freeserve in September 1998 and became the UK’s largest ISP in just three short months. It floated just nine months later at a market cap of £1.5bn and entered the FT 100 soon after, in March 2000 it had a market cap of £9bn.
Ajaz was one of the three founding executives to launch the business, seeing it through flotation and the £1.6bn sale to Wanadoo (Orange). Ajaz held the position of Business Development Director until April 2001 when he left the company to pursue a variety of business interests. He now sits on a number of boards including Tiva Services and Browzar.
Speaker 2 – Sam Sethi – Blognation, Vecosys
Sam Sethi is a London based entrepologist and consultant. Sam has worked in the IT industry for over 18 years for companies like Microsoft, Netscape, Gateway Computers and CMGi, in a variety of senior technical and marketing roles. Sam has also experienced the joy and pain of running his own start-ups. Recently Sam has been working as a freelance consultant with companies such as MSN (UK) and BT, helping develop their Web 2.0 strategies.
When not blogging, consulting or presenting, Sam loves nothing better than spending time with his wife & young family, running, drinking fine wine with his friends or watching his beloved Liverpool FC – YNWA.
Speaker 3 – Alain Falys – OB10, Omnis Mundi
Alain Falys co-founded the OB10 global e-invoicing network in May 2000 with three fellow Visa executives. He was Chairman and CEO until March 2005. OB10 is now the leading e-invoicing network with circa 25,000 companies worldwide exchanging 2m transactions annually for a value of $20bn. OB10 was successfully launched in the USA and Europe and the network’s key global clients include HP, GSK, Sara Lee, Cargill, Kelloggs, Barclays Bank. After leaving OB10, Alain spent nearly a year in Asia evaluating entrepreneurial opportunities in payments.
Between 1996 and 2000, Alain was Senior Vice President at Visa International EU region, in charge of the commercial cards division. Before joining Visa, Alain was head of European Business Development at Paris-based International Computer Group, a start-up joint venture created in 1989 by Computacenter, CompuNet AG and other leading systems integrators.
Since July 2006, Alain is a partner at Omnis Mundi, a group of entrepreneurial CEOs who have joined forces to foster the creation of new business in Europe in the technology, Internet services and On-Demand sectors.
Speaker 4 – David Ingram – Izimi
David Ingram is VP of Product and a co-founder of web 2.0 startup izimi. izimi lets anyone instantly publish and serve photos, music, videos, files, any content straight from their own PC to anyone else on the internet with just a web browser.
“I’m an entrepreneurial product strategist and product marketer with a background in enterprise software sales. I’ve always worked in cutting edge markets with cutting edge products; I’m a hands on do-er and I’m used to working on projects under tough conditions. I’ve several start-ups under my belt, and at the other end of the scale I’ve worked in international multi-site enterprise-scale operations. For a number of years I’ve provided independent consulting, chiefly around development of new revenue streams and business development, in a number of international blue chip corporations.”
Please visit http://www.nwstartup20.co.uk to register. It is a free event.
Tags: NW StartUp 2.0, Ajaz Ahmed, Sam Sethi, Alain Falys, David Ingram, Izimi, Freeserve, OB10, Omnis Mundi, Blognation, Vecosys