Manoj Ranaweera – The man who built Manchester’s Tech Startup Ecosystem

Sad day – edocr.com is shutting down

Published by Manoj Ranaweera on September 25, 2025

Sad day but it was going to eventually happen “We are reaching out to inform you that edocr.com will be shutting down permanently on October 29, 2025” Acquirer of my acquirer killing it. As I am getting lazier, I asked ChatGPT edocr.com is a notable case because: – Bootstrapped, UK-based origin (unique compared to heavily funded US peers). – Community + embedding focus — edocr carved out a niche by allowing professionals to upload, share, and generate leads through documents, which was a distinct angle compared to Scribd’s consumer reading focus or SlideShare’s conference slides. – Acquisition (Accusoft, 2015) —…

Definitions

Published by Manoj Ranaweera on August 26, 2025

Builder = someone who builds a software application. Indiehacker = someone who builds a software application for commercial gain. Bootstrapper = someone who self-funds a tech startup. Solo founder = someone who starts and leads a tech startup. Tech Entrepreneur = someone who builds a tech startup with others. Tech Startup = A company that build and commercialises a technology solution with people driving it. Feel free to disagree with me. Here’s a clean-up version by ChatGPT Builder: Someone who creates products — often software applications — by writing code, designing systems, or assembling tools. In startup culture, a “builder”…

Dote Product Launch in Manchester

Published by Manoj Ranaweera on July 18, 2025

I can’t remember the last time I attended a product launch in Manchester. I was glad to receive an invitation from Stephen Senior, Founder & CEO of Dote, a few months back. I’m glad I accepted it, as it was a fabulous event to be at the launch event, meet the team and witness the amazing product Stephen and the team have built. Stephen is a relatively new connection of mine. Shows that we first connected on LinkedIn in April 2024. The story behind the company is impressive – one word to describe “resilience”. It has taken 10 years to…

Sales Meeting

Published by Manoj Ranaweera on April 15, 2025

Just completed the weekly Sales Meeting at SkilledUp Life today. We discussed the positive story of one of our customers and how to amplify it. This is almost an ideal customer reference. Hope the team left motivated.

Rebuilding Deal Lite Team

Published by Manoj Ranaweera on April 15, 2025

I just completed my weekly meeting with the Deal Lite team. Our team has shrunk from about 20 to less than a handful. We need to re-energise, starting with building our HR team first. Francisca recently joined from Nigeria. I’m on the hunt for another HR Volunteer – ideally Chinese. Then we are going to rebuild the Cap Table team. We will be taking on a past Nigerian team member who moved to Canada recently and a youngster from India, both will volunteer for us in exchange for gaining experience and skills.

TCMCR60 is on 23rd April

Published by Manoj Ranaweera on April 15, 2025

The next Techcelerate Coffees Manchester 60 (TCMCR60) will be on 23rd April at Coffee Hive in Manchester Piccadilly. Grab a ticket – respect our rules TCMCR are pure networking events where tech founders and investors alike can mingle with Techcelerate members, partners and specialists. Guests can attend one event free per year. Regulars are asked to join Techcelerate, which is home to tech founders of the North. From 2006 to 2013, we built Manchester and North West’s tech startup ecosystem when tech startups were not very well known. Some of the superstars of Manchester today were very much part of…

China50k Plan

Published by Manoj Ranaweera on April 15, 2025

What is China50k or Chinese50k? It’s an audacious plan by me to acquire 50,000 of the 150,000 Chinese Students and Graduates in the UK and provide them with an option to acquire UK experience and skills through SkilledUp Life. Crazy, hah! Perhaps. To achieve this, we need to recruit 30 Chinese UK graduates into SkilledUp Life.

SkilledUp Life Signs MoU with Accelerate Me

Published by Manoj Ranaweera on April 15, 2025

I had the privilege to speak at an Accelerate Me session last Tuesday. Yesterday, I signed a Accelerator Partnership Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with their President, Jasper Lee. Under this Agreement, Accelerate Me cohort members can benefit from 20% discount on SkilledUp Life price plans.

Getting things wrong – two resigns

Published by Manoj Ranaweera on April 15, 2025

In my effort to be efficient (I’m still a slacker), I seem to have dropped all the niceties. My sentences are straight forward. I still use please but they are more to the point. I don’t write long essays when emailing. I try to keep things compact. I seem to have removed the filters, which means output can be quite row. Sadly, this drove two of my invaluable team members to resign over the weekend. “Yes, we decided to resign because we felt that the working environment at SkilledUp Life was not as supportive or friendly as we had hoped…

Evolving SkilledUp Life Product Team

Published by Manoj Ranaweera on April 15, 2025

Started with just me and my lead developer, we started to bring on SkilledUp Life volunteers at the end of December 2024. Now the team has expanded into: Head of Product – me Product Manager Lead Developer (only full timer) Back-end Developer Lead Designer UI/UX Designers Front-end Developers QA User Tester Next would be to add DevOps. Image credit: ChatGPT

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