ManojRanaweera – Page 5 – Manoj Ranaweera

Check list for company name change – the legal aspects

Published by ManojRanaweera on October 14, 2010

The most time consuming element of this process is the time between decision to change and actually implementing it. In my case, I decided to rebrand Northern Startup 2.0 in Feb to Techcelerate with help from my friends through tweets. We changed the website and many other sales and marketing collateral over the months of Feb and March, but postponed the legal changes that are necessary due to lack of prioritisation (or stupidity). My legal adviser (thanks Stuart) even went to the extent of sending me a form for my signature to advice the Companies House, with a warning that…

North West – Top Region for IPOs?

Published by ManojRanaweera on October 2, 2010

North West is host to 105 public listed companies with total revenues exceeding £52 billion, of which, £35 billion is generated by regions biggest company Unilever. 3 more companies generate over £1 billion from the rest of the 104 companies, these being Amec, United Utilities and now Lookers. 4 companies feature between £500 m and £1bn, these being PZ Cussons, JD Sports Fashion, N Brown Group and Findel. 13 companies feature in the £100m to £500m revenues range, which includes two tech companies, at No. 27 Moneysupermarket.com and at No. 28 Daisy Group Plc Other tech companies in the order…

TekCoffee hosted by Techcelerate is a fr…

Published by ManojRanaweera on September 28, 2010

TekCoffee hosted by Techcelerate is a free drop in event for all those who love technology from tech entrepreneurs to social media junkies, and those who falls between. We expect a small group of people attending these events References: 1. Event registration page on Plancast 2. Idea behind TekCoffee

Macbook Withdrawal Syndrome – Thinspace comes to rescue

Published by ManojRanaweera on September 20, 2010

My faithful MacBook Pro, which has been running every day since April 2008 suddenly stopped functioning yesterday morning, and I have been suffering from withdrawal symptoms ever since. I debated on whether to buy a new laptop, the entry product with 4GB RAM would have been £500 more than the repair cost, but decided to replace the faulty motherboard instead, so that I would not need to go through the hassle of installing new software and moving large amount of data. Strangely, you cannot order spare parts for Macs either on Sunday or Monday in the UK. Any hope of…

Mini Seedcamp London – Where are the northerners?

Published by ManojRanaweera on July 26, 2010

I will be attending my third Seedcamp event tomorrow as a mentor. Seedcamp is without a doubt the main event for any budding tech entrepreneur team in Europe, and it is getting bigger each year attracting companies from all over the world. For those who are not familiar with Seedcamp, it was first introduced in 2007 by none other than Saul Klien. Reshma Sohoni joined from 3i to run the day to day operations. In 2008, Mini Seedcamps were introduced in four cities to short list companies. The number of Mini Seedcamp events have gradually increased to 9 with Johannesburg…

Testing

Published by ManojRanaweera on July 16, 2010

Launch of TekCoffee – how to join and self-managed

Published by ManojRanaweera on May 28, 2010

The Inspiration Saul Klein has been a great inspiration for me since I came to know him in 2007, mostly through OpenCoffee, a great investment (sales) funnel to identify the hottest startups and tech entrepreneurs. Later, he introduced Seedcamp to add a second level of filtration and de-risk his investments as much as possible. Some of this learning has been applied by Imran Hakim and the team (perhaps not directly taking from Saul) in Manchester through Envestors and RAW2010, in terms of de-risking. But that’s another story for another day. The Motivation (best to come clean upfront!) At Techcelerate, we…

Daily Tech News – 2010-04-28

Published by ManojRanaweera on April 28, 2010

Annual NW Business Pitch (Liverpool, UK) Just returned to office from pitching both edocr.com and Techcelerate at the Annual NW Business Pitch on Digital, New Media & ICT sector at Liverpool Science Park. From more than 25 companies pitched, I noted four companies that could be considered as tech businesses, these being, edocr.com, Collabor8online, Mediatank from Skylab and bisTrack from Progressive Solutions International. Event was useful in terms of strengthening existing relationships (Skylab, STFC Innovations, How-Do, etc) and building new relationships (Liverpool Science Park, Hatimo Games, etc). Ravensoft gaining traction with Tweets60 Crains Manchester Business reported today that Manchester based…

Venture Capital Roundup – W/E 11 April 2010

Published by ManojRanaweera on April 12, 2010

Venture Capital Fundraising is up in the US On 6th April, Dow Jones reported 41% increase in US venture capital fundraising, raising $4.1 billion across 34 funds in the first quarter of 2010. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers setup fund for iPad developers The New York Times reported on 31st March 2010 (not quite last week!), Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, who invested in Google and Amazon.com early on, has double its $100 million iFund set up in 2008 and managed by Matt Murphy for application development to $200 million to support iPad application development. The iFund has invested in…

Business – what matters most!

Published by ManojRanaweera on April 10, 2010

All my businesses follow a model where it is split into 10 categories (opportunity, product, market, sales, operations, service, finance, legal, HR and other). The thinking comes from Michael Porters Value Chain framework. Today, I have started to look at this from a slightly different angel with respect to edocr.com. Financial Profit and Valuation Whilst a business should not be an accounting exercise, without a true picture of your finances, you have no business. I would argue, that the point of finances is to generate a profit and increase the valuation of your business. If we expand the profit further,…

Author: ManojRanaweera