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StartUp of the Week 1: Whamoosh – Personalised just got better

This week, I caught up with John Bickley to hear about the recent launch of Whamoosh! A new player in the personalisation business. Applying new technology to revolutionise an established market……… Manoj: What made you launch your company? Briefly, tell us about the company history and the management team John: FaceTec (owned by me) has a patented facial recognition personalisation platform which enables a face in an uploaded image to be recognised & automatically (i) extracted and placed in another image (i.e. replacing the face of the character in the recipient image) & (ii) to add assets e.g. face paint,…

Tech Entrepreneur Series – Managing Growth – 12th Nov Manchester

Register at http://www.nwstartup20.co.uk/nov09 High growth technology companies go through many phases; in the case of edocr.com, we recognise five phases in our road map; development, commercial trials, launch, growth and dominance. Each phase present a challenge; from many options open, which one (or few) should be pursued to achieve the end market dominance and increase exit multiples. Getting this wrong could result in your business becoming mediocre and loose the competitive advantage it was seeking to establish. We are lucky to have two of the most successful tech entrepreneurs to emerge from the North West over the last decade, sharing…

Transforming the textiles landscape past, present and future

I just got back from the inaugural event of UK India Business Council Next Gen North West, which Imran Hakim arranged on behalf of the Board on the textile industry at the University of Bolton. The event was well attended, and included some of the hottest names in the textile industry in the north west of England, including Tariq Marfani (Tarameen #850 staff), Neeraj Takiar (Eternity Clothing), Charles Wood (Baltex), Adrian Tracey (Future Textiles), Ashok Kallumpram (Premier Textiles), Andrew Borman (Helston Forensics) and Mark Pedley (Smartlife Technology). Notably absent was Raj Ruia, but he was represented by the General Manager…

I am on Posterous – so what?

Once in a while I come across an application which is so simplistic, you almost get the value proposition immediately. Posterous is such an application. The other application is of course Twitter. Most of us who operate closer to leading edge and open in terms of sharing knowledge tends to sign up to most of the new services that become popular. Then we move on unless they are applications worth sticking with. If I explore my social map (excluding edocr.com for this discussion), in order of usage right now: 1. Twitter with multiple clients, so they are worth noting: a.…

Sri Lankan Cabinet

The Cabinet of Sri Lanka is as follows: Hon. Ratnasiri Wickremanayake – Prime Minister & Minister of Internal AdministrationHon. Milinda Moragoda – Minister of Justice and Law ReformsHon. Dr. Sarath Amunugama – Minister of Public Administration and Home AffairsHon. Dinesh Gunawardena – Minister of Urban Development and Sacred Area DevelopmentHon. Arumugan Thondaman – Minister of Youth Empowerment & Socio Economic DevelopmentHon. Mahinda Samarasinghe – Minister of Disaster Management and Human RightsHon. Douglas Devananda – Minister of Social Services and Social WelfareHon. Nimal Siripala De Silva – Minister of Healthcare and NutritionHon. Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena – Minister of Cultural AffairsHon. Champika…

Kings of Leon – Closer

Stranded in this spooky town Stoplight is swaying and the phone lines are down Snow is crackling cold She took my heart, I think she took my soul With the moon I run Far from the carnage of the fiery sun Driven by the strangle of vein Showing no mercy I’d do it again Open up your eyes You keep on crying Baby I’ll bleed you dry Skies are blinking at me I see a storm bubbling up from the sea And it’s coming closer And it’s coming closer You shimmy-shook my boat Leaving me stranded all in love on…

My Response to Andrew Scott on Customer Service

This is my response to customer service post written by Andrew Scott, CEO of Rummble, mentor of Tech Mission London 09 and alum of Webmission08 Hey Andrew, interesting thought provoking article. What most of us would love to hear is how you scale Rummble’s own customer service. At http://edocr.com, most queries comes through “contact us”. We also use Twitter heavily, experimented with UserVoice and restarted using GetSatisfaction. Our FAQs are incomplete and we do not have a forum at present. There is a further distinction that need due attention. I assume this is true with most tech companies. Our queries…

Response to TechCrunch article on Scribd

Below is my response to comments posted against above blog post I am struggling to understand why people seems to be against Scribd so much. Given Scribd’s popularity, I can only assume these comments are from the minority. Scribd opened the document publishing, distribution and interactivity market, and for that reason alone, we should all be thanking them. No one is forcing anyone to use Scribd. We all have the choice to use or not to use. The level of criticism here is uncalled for. They have used various tactics to gain the level of success they are demonstrating today.…

Response to Sarah Lacy on TechCrunch

This is my response to Sarah Lacy’s recent article on TechCrunch We have never met Sarah, but have heard a lot about you. I run http://www.edocr.com, which I have bootstrapped for well over 2 years and we are perhaps the first to come up with a commercial model in our market segment, if you ignore Scribd’s commercial entry to Amzon.com’s territory. We will continue to bootstrap until we are ready to raise funding on our terms. This is not a reflection of the market, but our own attitude regarding taking external finance. Secondly, I run http://www.nwstartup20.co.uk – (NS20) my attempt…

Weekly Newsletter – Tech StartUps and Digital Advocates

This newsletter covers: 1. Next Event: Tech StartUps and Digital Advocates – UMIC, Manchester on 22nd July 2. Membership 3. Sponsor an Administrator 4. Your Feedback 5. Partner Events (The Insider, Chinwag and Technology World 2009) 6. Contact Details 7. Our Partners 1. Next Event: Tech StartUps and Digital Advocates Programme: 22nd July 2009 – 6 to 9pm Venue: UMIC, Grafton Street, Manchester Two sessions, each with four early stage technology companies pitching to a panel of digital marketing agencies with the hope of convincing their account directors (digital advocates) to introduce the companies to their clients. 5 mins pitch…