Author Archives: Nick Barker

E-Synergy, one the Midlands largest venture capitalists, recently held a well attended and received 1/2 day Crowdfunding workshop at Antenna.

Rob Cawdron from E-Synergy will kindly be giving a condensed version of this talk at Nott Tuesday on 14th of May.

In addition Rob will be sharing an update on the creative quarter funding opportunities.

Crowdfunding

The Crowdfunding talk will cover:

• Establishing if your business is the right type for Crowdfunding.
• Creating and driving your company profile to get the right crowd behind you and building momentum to get you across the line.
• Equity based Crowdfunding—the positives and negatives.E-Synergy is one of the leading teams for Crowdfunding in the UK.

E-Synergy is one of the leading teams for Crowdfunding in the UK.

Creative Quarter funding

Rob will also be giving an update on the funding opportunities from the very exciting new Nottingham City Council backed creative quarter.

The Creative Quarter initiative will see tens of millions invested, through investment funds, directly into Nottingham businesses active in the creative and technology sectors.

So, to summarise:

18:30 – 20:30 at Antenna, Nottingham 14th May

Speakers: Rob Cawdron from E-Synergy

Q&A: topics raised

Have you considered raising your funding from the crowd but just aren’t too sure what it’s all about? Nottingham based E-Synergy and GrowthAccelerator are running a Nottingham workshop to help businesses understand crowdfunding.

The event will be held on Tuesday 12th March 2013 from 1pm to 6pm at Antenna, followed by our Nott Tuesday event.

The Crowdfunding workshop will cover:

• Establish if your business is the right type for Crowdfunding.

• You will then need to create and drive your company profile to get the
right crowd behind you and build momentum to get you across the line.

• We will discuss equity based Crowdfunding—the positives and negatives
from those who have been there and done it.

Sign up here for the workshop: http://standoutfromthecrowd5.eventbrite.com/

E-Synergy has one of the leading teams for Crowdfunding in the UK and are working with an FSA regulated platform.

By the end of the day you should expect to go home with a greater understanding of the Crowdfunding process and how you might go about building your preparation plan.

In addition to Derek Mcauley’s Inter Social Networking talk we also have George Jewitt, from AIESEC Nottingham presenting at March’s Nott Tuesday. George will be giving a short talk on  internships opportunities for your company.

AIESEC is an international non-profit organisation based at the University of Nottingham. The organisation is run by volunteer members to foster growth for local businesses. AIESEC brings access to a global network of recent foreign graduates from 113 countries and 2400 universities.

AIESEC is particularly focused on the IT sector. George will tell you about the experience and skills of AIESEC interns, guide you through the recruitment process and its benefits.

For March we welcome back Derek Mcauley, after a 3 year break since his last Nott Tuesday talk.

Mac (Derek) is the Professor of Digital Economy in the School of Computer Science and Director of Horizon at the University of Nottingham. Mac’s got a wealth of academic experience from working at Cambridge and Glasgow University. He helped found the Microsoft Research facility and the Intel lablet in Cambridge. He also ran two startups, XenSource (now Citrix) and Netronome.

He’s focused on research in ubiquitous computing, computer architecture, networking, distributed systems and operating systems. So, this talk is sure to be enlightening. In Mac’s words:

“Proprietary sites dominant in the web 2.0 market (e.g. Facebook, iTunes, etc) and typically create a poor environment for user creativity for example by either demanding unreasonable IP rights, enforcing a business model (including crippling with DRM), changing APIs with the phase of the moon, or indeed all of the above.

Computer networking up until the 1980s (you can all remember that right?) was dominated by proprietary networks and applications – enter the idea of inter-networking – that the world should be composed of the interconnection of these networks by the introduction of a layer that subsumed these proprietary solutions.

Do we see a lesson here?”

Join us on the 12th of March for a glimpse into the future of social networking platforms from an expert.

So, to summarise:

18:30 for 7:00pm start at Antenna

Speaker: Derek McAuley – Inter Social Networking

Q&A: topics raised

Excellent news, our Nott Tuesday Tech Start-up of the Year 2012 Awards got into the Nottingham Post today with ‘Easypreorders wins development cash‘:

‘A NOTTINGHAM entrepreneur’s website that takes the pain out of restaurant pre-ordering has won £7,000 worth of cash and services at a networking club for local high-tech businesses.

Mark Roberts’ Easypreorders service beat four rivals to win the tech start-up of the year award at Nott Tuesday, which meets once a month at Antenna in the Lace Market.

The prize, which includes money and legal and other business services offered by sponsors, will go straight into the further development of EasyPreOrders as it seeks to expand across the country.

The service, which helps hospitality venues manage large customer pre-orders, is based at Nottingham Trent University’s incubator The Hive and is run by a small team that includes Mr Roberts’ brothers Adam and Edward.

‘EasyPreOrders has already been trialled by the Loch Fyne restaurant chain and Mr Roberts now needs up to £50,000 to further develop the service and market it to nationally.

“We already have 2,000 individuals logging in to use the service and we’ll be talking to more chains and individual hotels and restaurants,” said 31-year-old Mr Roberts, who previously worked with his brother Adam on the Nottingham-based restaurant booking service Go Dine. “I’ll be doing the sales but we’ll be employing more people as we go across the regions.”

In winning the Nott Tuesday prize, EasyPreOrders beat competition by four other local tech start-ups – Guestsort, Hivedrop, Neehoy and Paydot.

The decision was made by a panel of judges which included SMS business Esendex’s co-founder Adam Bird, who started Nott Tuesday four years ago to invigorate Nottingham’s tech business and entrepreneurial scene.

Monthly events now regularly attract around 100 people and the network is regarded as both a gauge and promoter of the health of entrepreneurialism in Nottingham’s technology-based business sector.

“The people who come here include entrepreneurs and developers who work for different companies, but what brings them all together is technology,” said Nick Barker, who now helps to run Nott Tuesday and is founder of his own tech company, Aware Monitoring. “But we’re not all propeller heads. You can’t have technology for its own sake, which is why there’s a big business focus here.”

One of the judges on the tech start-up of the year panel, Jason Watkins, who is now a director of ecommerce consultancy Kuki Ventures, said: “I do think that networking is a very important part of a successful business. I’ve been coming here for three years and I’ve seen it grow to the point where, regionally, it’s become an important platform for people to talk about ideas and look for business services. There’s a lot of this kind of thing in London, but in the regions it’s more difficult to make connections.”

He added: “I’m not suggesting that Nottingham can become Silicon Valley overnight, but it has to start somewhere and it’s platforms like this, and councils that are engaged, that are helping the East Midlands to create opportunities.”

Of the other four Nott Tuesday prize contenders, Guestsort is a service allowing venues to better manage event guest lists using Facebook; Hivedrop is a web-based information-sharing service; Neehoy is a software app that encourages social recycling of used goods; and Paydot is a software tool to improve management of affiliate marketing.’

A big Thank You goes to Mark Patterson for covering the event.

For February the 12th’s Nott Tuesday we have Martin Boddy, the founder of Nexsan, with his talk entitled: The long and winding road to exit.

Nexsan pioneered the adoption of disk to disk back up as a mainstream technology and brought about the decline and ultimate demise of tape libraries. Nexsan have just been acquired by Imation for $120m.

Hear from Martin how he found the idea to start Nexsan in 1999, grow the business, moved to the USA, raised private equity financing, replaced himself at CEO and ultimately exited, with a few twists and turns along the way.

Like Doug Ashby’s, Rob Wilmot’s and Ian Flechter’s talks Martin’s is sure to be an interesting founders story from beginning to end.

For February’s event we also have Shaun Fensom from the Big Chip Awards  to give us a brief overview of their tech competition. Shaun is also kindly buying your first drink on Tuesday  

The Big Chip awards are the biggest and longest running digital awards outside London. They’re open to entries of all types of digital work – from software to marketing, technical or creative – from anywhere in the northern part of England. Entries will close on 11 March.

Please note the earlier start time of 6:45pm.

So, to summarise:

6:30pm for an earlier 6:45pm start at Antenna, Nottingham 12th February

Speakers:  Martin Boddy and then Shaun Fensom

Q&A: topics raised

A happy New Year to you all!!

To kick-off 2013 with a ‘bringing out your personal best’ we have Alexia Leachman giving January’s Nott Tuesday talk on the 8th of January. The talk, ‘Why being you is your only chance at living awesomely… and 5 signs that you’re not ‘, promises to help you to kick start your year ahead in a focused and inspired fashion.

Alexia is a Nottingham-based personal brand & reputation specialist and is the founder of www.headtrash.co.uk. As well as giving regular talks on reputation, personal branding, marketing and social media all over the UK she also blogs and writes. She’s just published a new online marketing book Hit Me – The secrets of getting your small business to punch its weight online. Alexia also used to help organise Nott Tuesday with Nick Barker. You can find more about Alexia at alexialeachman.com

Alexia is a lively and fun speaker, so come along and figure out what awesome things you are going to do in 2013!!

So, to summarise:

18:30 – 20:30 at Antenna, Nottingham 8th November

Speakers:  Alexia Leachman

Q&A: topics raised

As a followup to last months Nott Tuesday Nottingham’s Tech Start-up of the Year 2012 competition we are bringing together the past competition winners to present ‘Where they are now’.

Adam Roberts from GoDine and Zahid Mitha co-founder of Planitt, will be sharing the following with you on the 11th of December:

• Their progress since winning the award
• How this award and other awards have helped them
• Their key startup lessons learned
• Where are they going..

Zahid Mitha co-founder of Planitt

This should be an excellent opportunity to learn how the startup journey continues and progresses. Zahid will be joining us by video conference as he is now based in London.

So, to summarise:

18:30 for 7:00pm start – 20:30 at Antenna, Nottingham 11th October

Speakers: Adam Roberts from GoDine and Zahid Mitha from Planitt

Q&A: topics raised

We’d thought you maybe interested in the ‘Audience Vote’ Survey Monkey stats produced from last weeks Nott Tuesday Nottingham’s Tech Start-up of the Year 2012 competition with EasyPreOrders winning you over:

Nott Tuesday Award Survey Monkey stats (organised by Julian Higman)

You voting (picture supplied by Nick Walker, of Walker Systems)

Thank you again for participating.

Easypreorders scoops the judging panel and audience vote to win  Nottingham’s Tech Start-up of the Year 2012 and £7,000 worth of prizes including £850 cash!!

Mark Roberts, Managing Director of Easypreorders making it look easy! Mark receiving a £500 cheque from judge and sponsor Adam Bird

“The best startup competition yet” was a comment repeatedly made at the event. Antenna was packed with almost 100 people enjoying the awards.

The Audience Voted for EasyPreOrders to Win

Easypreorder is an online pre-ordering service for organisers, restaurants and the hospitality industry. In 2nd place was GuestSort with their venue guest list platform app  and in 3rd place was NeeHoy with their  Sociable Recycling app.

The judges were really impressed by Easypreorders and the other finalists. Adam Bird, spokes person for the judges said:

“The awards have really up stepped a level this year especially in terms of the quality of the startups and teams entering. The top 3 were targeting very different sectors but shared common ingredients: passionate teams, solving real problems that people are prepared to pay for. I look forward to seeing these young businesses develop and rise to the inevitable challenges over the coming years.”

Mark Roberts, Managing Director of Easypreorders , said after winning the award:

“Winning Notts Tuesday is an absolute honour. To say “I’m dead chuffed” would be an understatement! The prizes are fantastic, and geared up to a tech company like ours. Thank You, this really will make a difference our business and ultimately our future.”

Honourable mentions also go to the HiveDrop PhD crew with their spheres of information and PayDot’s tracking, payments and financial reporting service.

Our sincere gratitude go to the long list of 11 sponsors for this year’s event:

• Gold Cash prize & entertainment sponsors: Nottingham City Council, Esendex, Experien & Web design Training
• Gold Sponsors: Security Aware, Anterian & Skeleton Productions
• Silver Sponsors: Esendex, Web design Training & Shoosmiths Solicitors
• Bronze sponsors: Bildurn Property development, TedxLacemarket & Quantum Event.

EasyPreOrders took the lions share of the prizes, with GuestSort receiving two prizes (Legal consultancy and security service) and NeeHoy with Tedx ticket. Interestingly the Audience Vote mirrored the judging with EasyPreOrders (1st) – who received the £350 cash prize, GuestSort (2nd) and NeeHoy (3rd).  Without the support of the sponsors the event wouldn’t have attracted so many startups and make the event hotly competitive.

Our thanks also got to the judges: Adam Bird, Jason Watkins,Rob Cawdron, Ian Fletcher and Aisling Duffy, who did an excellent job at questioning the startups and selecting the winners.

Nott Tuesday Startup Awards 2012 judges

And last but no means least our to thanks go to: Nick Walker from Walker Systems for once again providing the great photography (All the photo’s on Google+); Antenna for hosting and helping to organise the event; Marie Peach and her The Saboteurs band for entertaining us so well with live music, and CJ for live voice streaming the (hear it again here!) and helping the organisation on the night.

Each year the event gets bigger and better with more startup entries, more sponsors with better prizes. And now with the £56m Creative Quarter Nottingham really is a great place to be with your startup!!