Benjamin F. Wirtz, the co-founder of HandyElephant, is holding a workshop on techniques for Strategic Networking. With the hype of social networking, we are now able to in touch with many more people than we can keep track of - but "social capital" is still an essential part for venture success. The workshop's focus is to put techniques for planning your network and social capital into practice - even without HandyElephant.

Hopefully, you will find this an acceptable description of what Techcelerate is.

Braveheart was introduced to me by Andrew Burton who sold Viking Fund to them in 2009. Its good to hear that they are in the process of acquiring Envestors including the North West Franchise setup by Manchester based entrepreneurs Mike Pearls of MC2, Scott Fletcher of ANS Group and Imran Hakim of iTeddy, the three musketeers.

I will be attending my third Seedcamp event tomorrow as a mentor. Seedcamp is without doubt the main event for any budding tech entrepreneur team, and it is getting bigger each year attracting companies from all over the world.

I was aware that Yuuguu was negotiating another round of investment, but this even took me by surprise. No wonder Anish cancelled our webmission reunion at the last minute on Monday. Good to hear one of the local tech startups find an exit this early. Well done Anish and the team.

Round up of local tech and venture capital stories from setting up a bank for entrepreneurs in Manchester to NCC group reporting growth in profit margins.

Quick overview of pitching at Liverpool Science Park today and the story of Tweets60 by Ravensoft

Dow Jones reported 41% increase in US venture capital fundraising, raising $4.1 billion across 34 funds in the first quarter of 2010.

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.

In a Budget that promised to support investment in growth and jobs, it is the north west’s emerging high-tech, digital and advanced manufacturing businesses that appear to be the main beneficiaries.