Are you a tech company wanting to pitch to healthcare sector free? If so, click on the following thumbnails to find out more about this great opportunity!

If you wish to download above, please create a free account if you do not already have one. If you do, just log in.

For the last five weeks, Northern StartUp 2.0 website has been under attack by spammers. The spamming was related to opening accounts, about 5 every hour, which has resulted in over 1000 new accounts. Less than 1% of these accounts have actually added any comments, but if they all did, the site will be overwhelmed by spammed comments.

Here are some facts about the site:

• Drupal 5.3
• Accounts are needed to comment

Based on various suggestions via Twitter and from Ixis IT (previous website development team) and CTISN (current website development team), following changes were made:

• Captcha
• Recaptcha
• Mollow
• Akismet
• Must complete all 12 fields to register with tricky new feild to catch the spammers
• Admin must approve account creation - all new accounts are blocked but this activity creates additional emails for me to address

None of the above had any impact on spam account creation! All of us are running out of ideas and wonder whether you have any further thoughts on this issue. All help is most welcome.

Don't forget, the issue is not to identify which is spam and which is real, but to stop this happening alltogether.

Update 1:

With an immediate effect, account creation has been suspended. If you wish an account, please get in touch with your phone no. and email address.

Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience

Best regards
Manoj

As Michael Taylor, Editor of the North West Insider introduced me at the yesterday's Insider Breakfast event, "where's Manoj, a short chap, ah there he is". Luckily, Sean Fensom, Chairman and Digital Veteren of Manchester Digital later came to my rescue as he is shorter than me. At this point, I felt a whole lot better, having cocked up my earlier question to the panel, which Dave Carter, Head of Manchester Digital Development Agency responded by saying that if we want help, talk to the VCs. Unfortunately, there are only two VCs in town (EV Group and YFM Private Equity). They are as risk-averse as hell, unless its their ideas (sorry guys - bit unfair I know! Julian, loves your rough 2010 look!). Later, Michael tweeted the following, perhaps thinking he offended me (no chance there, Mike)

@manojranaweera #ff top chap. Loads of energy, ideas and charming eccentricity

At least, Michael has been consistent in there. This is the second time, and the only person to my knowledge to call me eccentric. As you can see from the thumbnail (first one), at least I am with good company (2nd paragraph right hand).

Ok, those who were misfortunate enough to miss the excellent event organised by Insider Digital Team, which was well attended, here (second above) is a Twitter Report courtesy of moi! What I also realised is that there are some hard networkers in Manchester, whom you would see attending many of the city's key events. Here is a list in no particular order:

• Phil Jones - UK Managing Director, Brother - a man who thinks we still need a printer (actually I own two)
• Awan Moneeb - a man in demand - Chairman of Manchester Chamber of Commerce
• Graham Bond - Baker Tilly - must find a way to do business with Graham as he is everywhere!
• Steve Bennett - ex IoD - nice chap!
• Tom Cheesewright - a man who keeps changing brands, And Digital

I would like to share some of the discussions I was part of, if that's OK with you:

1. Manchester Digital - has a desire to connect with all the technology based groups in the city. This aspect is currently managed by NWDC (chaired by Andrew Disley), which I am a member of. Other than NS20 and Manchester Digital all other members of NWDC run software user groups except for GeekUp (Andrew's baby!), which is a collective of software developers (and friends).
2. Sharp Project - I am yet to have a proper chat with Sue Webster who runs Sharp project, but question remains whether she has ambitions to open up her well-funded facilities to product-based technology companies that NS20 champions.
3. Creatives and NS20 - This year, NS20 will put effort into building stronger relationships with other organisations. RedVision promised to give me an insight to digital media - I must follow this up!
4. Broadband issue - This is currently a hot issue in Manchester, and it would not be right, if I do not poke my nose into this discussion. In addition, being a partner and a tenant of Daresbury Science and Innovation Campus (DSIC), I would like DSIC to be a major stakeholder in this discussion, due to DSIC hosting a Media Access Point, the forthcoming Vanguard House (third thumbnail), and current 85 or so high-tech tenants. I also believe that Northernnet and other stakeholders have not engaged with the business community in sufficient context to understand their needs. I have been promised through twitter that marketing of Media Access Points will commence next month.
5. Insider and NS20 - There is a desire to do something together. I just wish that respective parties (one being me!) sit down and firm up what, when and where? Talk is cheap, only actions matter! (Take the hint Mr. Taylor!)

Based on some further discussions outside the Insider Breakfast (I enjoyed it, let me in next time as well Michael!), there are few other areas I need to poke my nose at (when would someone pay for all these nose poking is not clear):

1. Building a VC culture. It seems the city has ambitions to attract VCs from elsewhere to setup base here. Did you know that NS20 brought VCs from Internet Capital (New York, USA), Advent Partners, DFJ Esprit (twice), Eden Ventures, Seedcamp, Difference Engine/North East Finance, Doughty Hanson to Manchester without any public sector spending? The responsibility for this activity seems to be given to a specific body (not sure which part of this was confidential so better not spill out the beans in case they did not know it themselves). Plus they wish to make existing VCs less risk-averse! According to Steve Livingston, most of the VCs that comes through his accountancy practice are not interested in technology companies. If Manchester wants NS20's help, we will be happy to help in educating the VC sector.
2. Businesses and IT. It seems that some non IT businesses are bit fedup of hearing too much about the city's focus on creative media. And they seem to be in the dark about how to take advantage of new technologies to improve their bottom line. Sounds like an opportunity for NS20. I think there is a way we could address this whilst helping our budding tech entrepreneurs. More to come later.

As usual, drop your thoughts here please.

To be collaborative means that you embrace a certain way of life and work ... an openness to the ideas of other people, and in particular to how their ideas and perspectives may mold, change and transform your ideas. The heart of collaboration is openness to the ideas of others, and a stated and acted upon willingness to explore those ideas, rather than assuming that everything you think is right and correct from the get-go. To be collaborative then, is in essence a human process, that plays out over whatever modality of interaction you use with other people, be that face-to-face, email, a wiki or any other "collaborative technology".

- Michael Sampson http://www.michaelsampson.net/

This blog post by Michael Sampson really hit home when I was reading up about collaboration in project management. It was always clear to me that strong collaboration between teams, between management and their teams and between geographic locations is a critical factor for projects success. Michael, though, turns collaboration into a fundamental human desire that needs to be facilitated and nurtured by the correct environment and possibly, the right set of tools.

Before introducing tools and processes for team or organizational collaboration, the first place to start is to introduce ‘Everyday Tools’ for collaboration. These are things that may be a no-brainer to facilitate within a centralized organization but become even more important when an organization is distributed with teams sitting in different locations and time zones with different languages and cultures.

- Personal Responsibility – Team members need to find the channels and methods that work best for them to communicate within their groups effectively. This may be through email, phone, twitter (or other social media platform) or even water cooler conversations. In addition to the traditional (and recordable) forms of communication, these informal forms of communication allow team members to adapt the project communication tools to suit them.

- Build Relationships – Team members need to master their communication skills to build relationships with co-workers even when in person work is not possible. There is nothing unusual or hard about following this recommendation but with fewer opportunities to work together in person, it is more important to do these things to show that you are a real people. Here are some simple examples:

* Pick up the phone and call a co-worker when there has been too much electronic interaction and you are feeling disconnected
* Express an interest in both the work and personal lives of others, notice birthdays, children, hobbies
* Learn what you can about your co-workers strengths and passions

- Collaborative Environment – The culture of an organization must encourage collaboration through various communication and collaboration technologies for any true collaboration to take hold. This is where talking the talk meets walking the walk. Encouraging collaboration includes instilling a sense of trust between employees and management, encouraging freedom to speak and discuss topics across teams and hierarchies, building seamless communication channels between teams and removing any sense of fear or retribution for speaking your mind.

Once the foundations of collaboration and communication are built, bringing in the appropriate tools to facilitate that collaboration will be welcome and easily adopted amongst the team.

Stay tuned for my next post on how to propel team collaboration by using the right project management tools.

The first ever UK Microsoft Innovation Academy Workshop took place on the 10th Dec 09 at Daresbury Innovation Centre. It was delivered by Jyoti Banerjee. I tweeted the full workshop, a two-day event squeezed into one-day, and my tweets are captured on the following report, which you can read on-line or download.

Whilst I had reservations about the value of the workshop prior to participation, I was proven wrong during the afternoon session. As far as I was concerned, it was a day well spent getting a valuable insight into developing the right business model for edocr.com.

Few quotes from fellow participants:

"Interseting day, very useful, covered strategic issues that will have a big impact on our approach to the market", Aldo de Leonibus, Director of Inventya.

"Useful and timely overview covering a variety of issues around the value chain and approaching new markets", Katrina Delargy, Managing Director, Aventura.

I sincerely hope Microsoft will continue to offer these workshops to high growth businesses across the country.

As you are probably be aware, Northern StartUp 2.0 has been a Microsoft BizSpark Network Partner since we launched the programme at Cloud Computing event held in April 2009 when Bindi Karia visited us.

For the first time in the UK, Microsoft is running an Innovation Academy Workshop For Start-Up Software Businesses on the 10th of Dec 2009, and I am honoured to inform you that this event will be run out of Daresbury Innovation Centre, where both of my companies are head quartered.

The course takes the form of one-day interactive instructor-led workshop covering:

- Introduction to the software industry: How it’s the same, why it’s different
- The Market Environment and its Analysis: Managing change and ambiguity
- Building Customer Value and Loyalty: Which Software Business Model?
- Solutions Selling and Managing the Complex Sale
- Software Operations: Introduction Application Life Cycle Management

This free workshop is designed to provide executives and managers of independent software application vendors with the business tools and knowledge required to determine their competitive advantage in their targeted value chain, bring software products to market and plan for international marketing and channel promotion.

The programme will be delivered by Agitavi Research.

The software development industry contributes in the region of £20 billion per year to the UK economy. Microsoft is committed to supporting a thriving software development industry in the UK through their partner programmes and through the BizSpark programme for software startups.

The event is co-hosted by Northern StartUp 2.0, Daresbury Science and Innovation Campus and the Northwest Regional Development Agency.

If you wish to attend this event, please contact me in the first instance. Please note that Microsoft is expecting to deliver this programme to about 20 startups, with preference given to those who have already signed up to the BizSpark programme. The sooner you apply the better chance you have of securing a place.

This week, I caught up with Mark Strefford, CEO of TheWeddingVine.com he runs with his wife, Vicki. I remember the days when Mark was thinking of how to take the first step of developing the site. I pushed him towards Drupal. TheWeddingVine.com has come a long way since then.

Manoj: What made you launch your company? Tell us about the company history and the management team. Given that your wife, Vicky is also involved in the day-to-day operations, do you consider your business as a family business, life-style business or high growth business?

Mark: This may sound like a story you’ve heard on many other wedding websites, but we came up with the idea for TheWeddingVine.com after planning our own wedding back in 2006. Victoria is a professional Wedding Co-ordinator and has run a successful wedding planning business since 2002, but even for professionals there are limited available online resources. Although this is a family business, we see huge potential to revolutionise the way weddings are planned using the internet and see a potential for significant growth in our business.

Manoj: What problem(s) do your company solve? Why do you think your company solve the problem better than others? What have you learn from similar businesses set-up during the dot.com era?

Mark: Our company aims to give couples the resources that professional wedding planners have at their finger tips through an easy to use, feature-rich website. The site will provide inspiration, ideas, and the ability to find wedding suppliers based on the couple’s own exacting criteria. Victoria’s network includes a number of the inspirational wedding industry experts, and this gives our users inside access to information on upcoming trends and fashions. In our research, we see that many of the leading UK wedding websites tend to follow a very simple and static approach for finding ideas, suppliers, etc., and although some of the US sites are starting to move in the right direction, we still see that there is a significant gap between these leading US sites and the capabilities available in other industries. However, we’re conscious of the fact that lots of great functionality doesn’t necessarily pay the bills, so we’re constantly challenging our ideas for their commercial viability.

Manoj: Describe your products and services. What benefits do they bring? Given that weddings are rarely repeated more than once in one's life time, how do you retain customer loyalty, or is this not important?

Mark: The latest release of the beta site provides the ability for couples to find suppliers through a number of ways. We’re the first internet wedding website to offer a free-form tag based search for suppliers and also the ability to search for specific products or services. For example, if you were looking for a venue, you may want to find specific features such as a specific venue type, the ability to host a certain number of guests with on-site accommodation that you will have exclusive use of. As the paint dries on the new site, the big drive is on now to populate this detailed information. What’s great with our site is that we can use our community to maintain information on wedding suppliers, and provide useful feedback and reviews to help future couples find their ideal suppliers.

We see customer retention in two ways. We aim to keep suppliers engaged with us for many years to come, and as these are currently our main source of revenue, we’re looking to build long and mutually profitable partnerships across the industry. Although we see that most people only marry once, they are likely to recommend services that worked for them to their family and friends, and sometimes they do marry twice! We’ll also know when their anniversaries are, and have the opportunity to partner with appropriate companies around this.

Manoj: Who are your key competitors? How do you differentiate from them? How are you currently marketing your products and services other than through your website? Is social media helping you achieve traction?

Mark: In the UK, we see our largest competitors as hitched.co.uk, confetti.co.uk brides.co.uk and yourandyourwedding.co.uk. As you can see from these domain names, they are firmly focused on the UK market. We see that hitched.co.uk and confetti.co.uk are mainly focused on product sales (ie. table decorations and wedding favours). Brides.co.uk and youandyourwedding.co.uk are front end website for their respective magazines. We’re the first company to approach the market solely with the user experience in mind, rather than as a route to sell more offline products. Based on the fact that we’re entirely an online company, all of our marketing is through low cost and no-cost channels and we’re currently making use of social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook.

Manoj: What stage are you in, in terms of execution of your plans? What are your plans for the next 12 to 18 months? What are the key challenges you are facing right now? What help do you need if any, especially from Northern StartUp 2.0? By the way, congratulations in closing first debt finance round. Please share your experience.

Mark: We’ve just secured financing through our bank, with some great help from the NWDA, and this has coincided well with the launching of the new beta site. Our experience has shown that raising money through the banks is significantly slower than the banks initially suggest, and in the end we managed to get the buy-in from a senior regional director who had faith in our vision and backed us all the way! This was significantly helped by having a thorough and exhaustive business plan (with expert assistance from Roy Shelton), a compelling message and persistent and expert help from the NWDA. We’ve got a lot of things to do over the next 12 months in terms of adding functionality to the site, making sure that we stay ahead of the curve, and keeping our competitors firmly playing catch-up! We foresee a need to raise extra capital as we go into 2010, so would be looking to develop our contacts and partners through the NWDA and Northern StartUp 2.0. The key challenges we are facing right now is juggling our family (complete with new baby and a 10 year old), Mark’s day job and the many demands of running a start-up. We’re also facing the challenge common to many new businesses in getting people to have faith in you when you are not an established name YET!

Michael Taylor, the Editor of the Insider Magazine, just ran another successful Deal Makers 2009 Award ceremony, which clashed with my own, Managing Growth - Tech Entrepreneur Series held at eOffice on 12th November 2009.

Michael in his weekly column argues that private equity needs to get back to its venture capital roots. The Good news is that LDC is making a change in their investment criteria by wanting to invest into early stage businesses. So Michael thinks this is a good ground for celebration, especially as LDC won one of the awards he gave them.

Disclaimer 1: I am jealous as I could not attend the event. So you know why I am taking this attitude!

In my view, just like any industry, you see companies changing their strategy from time to time. Whilst LDC is speaking about lowering their investment criteria with the hope of netting the next Google (why is it that they all pick Google as the one to beat?), which is great news for Northern StartUp 2.0 community, there are others who have got tired of early stage investment, and changing their strategy by targeting companies with stable revenues and profits, but could do with an injection of new ideas to revive growth. In fact, just over the last two months, I have spoken to two tier-1 VC houses from London on the same topic.

So whilst we should be jubilant on one hand of LDC's decision, we should be less happy on the other hand with my friends from London! In essence, we have equilibrium, one going down and two going up, well almost!

Disclaimer 2: As I cannot be a friend of Roger Cashman (he is way too cool and hangout with only the A-list), I decided to be friends with Michael, as Michael is the second best thing to Roger!

Extract from Michael's article on his website

"Eales told Insider that although LDC only makes investments below £5m on an exceptional basis, he was keen to see technology developed in the UK and not lost abroad. "I am considering plans to set up part of LDC to invest in special situations," he said. "I would like to develop LDC downward. We could still do all the things we are already doing but could also do SME investments."

As if to dampen our enthusiasm, Eales cautioned that plans for the shift were in the embryonic stages, but as he outlined further ideas of how it would work, it rather suggested progress was being made. "The level of due diligence we carry out on our current investments - between £5m and £50m - would not be appropriate," he said. "We would need individuals with specialist industry knowledge to explore the business for us."

I can only say, bring it on! as we, the Northern StartUp 2.0 community got the experience and know-how and the odd failures (1 under my belt) to help LDC reduce its risk exposure! But more than anything, it would be a blessing to add another brand to the community. Whilst the EV Group and Liverpool Ventures (now gone!) invested in to early stage tech businesses in the past, we have seen our new friends, A2E Venture Catalyst investing into another NS20 tech startup and making two more offers. Sorry, I cannot reveal the names here!

Whilst Northern StartUp 2.0 has engaged with Aquarius Equity Partners, I do not believe they have invested into any startups from the NS20 community. In fact, I believe their interest lies in heavy research based (IP rich) companies than software startups.

EV Group and YFM Private Equity have always been supporters of Northern StartUp 2.0. However, it seems I have annoyed EV Group with my last newsletter, so I now need to rebuild our relationship! All I want to say about this issue is, whilst I may have jumped the gun a bit (my analyst days coming back), we cannot just talk about the upside! We must talk about failures and learn lessons, if not, how can we ever learn?

Of course, Michael is operating at a level much higher than me, rubbing shoulders with the top elite of corporate financiers delivering news whilst trying to entertain the not-so-entertainable chaps such as me!

Disclaimer 3: As far as I know, I appeared at least 3 times on Michael's flagship product, the North West Insider

Just to conclude, it is great news to hear that LDC's new strategy. EV Group has also geared up with recruiting two staff from now closed Liverpool Ventures. In addition, they now have offices in Preston, Manchester, Leeds and Birmingham.

Disclaimer 4: Given my big mouth and Michael's charming network, don't you think it makes sense for us to work on a project together?

From my side, I would love to see lot more entrants in the market, from single investment partner to multiple. We need to create competition within the venture capital market place. We need to change our attitudes, and see technology businesses are worthy of the news as well as investment. Just to close this, you all should be attending Northern StartUp 2.0 events and supporting my efforts in building the ecosystem (shameful plug!).

Place: eOffice, 1 Portland Street, Manchester

Date: 12th November 2009; Time: 6:00 – 9:00 pm

Event: Northern Start-up 2.0’s Managing Growth - Tech Entrepreneur Series

A typical Autumnal evening in Manchester; I’ve taken a cab from the Corner House to avoid being soaked by the copious rain. Traffic in Portland Street at the Piccadilly end is still heavy. I pay the driver and leave two blocks earlier to carry on on foot. I arrive at the venue at twenty minutes past the hour. As I am not the only one arriving late, I squeeze through the crowd and luckily find an empty seat in the third row. I see out of the corner of my eye Manoj Ranaweera, who is in the front row, listening attentively to one of the speakers. His monthly events have become almost a kind of cult for the cadre of young Mancunian entrepreneurs.

The three guest speakers do not disappoint the audience. In his usual informal, amusing and no-nonsense style, Steve Purdham shares personal insights from his recent ventures. We7.com and SurfControl.com are two of his success stories. In the same way, Chris Allen tells us about his ten-year journey with Laterooms.com. Wearing the hat of an investor, Peter Jones, Eden Ventures, succinctly outlines his thinking process and key criteria for securing venture capital.

In a nutshell, for technology-based start-ups to attract the attention of corporate VCs, the personal qualities, vision and market orientation of the entrepreneurial team is one of the two most important factors. The second factor is the potential for a global market - the technology solution ought to have the potential to generate a billion - what Hollywood people would call a ‘blockbuster’.

A clear vision geared towards constant growth is vital. As an adopted Northerner, I'm still amazed when a shrewd executive such as Chris Allen recounts his history of perils and ruthless decisions to inject an additional five or ten million pounds of capital – while he casually takes another sip from his glass of water. Growth is for them a necessary thing to stay ahead of the competition. Plain survival is a mediocre option; death is not in their vocabulary.

However, nowadays, according to our speakers, venture capital is not always necessary to succeed. Entrepreneurs have a range of options to acquire additional capabilities and still generate attractive profits focusing on very concrete market niches. Very, very few solutions have the potential to become as global and as profitable as Google, YouTube, Facebook or Twitter. By right-sizing operations and strategic market segmentation, young start-ups increase the chances to demonstrate that their solutions are workable and can generate revenue and profits.

Our speakers also remind us of the importance of business models and economic logic. Most sound technological solutions become unviable because of the choice of an inappropriate business model. A good business model needs to exploit and capitalize on the disruptive nature of technologies.

‘Disruptive’ here is the mantra.

We7 is now in a position to become a multi-million business because it has disrupted the very structure of the music industry by providing free music to end-users - legally. The traditional ‘pay-per-track’ logic has been trashed by a combination of advertising revenue and (forthcoming) premium services. This brings to my mind Chris Anderson’s ‘FREE: The Future of a Radical Price’. Two-sided markets and network effects are increasingly shaping the next generation of business models.

After the event, the discussion continues in KroBar across the road. Here, I have the opportunity to engage with Barry James. During the event, Barry willingly agreed to have his new cloud-enabled security solution ‘TakeWare’® slaughtered by the audience. It is clear from our conversation and the previous presentations that timing and opportunity sensing, besides disruption, is another key ingredient for our recipe for success. This sense of ‘timing and opportunity’ has become ingrained within the mind of these entrepreneurs partly through a painful but enriching ‘experiential’ process, and partly by developing an indifferent attitude towards uncertainty and risk.

However, how many people can honestly say that they do not fear the future, given the current uncertain economic environment? At least four people above can answer ‘Yes’.

Copyright: Angel J Salazar, Foresight North, 2009

When Guinness decided that they wanted to expand their market into Europe,they saw Germany as the biggest growth area.After all the Germans are the biggest beer drinkers on the continent so why wouldn’t they drink the black velvet?

Well they didn’t and Guinness ended up with less than 1 per cent of the market.The reason-well Germans prefer light beers and have an affinity to local breweries.

If one message came out of last night’s Managing Growth – Tech Entrepreneur Series held in Manchester,it was that to successfully grow a business,listen to what your customer wants,and understand who your customers are

Speaking were Chris Allen,instrumental in the founding of Laterooms.com back before the first dot com crash and Steve Purdham who co-founded Surf Control, a global provider of internet filtering software and is now one of the names behind free online music service we7.com teaming up with Genesis front-man Peter Gabriel.

Both gave some of the secrets of their success to an assembled audience of entrepreneurs and funders last night.

Chris has worked for 40 years in what he described as the second oldest profession in the world,hotels.Working withinPremium Inns,he tore up the business model of selling rooms,decided that customers wanted something a little more special than their own bedrooms.

Instead he offered them such innovations as the trouser press and satellite television.

It is a pressure business he said because it is a commodity you can only sell once.

After leaving the business he set up LateRooms.com and again tried to tear up the business model by offering hotels a direct fee model instead of the more traditional percentage cut.When this failed to take off he decided to differentiate by giving his customers more choice and a personal level of service,often manning the call centre himself to find out exactly what they wanted.

What the customer wants according to Steve Purdham is free music.At WE7,they have created an environment that customers like,you get a free song and you get an advert to pay for it.

A simple model says Steve,publicised not by advertising and PR but by word of mouth.”If you like it you will tell your friends”.

For both entrepreneurs people are at the heart of any growth model.According to Steve,the biggest restrictor of growth is the person in charge wanting to keep control and not delegate.You must have the courage to move people on if they are in the wrong slot and create gaps to bring new people in.

For Chris,a good entrepreneur needs good people around.These people will grow with the company.

The proof is in the pudding and both men have successfully sold their businesses on for a considerable premium.

For Chris his company was sold in 2007 to First Choice for £120 million in 2007, two years after a MBO.For Steve his Surf control company was sold to US rival Websense in 2007 for £201 million in 2007.Now We7 vies for the free music market along with its better known rival Spotify.