PROGRAMME:

EVENT SPONSORS:

Ajaz Ahmed - Freeserve

Ajaz Ahmed is the Founder of Freeserve, the UK’s largest Internet Service Provider (ISP) now known as Orange. His eureka moment came when he bought a PC at PC World in Leeds and nobody in the store could tell him how to get onto the Internet. After much persuasion by him, Dixons launched Freeserve in September 1998 and became the UK’s largest ISP in just three short months. It floated just nine months later at a market cap of £1.5bn and entered the FT 100 soon after, in March 2000 it had a market cap of £9bn. Ajaz was one of the three founding executives to launch the business, seeing it through flotation and the £1.6bn sale to Wanadoo. Ajaz held the position of Business Development Director until April 2001 when he left the company to pursue a variety of business interests. He now sits a number of boards and has a number of investments which he is actively involved in and he also sits on the Governing Council at the University of Huddersfield.

Manoj Patel - CEO Lanxoma

Founder and CEO, Manoj was one of the original founders of UES Limited and Unity Solutions LLC, a JD Edwards reseller formed in 1999. In 1999 Unity was one of seven companies in the U.K. offered a reseller contract from JD Edwards Inc. In 2001, Manoj bought out his partners and built the business into a highly successful and profitable company with a worldwide customer base. Under his leadership Unity Solutions has developed software products and services and the company's sales in 2008 exceeded the target of £3.5 million. Unity solutions invested close to £1 million during 2008 to fund the Lanxoma project, and has secured a further $1 million investment from a US based national security consultancy. Manoj will be sharing his experience of raising funding for Lanxoma.

Robert Wakeling - CEO Wadaro

Robert has over 20 years of hands-on industrial experience featuring various senior management positions and years of corporate development and governance. Robert has provided strong thought leadership and continues to be a strong analyst of future trends in wireless technologies. Robert founded Wadaro 2 years ago and successfully raised seedcorn funding from regional venture capital market. He is currently negotiating the next round - Series A. Robert will share his experience of raising funding in an economic downturn

Ed French, Venture Capitalist, Enterprise Ventures

Edward joined EV in 2002, initially to help set up the RisingStars Growth Fund and later to assess and complete technology investments. Edward has assessed several hundred business propositions and has completed investments to date mainly in software and medical technology. Prior to joining EV, Edward ran a technology transfer business based at the University of Bradford where he completed numerous licence deals and patents, and founded, and funded seven new spin-out companies, mainly in Telecoms, Medical Technology and Software. Edward served as Chairman of Unico, the University Companies Association, which deals with issues associated with creating spin-out companies from University technology. During this time Edward gained useful exposure to building technology business teams, IP strategy work and financing, building upon the experience before Bradford of managing product development, sales and manufacturing in a number of engineering businesses. Edward won a sponsorship from the National Engineering Laboratory to study Engineering Science at Cambridge, and has an MBA from the Bradford School of Management.