Bootstrap Business Club @MadLab
So Monday evening we were at the awesome MadLab here in the Northern Quarter of Manchester for the Bootstrap Business Club organised by Tekin Suleyman.
The Bootsrap Business Club held a ‘Show and Tell’ night where tech startups had the opportunity to explain and demonstrate what they’re working on right now and give the audience the opportunity for Q&A - all in a 5 min time limit. It was brilliant to see the loft of MadLab full to the brim with standing room only at the back. The night attracted a whole host of self funded startups all at varying stages of development.
The evening started off with Tekin talking about his own startup Crowd FM, and then handed over to the 15 other startups waiting to pitch.
For a blow by blow live blog of the pitches and a list of all startups, check out the Northology blog. Northology is a podcast/ blog centered around the startup scene of Manchester. It’s run by a friend Nathan Rae - I was involved with Northology at a super early stage until my life got taken over by all things Twocial. It’s definitely worth checking out.
At the end of the evening, I managed to steal a 5 min slot at the end to conduct some Minimum Viable Product testing - I began the sentence with “Twocial is…”
- Twocial is… an online sentiment analysis engine, monitoring social sentiment empowering targeted engagement.
- Twocial is… a CompareTheMarket but for service and not price
- Twocial is… social sentiment tracker for realtime political/ presidential debates
And I tried to garner which of the above were interesting, awesome, rubbish, had potential… the reaction was mixed but did provoke some interesting questions! Martin also pitched in with comments throughout. The pitch was total ad lib and I wasn’t prepared by any means - but it was great fun to do and we got some great feedback.
But at the end of the evening, the thing that struck me most was the energy that was in the room and the diverse set of startups present. It was really awesome to be among other startups who were in the same boat - the feedback was all constructive and I think we all made some awesome contacts.
All in all a great evening and I shall definitely be attending next month, thanks Tekin for a top event.
Twocial Social 3 - 4 startups, 1 FatCamp and ass patches?
We held Twocial Social 3 with some awesome company this week, following the launch of the Manchester Startups Facebook page we were able to get 4 startups around one table: Paul Stacey cofounder of Fatsoma, Andrew Threlfall founder of Malinko and Neil Beardmore founder of SafetyGearStore. We also had our dear friend, technical architect extraordinaire and (my) colleague Jimbob.
This was by far the best social we’ve had so far and I’m still buzzing from it. It was only until afterwards when myself and Martin realised that we hadn’t actually spoken about Twocial all that much. From the get go the discussion was centered solely around the Manchester startup scene and what we need to do to cultivate it.
Manchester startups where y’all at?
Berlin, with the most awesome Silicon Allee scene have a number of cafe’s and bars which are the places to go if you want to bump into startup and techie types. The Silicon Roundabout scene in Shoreditch, London has the TechHub (claiming to be the digital capital of Europe) - so where is it in Manchester? Manoj is doing a great job at Techcelerate, but which coffee shops are the place to congregate? Naturally me and Martin favour North Tea Power for its great coffee and free WiFi :)
Paul, having just undergone a second round of funding with Fatsoma is moving into brand spanking new offices just off the Ancoats area of Manchester and very kindly offered a space for us to get together. This is very much in the same vein as MOO cards - who purportedly were the catalyst behind the Silicon Roundabout hype by doing the very same thing. Also, we did get an invite to tour the office once they’d moved in - blog post to follow! One other future blog post will be Paul’s ideas around organising a FatCamp hack weekend.
SafetyGearStore.co.uk
So I got talking to Neil who runs SafetyGearStore from Stoke. Paul in his own words is a reformed SEO expert who took to selling lanyards and harnesses online - and although the name suggests Safety Gear, he has extended his product range to boating cranes and equipment. Neil pivots his product range directly around the demands of the customer and again in his own words “if my customers want ass patches, then dammit I’ll supply ass patches” - which is a sound strategy. We still don’t know what Ass Patches are but I’m certainly not googling it.
Malinko
Both me and Martin know Andrew only from Twitter, and it was great to finally meet. He founded Malinko as a Scheduling and CRM tool to manage disparate workforces. His core userbase are contractors managing sub contractors. The interesting thing about Malinko is that they started off as a team of three devs, one dev left, and they ended up getting a salesperson instead. This simple pivot enabled the salesperson to help shape the product. Not only did the salesperson trim the product down to its core features - it also helped that he was previously a customer of Malinko and helped implement it at his old workplace. Andrew is based at Manchester Business Park and is going from strength to strength.
We ended up spending the best part of two hours at North Tea Power having made some awesome contacts and had some really insightful conversation.
We’re going to see Paul and Andrew again at the Bootstrap Business Club at MadLab on March 11th which is hosting a “Show and Tell” night.
As I meet new Manchester Startups I’ve decided to write a bio post on each so that you’re able to read about the awesome people we meet.
If you’re a techie, designer, fellow startup, current/ potential user or if you just nosy and want to say hello we’d love to meet you at the next Twocial Social. Especially if you’re just nosy. Follow us on Twitter to stay in the loop: @TwocialApp
Manchester Startups Facebook Group
Quick one, if you’re a startup based here in Manchester or even if you’re just interested: first off read Martin Bryant’s blog post and then join the Manchester Startups Facebook Group.
Twocial Social 1.5 (and why I love the Manchester tech scene)
So today was pretty awesome, I spent the afternoon with two awesome gents; Michael and Ash. Michael works at a startup in Doncaster (I’ll get to that in just a minute) and tweeted that he’s travelling through Manchester. So we ended up meeting at the awesome North Tea Power which was heaving as usual on a Saturday afternoon with our mutual friend and fellow techie Ash.
Although it was meant to be tea and coffee with friends, it did end up becoming a mini Twocial Social (hence number 1.5).
Although we do have a tonne of mutual friends, I’d like to mention that I only know Michael and Ash through attending BarCamps around the country. I first met Ash at BarCamp Blackpool and since then a number of Limited WIP MeetUps. Michael and I have been bumping into each other at BarCamps all over the show: first at BarCamp Media City, then at Blackpool and finally at BarCamp London. Oh and we also bumped into each other at The Power of One conference (on 11.11.11 geddit?). Actually it’s through BarCamp Media City where Martin and I first met. The Manchester tech scene is awesome.
Ash is an incredibly intense and intelligent chap who is always on hand to bounce ideas off. By trade he’s a ruby dev and Agile coach/ Systems Thinker and he reads like a book a day. Like I said, Michael works at TweetDig which is a startup based in Doncaster. The TweetDig product is a method by which you can better manage and control your Twitter feed – it’s like Outlook but for Tweets. It allows you to create rules and folders and by all accounts it’s pretty awesome. It’s still in private beta and even though I’ve been nagging for a while, Michael still hasn’t provided me with an invite (hint hint). And btw, register your interest for TweetDig here: http://tweetdig.com/. As Twocial uses Twitter, I really wanted to hear what Michael and Ash thought of the idea behind Twocial.
After hearing my pitch (and not tearing it to pieces) both Ash and Michael referred to the Technology Adoption Life Cycle as mentioned in the book ‘Crossing the Chasm’ by Geoffrey Moore. As Twocial is about enabling social engagement and offering social intelligence – how do we then present the social audience back to a Twocial user. As a Twocial user may be as diverse as a company launching a product to a service company, how do we segregate the social audience into useful and meaningful categories and how should the user then best engage with that group? I can’t offer any deep insights here but I can tell you that it was an eye opening conversation. Crossing the Chasm added to reading list.
As usual awesome conversation, great company, great tea and coffee and plenty of notes taken.
Discussions included:
- Technology Adoption Life Cycle, Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore
- Twocial as customer engagement tool (-ve: Crowded market place, +ve: Immediate value can be offered, and if we find a niche where we can offer a solution for a specific need)
- Twocial as distributed focus group (-ve: Lower demand, +ve: Unique in market)
- Create stub accounts for potential customers to use as an aid in sales pitches
- Check out new Twitter feature – ‘Contributors’
- Principles of Product Development Flow by Donald Reinertsen
- Neuromarketing by Renvoise and Morin
- …and finally Guillan Barre Syndrome which is what I had.
If you’re a techie, designer, fellow startup, current/ potential user or if you just nosy and want to say hello we’d love to meet you at the next Twocial Social. Especially if you’re just nosy. Follow us on Twitter to stay in the loop: TwocialApp
P.s. We also bumped into Tekin, who I only know from Twitter who already knows Ash. That’s also why the Manchester tech scene is awesome.
