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…”

  1. Twocial is… an online sentiment analysis engine, monitoring social sentiment empowering targeted engagement.
  2. Twocial is… a CompareTheMarket but for service and not price
  3. 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.