You’ve been developing an android app in your spare time as a distraction from your dull-as-dishwater-job working in the IT department of a city law firm. One day it all becomes too much and you think ‘screw it, I’m going to leave this place, sacrifice my decent salary and start up on my own in order to have a measure of control over my career and to create a brilliant product I can sell to people.’
You’re a one man band. You can’t really get any work done in your semi-trendy East London flat. Where do you go to set up shop?
Well, co-working spaces are a good place to start. There is a decent choice in and around Old Street, offering a number of different memberships.
While government attempts to grow british business have been given short shrift for not going far enough, Tech City continues to grow.
A startup that connects patients with healthcare companies and research organisations has received a £2million funding boost. TrialReach, a platform designed to help people access new treatments around the world has been fortunate enough to receive this massive capital injection.
The main chunk of the funding for the firm, started in 2010, has come from Octopus Investments. Amadeus Capital Partners has also provided part of the investment, having backed the company back in 2011.
Alliott Cole, a Principal on the Ventures team at Octopus, said:
“We are really excited to be partnering TrialReach at this stage of its development. The team has created a unique platform that has the ability to improve the efficiency of medical research, by making it easier for people to explore, understand and access the latest clinical trials.
“Data shows that finding the required number of patients delays the vast majority of clinical trials. TrialReach offers a fantastic solution to a problem that the pharmaceutical industry is only going to find more challenging as it looks to recruit patients for clinical trials to support drug development.”
Ladies and gentlemen, this is it. After one month of consultations, heavy lobbying and a few bruises kindly given by friends who didn’t make into our final list, we present to you the first 2013 Silicon Roundabout Twitterers Award. It was a difficult process that took longer than electing the new Pope (we needed much more than two and half days of voting). We truly hope it reasonably represents East London’s tech community, a group of people that are so special that they could inspire this group of four City University start-upers in journalism to write about them.
We had to develop some criteria to put it all together. Surely there is loads of people who are influential in Silicon Roundabout, but there is a need to draw a line that is comprehensive and says more than “he has more followers than her”. We know you guys know how to count. So we tried to give some extra value by bringing some analysis into the raw figures. We looked for patterns of behavior with followers. We detected those who outline clearly what they are up to and who leave more contacts to reach out to more people.
Before we talk about our final list, we will explain our criteria (we know you have looked at the list first, but we will pretend you didn’t).
What do they have to do with East London? - This might sound stupid, but many influential twitterers just don’t work, do business or live in East London. So we couldn’t count them as part of our top Roundabout twitterers list. We are sure people from Brighton, Croydon and abroad have a huge influence on those who are in the Silicon Roundabout. But the objective of this list is to gather information from their community.
Number of followers - The bigger is not necessarily the better Twitter wise. We were much more interested in a sort of ratio between followers and who our candidates were following (no, we didn’t use an algorithm. We looked at the figures, thought for a moment and many times declared “this ain’t no good”). We held a threshold of at least 2,000 followers — otherwise it would be unfair to those who have gigantic numbers and have to deal with a bigger scale of attention. Those who have 50,000 followers and follow almost just as many are out of our list. Those who have 50,000 followers and follow 50 people are out of our list. No one can be responsive and engaging — which means influence to us — if they don’t care about what they others think.
How often do they tweet -Once a day just won’t do. Of course a hundred irrelevant tweets for days count less than one relevant tweet a week, but we are here to find the top twitterers and it is a sure thing they must have a massive online presence. Important executives and tech savvy folks might be in East London and have a good ratio of followers and following, but if they rarely use those assets then they can’t make it to the list.
Quality of the tweets - This is a very subjective arena, but too many pictures with puppies, comments about lunch and football rants don’t make a top twitterer. We cared more about those who showed a human face in their tweets (even organizations can do that), but also contributed positively to the community with links, insights and offering help.
Engagement with users – Those who tweet a lot probably get a lot of answers. If they don’t engage with the readers or engage too little, we take them off our list. If they don’t retweet anyone, we tend to think they either don’t care or get inspired by other people and tweet without attributing the sources. Twitter is also about building a community and those who use it well at least try to be responsive.
Extra contacts - Some people have all of the above on Twitter, but they give users no other way of reaching them. Not a blog, an email or a LinkedIn profile. That surely limits their Twitter experience, because it limits their contacts just as much as following lots of people and never reading what the others say or following no one. It sounds pretty amateur — and, sorry to say, it really is. That kept some good twitterers out of our list. Quite a shame…
Except for the first and the last criteria, which would exclude twitterers from our list if they didn’t meet our requirements, we used a balance between the other three to come to the results. Of course this could be controversial, but this is what these top of the top are made for, isn’t it?
We are using alphabetical order. We limited the list to ten twitterers, but we could surely have 20, 30, 40… who said we have to choose an obvious number? But we did.
So here are the first top Roundabout Twitterers Awards!
Alex Wood - We know we are a small blog which has just started. Most of our feedback came via Twitter and in face to face conversations. But there was only one person which was mentioned on Twitter, face to face conversations and in OUR COMMENTS as a top twitterer. The editor of Tech City News fits all our criteria. If we were looking for a number one (we are not) he would probably be among the favorites.
Benjamin Southworth – It is true his ratio followers and following is not ideal. But every influence in Silicon Roundabout seems to be interested in what he has to say. The Deputy CEO of Tech City UK is one of the most engaging Twitter used in the region.
Digital Shoreditch – These guys are getting so big they even ring the bell at the start of the trading day at London Exchange Market! But that is not why they are on the list. Part of the success of their monthly meetups, hackathons and the enormous annual festival is Twitter. Despite the huge scale, they are responsive and helpful. Not an easy thing to do.
Eze Vidra – As the head of Campus, Google’s new start-up space in East London, this is a guy who clearly has a busy schedule. Still he manages to contribute. Of course he doesn’t retweet people as much as others, but it is comprehensible so those aren’t mistaken for Google endorsing too much.
In Shoreditch – These local businessmen look farther from Shoreditch. They have engaged communities in Brick Lane, Hackney Wick, Dalston — and they are very proud of it. They haven’t retweeted as much as they could, but they skill in creating dialogue is notorious.
Mike Butcher – Tech Crunch’s editor is probably Silicon Roundabout’s most known mediaman. And his Twitter account shows that. He is one of the most influential people in the country, according to the The Daily Telegraph and Wired UK magazine. Still finds time to be responsive. Most of his retweets are journalistic material, which makes his timeline too serious sometimes. But it is still worth it.
Musicmetric – This is a relatively new twitterers and they do it very well. No wonder why they track and index data for 600,000 artists and over 10 million individual releases. You have to be very engaging in communities so your voice is heard. They were also the first suggestion we had for a top Roundabout Twitterer. We were suspicious at first, but truth is they really are.
Rajeeb Dey – The co-founder of Startup Britain and CEO of Enternships is very focused on business in his Twitter profile. He is one of the few top twitterers who puts a link to his LinkedIn profile right below his photo. Sometime there is an imbalance between how much he retweets organizations which have to do with him and everyone else, but it is only fair when for a guy who is involved in all things new in East London.
Silicon Drinkabout – They use Twitter to organize work drinks for start-ups. And it works. How can anyone be more influential than that?
Startup Britain – Not many people are up on a bank holiday morning to tweet. Not their case. They are informative and helpful (yes, we owe them a good amount of the responses we got for this poll). If we didn’t owe them anything they would still make the list, no doubt.
CONGRATULATIONS TO THE AWARD WINNERS!
They will be treated with a dazzling and exclusive applause by Silicon Roundabout Reboot!
Startups face many challenges when setting themselves up for business. There are a multitude of questions tech entrepreneurs will be asking themselves, ranging from issues like whether they need to protect their idea with a patent to the best ways to seek seed funding.
We wanted to find answers to some of these important questions and to debunk misconceptions that people in the tech community might have.
The best thing to do was pick the brains of someone who works at the coal face of all this. So we spoke to Chris Keen, a technology solicitor at Taylor Vinters.
In this second section we discuss the best ways for firms to get funding and how the taxman can be your best friend. Really.
Chris Keen debunks the myths surrounding patents and growing your tech business
Startups face many challenges when setting themselves up for business. There are a multitude of questions tech entrepreneurs will be asking themselves, ranging from issues like whether they need to protect their idea with a patent to the best ways to seek seed funding.
We wanted to find answers to some of these important questions and to debunk misconceptions that people in the tech community might have.
The best thing to do was pick the brains of someone who works at the coal face of all this. So we spoke to Chris Keen, a technology solicitor at Taylor Vinters.
In this first section we discuss the misconceptions that abound in the tech community around issues such as intellectual property and overseas expansion.
Design students creating murals along the walls of Tech Hub Manchester’s offices (Photo: University of Salford)
Tech Hub is one of the biggest names to come out of the roundabout. The company offers tech entrepreneurs support services and office space. Not content with being a base for some of the capital’s fledgling tech startups, they have been stretching their tentacles across Europe.
Last year a group, including Martin Bryant, managing editor of theNextWeb.com, bought the rights to a Manchester franchise and thus TechHub Manchester was born. They opened their doors to the best tech minds in the North West last November.
Tonight at their Princelet Street HQ just off Brick Lane, City Unrulyversity are continuing their commitment to educating the Tech City community by holding an interactive networking session on finance for budding entrepreneurs.
With panel members from both the venture and growth equity community, the evening aims to offer a unique insight into current funding options for businesses and what investors are really looking for.
It will be led by Jane Reoch, the investment director for the Cass Entrepreneurship Fund, and Nick Badman, Chairman of Cass’ Peter Cullum Centre for Entrepreneurship.
Reoch has spent 10 years working across a number of funds including Panoramic Growth Equity. Similarly, Badman has built up extensive experience in venture capital and private equity spheres since deciding to “do the deals rather than the documents” and joining 3i from his position as a corporate lawyer with Clifford Chance.
Other representatives from Panoramic Growth Equity and the Business Growth Fund are set to attend, as well as members of the business angel community and early-stage CEOs who have successfully raised funding.
Sarah Wood, co-founder and COO of Unruly Media, voiced her excitement about the upcoming event.
“City Unrulyversity’s mission is to inform, inspire and empower a new generation of Tech City entrepreneurs,” she said. “So I hope that tonight’s session will help do just that.
“The finance session in particular is designed to highlight funding options for start-up and early-stage business. It will also cover how to make your company more attractive to business angels and venture capital investors. There will be presentations from angels, VCs, and funded entrepreneurs.
“Early-stage entrepreneurs can really benefit from building out their network early on. Tech City is a vibrant ecosystem and a melting pot of people with amazing ideas and contacts across the investment community. Read the full post »
We picked the brains of Technology solicitor Chris Keen from Taylor Vinters.
Fledgling startups pay attention! Here are his top pieces of advice:
1) One of the most common misconceptions is that people think that the only intellectual property that’s worth anything is a patent, which of course is not true.
One of the things that we spend a lot of time doing with firms in their early stages is to explore business plans, talk to them about the technology that they’re developing, looking at which aspects of their idea are novel. What part of it is new intellectual property that others don’t have and that they can protect? Read the full post »
It is not easy to be noted in our gigantic tech community. As a recently new blog made by students of City University, we feel it to our bones. That is why we were intrigued on how effective people and organizations in the Silicon Roundabout community use Twitter, potentially the most efficient tool for anyone who wants to be influential in our environment. So, about a month ago, we started gathering information on the best twitterers related somehow to East London. We are almost finished doing it. But we wanted to share how that process happened with you guys. Transparency is always good.
If you haven’t given any suggestions, there is still time! We will publish the results on 10 May sometime in the morning. Our refined jury, basically composed by us four, is not out yet. Those who made it to the list will get a dazzling and unbelievable “thank you” from Silicon Roundabout Reboot(what else did you expect?).
You are invited to leave a comment or give us a shout on Twitter: @slcnrndbt. Hurry up!
For a jobs fair, the Silicon Milkroundabout is enormous fun. The event in November was full of free coffee, free drinks, thousands of Moo business cards (also given away free) and a lot of great jobs.
The organisers recently surveyed employees of tech startups and, along with stats from Adzuna, found UK start-up jobs to be on the up, with 3,299 jobs currently on offer, which is a 22 per cent increase on last year.
Considering that the rest of the economy is teetering on the edge of a trip-dip recession, this is astonishing growth.
Joanna Shields, chief executive of the Tech City Investment Organization said: “These statistics are extremely encouraging. I passionately believe that technological innovation is by far the most powerful change agent and that entrepreneurship is the greatest force for economic growth.”
The survey also have the effect of confirming the long held suspicion that those looking to work in start-ups are looking for something very different to the usual 9-5.
A surprising 73 per cent of employees of start-ups strongly expect job satisfaction from a position, ranking it five out of five on a scale of importance. But of those at traditional businesses, 39% rank it only a three out five in terms of importance. Read the full post »
Startups face many challenges when setting themselves up for business. There are a multitude of questions tech entrepreneurs will be asking themselves, ranging from issues like whether they need to protect their idea with a patent to the best ways to seek seed funding.
1) One of the most common misconceptions is that people think that the only intellectual property that’s worth anything is a patent, which of course is not true.