A report on the boom in the media industry despite the worst recession in 70 years.

Not talking about my next idea hasn’t actually progressed me towards my desired destination.

So, I’ve decided to do a bit of the opposite. Over the next weeks, I’ll be posting more material as I generate it, including getting some screenshots put together after I’ve put together some basic sketches. And it’s all going up here.

A new Cultural Tourism app competition for Northern Irish mobile companies.

The DCAL initiative aims to harness the innovation and entrepreneurial potential of culture, arts and leisure by encouraging local digital companies to use these sectors as a source of inspiration and content for mobile Apps. Digital technologies are transforming how people access information and how business sectors, such as tourism, communicate with consumers. Billions of Apps are downloaded globally each year and this competition offers opportunities to grow the creative industries and tourism sector in the north of Ireland.

The competition is being managed by Momentum / Digital Circle, which promotes the ICT and digital content sector in the north of Ireland. Local digital companies are invited to put forward creative and innovative ideas for two apps showcasing Irish and Ulster-Scots culture respectively. The winning applications will be funded to develop the apps in time for the 2012 tourism season.

The tender documents are located:

• Ulster-Scots Tender
• GAA-Comhaltas Tender

There is an inevitability of a concentration on the digital knowledge economy for Northern Ireland. We have a thriving group of developers and designers in Belfast, a huge amount of ambition in the North West and a heap of activity building in the Southern and Western counties of the province.

Last week I went to the Digital Hub along with Momentum, Belfast City Council, InvestNI and representatives from DCAL and OFMDFM.

We heard the spiel about how it brought some regeneration to the area, that they still have a considerable subvention from the government after 10 years (less than €2m a year, but overall investment has been around €30m since inception and may not include transferred assets).

I also spoke to some of the guys in some of the businesses. They said they wish the Hub was one mile closer to the city centre, that the reason they use bikes and public transport is because they don’t want to bring their cars to that area of town and even the big lads feel a little concerned leaving the Hub with a laptop.

It re-iterates my belief that a city centre location for a Belfast Hub is essential. Not least because Davy Sims put together a map of Digital Media companies in Northern Ireland back in February of 2010 and discovered most were within a square mile in the city centre.

View Belfast Media Square Mile in a larger map

I don’t think we want a straight property play like the Hub in Dublin. We’re a small region with a big ambition so we have to think much more strategically about what goes where. We also need to be 100% joined up. I think I have the support of the Digital Circle steering group in my opinions and in my vision for a digital hub-type infrastructure in Northern Ireland. It’s a big plan, an ambitious plan, even an audacious plan and if it delivers, it will bring the concept to the province as a whole rather than just to a small region.

This morning I had coffee with Marty Neill (from AirPOS and Brian McKimm (from eSynergy). I could have done with another couple of hours (and a whiteboard) but in all I was very pleased with the conversation even though we may not have agreed on the finer points.

In essence, I was pitching to try to increase the “ideaspace” in Northern Ireland.

I’m of the opinion that there are small ideas and big ideas. The theory is that all of these ideas tend to have equal chance of happening in any given time. The difficulty then is not only finding the time to just have ideas but also having the space, time, resource and, probably most importantly, the network, to realise the idea.

Sometimes what seems to be a small idea can turn into a big idea and it’s not always apparent immediately. Facebook began as a blog, turned into a college network and is now permeating every aspect of our lives. Twitter began as a way to send text messages to groups (and have them be able to easily reply to the group). Google began as a search engine and now does pretty much everything.

I can’t speak for others in this but I’m pretty sure that AirPOS started because Marty realised that Point of Sales systems were hopelessly outdated and none of them used the Internet. I’m sure that Onotate started because Rumble Labs needed a controlled way to share graphical assets with clients and generate appropriate feedback. I’m certain that Planzai started out as a way for Richard to organise some of the activities in his dual life as a rockstar software developer and a rockstar. But these were big ideas masquerading as small ideas.

We’re working on methods now to increase the ‘idea space’ in Northern Ireland. We’ve been doing it through the InvestNI Collaborative Network Programme and we’re continuing it with the development of an “innovation hub” in Belfast. Part hub, part incubator, part soft landing zone; the intent is to provide the default industry location for the development of ideas and collaborations. It’s what I’ve been doing for the last three years – with the ideaspace being virtualised – and it’s what we’re going to be executing on for the next three years.

If you’re interested in being a part of it, drop me a line.

This weekend I was entertained by the news that Color, a social media startup, was moving from “mobile” to “FaceBook” as their primary platform. Whether you think that’s a good idea or not or whether the only thing Color has going for them was the $40million they received in venture capital, it represent a pivot in their strategy.

My second company pivoted. I didn’t like it much. We started out doing products, bootstrapping due to the complete lack of seed funding in the region (something that has been fixed) and ended up selling our souls to contract development. Yes, we were bootstrapping but only due to lack of choice. And I hated it.

I spent last weekend sailing with Ballyholme Yacht Club and earned my RYA Level 2 “Start Sailing” certificate. The core concept of sailing is summed up by five essentials:

• Trim
• Balance
• Sail setting
• Centreboard
• Course Made Good

Trim and Balance are all about keeping yourself in the boat while the wind and waves are trying to throw you out. In dinghy sailing, keeping the boat at flat as possible means you can eke out the best performance. Plow the bow in too far and you lose speed, similarly too much weight on the stern causes excessive drag.

Sail Setting is about keeping the wind in your sails. When sailing, your primary method of locomotion is through the wind. While you can make some progress on the currents, surfing the odd wave and negotiating the tides, it is with the wind that you make progress.

Centreboard, also known as a daggerboard or keel, provides resistance to the wind driving you sideways and off course. It also helps in keeping you in a boat. You have to know when to set the centreboard hard or when to pull it in a little to reduce drag.

Course Made Good is figuring out which way you have to point your little boat in order to arrive at the destination, taking into account the current and tides, waves, obstacles, other vessels and, of course, the direction of the wind. Sometimes the most direct route is impossible (sailing upwind) and you may have to tack or gybe your way through the wind to reach your desired goal.

So what are tacking and gybing?

Tacking is moving your boat against the wind to change direction. As you face the wind, the power is lost from the sails. You lose some speed but the manoeuvre is controllable, predictable and if things go wrong, the worst thing that can happen is that you slow to a stop.

Gybing is moving your boat through the wind to change direction. The wind is always fully in the sails, the process is much quicker and much more violent but there is much more risk of losing control and ending up in the water.

Knowing when a tack is needed and when only a gybe will do is something that is gained through experience. It depends on what direction you are going, where you want to go and what direction the wind is heading. it depends on what risks you are taking. Our instructor, Alice, related a tale of how she was forced to tack multiple times during a race when one gybe would have completed the turn because the high winds and risk of capsize would have lost her the race.

I can’t help but relate the concepts of tacking and gybing to startups who feel the need to pivot. In fact, all of the five essentials of sailing can be related in some way and would, in my opinion, go well in a business plan.

Last chance to register for a games technology development seminar here in Belfast.

Wed, 14 September from 10:00 to 12:00 at Radisson Blu, Gasworks, Belfast

The speaker is Paul Durrant, Abertay University’s Director of Business Development. He has been instrumental in developing a range of projects to support digital media IP generation, business start-up, incubation, and skills development particularly in the video games area. He developed Dare to be Digital and Dare ProtoPlay to become significant international events including a partnership with BAFTA to recognise talented young developers and the development of the Channel 4 Crunchtime TV series. He also raised £2m to establish a prototype fund for small games developers and has recently launched a partnership with the Technology Strategy Board to fund novel games applications.

In this seminar, Paul will describe the Scottish experience in digital content, the contribution from Abertay and the funding opportunities available through Abertay which are available to companies in Northern Ireland. In particular, he will describe the Abertay University Prototype Fund (http://prototypefund.abertay.ac.uk/) and the Future Games Contest ( https://ktn.innovateuk.org/web/future-games-contest )

One final note: investors who want business plans are probably not your target market, if you’re founding a high growth technology startup. We had lots of great followup conversations with the angels who wanted them, but ultimately none of them turned in to investors

A bit of sense from Dan Shapiro which is worth reading in its entirety.

The problem I see at the moment is a heap of self-labelled entrepreneurs who won’t write anything down. They have obviously spent too much time watching Dragons Den or making pointless elevator pitches at BarCamp (where most people are too polite to be honest) and reckon that by sheer force of personality they’ll get what they want. Because, obviously, this has happened. Deals can be made on the back of a napkin, the investor wants to invest in you as a person so they’re not interested in the detail. And I’m not even talking about a 30 page operations plan, folk won’t even put the time n to do the executive summary which is, after all, the most minimum of effort and the only thing worth writing.

I say this after writing a dozen business plans, after finishing an executive summary and now having to write the accompanying 30 pages of supporting materials for a strategy document. I’m currently on page 11 with that one. But you have to choose your battles and suit them to the audience. And by audience I mean customer.

The customer is the person who gives you money. The customer may change over the life cycle of your business and you’ll need to change your pitch accordingly.

• The customer as private investor

– will want a story about markets and returns and how you’re going to achieve them. You are competing with golf, drinking cocktails by the pool and sailing in the Aegean so your pitch needs to be short, snappy and exciting.

• The customer as public sector

– a very different story when accessing public funds. The risk-aversion will go deep and wide and you’ll have to address every concern. And it’ll need to be written down.

• The customer as VC

– in many ways like the private investor but with fewer bikinis and sailboats. You have to outline possibility and opportunity and, to be honest, make I seem like you can deliver.

• The customer as Punter

– way too many variables depending on where the market is, how much it’s going to cost, whether it’s a hit model or a slow burn, buy once or forever subscribe. Arguably these are the second most important customer.

Your punter customers don’t necessarily want to see your entire business plan and it’s likely that your initial investors don’t either. But they’ll want to see something and the more institutionalised they are, the more paper they’ll want to see.

At the moment, Northern Ireland is awash with startup supports. There are more than 10 startup incubators either in planning or in execution. All of them will require you to do more than an elevator pitch.

The show is on from the 16-25 September in Southampton, no less. Advance tickets are very reasonable. See here.

Just interested in seeing if other travellers would like to attend as I’d love to make the trip down maybe for one of the weekend days.

Bringing this back into the realm of the day job: I went to the London Boat Show earlier this year and I was struck by one thing: how few of the traders and chandleries in the exhibition stands were prepared for taking payments other than cash. I’d see this sort of market ripe for companies like AirPOS to provide mobile points of sale turning netbooks, tablets and even phones into a point of sale for small businesses.

The first business show that I exhibited at really drilled home the concept:

Don’t give me your business card, give me your credit card.

For smaller items, you just want to buy, for larger items you want it to be shipping to your house just after you get home (or waiting in your office). Having a connected Point of Sale with an online store can make all of the difference. It pains me that so few companies take this on board.

Sean Blanchfield writes about Startup Capital in Ireland:

I believe that online technology companies are the way forward for Ireland. It is now clear that online technology companies can be as financially successful as more traditional businesses. However, unlike other sectors, it takes very little money to start an online tech company. Neither does your geography limit your market. All you technically need are brains, and enough money to pay other brainy people to work for you. No need for factories, or 20 years of lab research, or anything like that.

Unfortunately, there are problems providing capital in the relatively small amounts these companies need to initially launch themselves (say €20K to €200,000). There aren’t enough sufficiently cashed-out former technology entrepreneurs to fund at this level as angels. Instead, we rely on small investment firms doling out government money, and a couple of loose angel networks that can make small aggregate investments. At this scale, it’s not viable for investors to have excellent in-house domain expertise to help understand and vet opportunities. Because of this, the dynamics are not what you might expect. You may encounter:

• Folks on the investment side getting confused and thinking they are on Dragon’s Den
• Rife suspicion that entrepreneurs exist to con money out of investors so they can run away with it to paradise island

He goes into a lot more detail so it’s a recommended read.