Startup – Page 3 – ɔimoɈɒ

ConnectED event, QUB.

I spent this morning in the company of academia, industry and government as a ConnectED event. ConnectED is a fund used to create opportunities of collaboration between the colleges and universities. The aim was to try to foster some collaboration potential between the groups. I took some notes from our table (one of 5 tables … Continue reading “ConnectED event, QUB.”

There will be a further event to help foster this but the real wins for me were to get in touch with folk in QUB in the Knowledge Transfer Centre as well as some contacts within SARC.

There was a lot of consensus that there needs to be (at least one) hub for the creative industries (including software and digital media) in the North of Ireland. This is kinda what we’re trying to do with StartVI but without the large funds that ConnectED can provide.

It was startling how little interaction there is between industry and academia in truth – even the difficulties voiced by academia in getting productive student placements within industry. We need to work on that – not necessarily to change courses but to foster understanding. It is not the role of education to prepare an individual for work in a company but rather to educate them to be able to work in any company. And there is an onus on the students to make themselves indispensable to the businesses with whom they are placed. There is significant culture clash between academia and industry – whether it’s the timing of the academic year, the pressure of deadlines or the appreciation of impact on a business that a single student can make, positive or negative.

For our part, StartVI intends to take on a lot of placement students. And if they make themselves indispensable, then they’ll get work from the startups. If not, there’s always a McJob.

Start-Up Nation

Andy Oram at O’Reilly RADAR writes: One might expect Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle to come from the pen of business school or economics professors, but the biographies of authors Dan Senor and Saul Singer reveal policy backgrounds. Both were advisors in the U.S. Federal Government. … In this blog I’ll summarize … Continue reading “Start-Up Nation”

Andy Oram at O’Reilly RADAR writes:

One might expect Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle to come from the pen of business school or economics professors, but the biographies of authors Dan Senor and Saul Singer reveal policy backgrounds. Both were advisors in the U.S. Federal Government.
…
In this blog I’ll summarize the traits that that the authors find make Israel a successful incubator for innovation, distinguishing between traits that other countries can emulate and traits that seem uniquely embedded in Israel’s historical and geographic circumstances.
…
I’ll lay out three observations that came to my mind while following the authors’ argument: the importance of hard data, flipping axioms, and the creative role government can play.

The traits Andy mentions are summarised below. Go to the article for a more detailed discussion.

A loyalty to the entire community that goes beyond personal success.
A sense of dissatisfaction. To innovate, one must be convinced that things are not good enough the way they are now.
A Do-It-Yourself approach to technology, which perhaps is one manifestation of the afore-mentioned innate dissatisfaction.
A culture of challenging authority.
A determination to succeed against all odds
Interdisciplinary agility.
A tolerance for failure.
Providing young people with arenas to exert responsibility.
A fruitful mentoring relationship between venture capitalists and new entrepreneurs. Injecting money into new ventures (as so many countries do) is not enough
Government policies friendly to startups.
A truly open-arms approach to immigrants, who bring not only fresh perspectives but a high tolerance for risk.

I commented:
Coming from another nation transitioning from a traditional skills-based economy to a knowledge economy. When you compare Ireland and Israel, there are several comparisons.

A divided country, history of conflict, large international diaspora.

But there is one major difference. Ireland may have received funding from it’s diaspora but it did not receive the sort of funding that Israel received from the US DoD budget spending. The impact of the military budget combined with the impact of the diaspora is nothing to be sniffed at. I’m not saying that Ireland wants or needs DoD money – quite the opposite – but the impact of this investment seems to go unmentioned above.

My interest is, however, in Ireland, North and South. We’d welcome interactions with the Irish diaspora internationally – get in touch with the Start Virtual Incubator in Belfast or the Greenhouse Startup Incubator in Limerick – two private enterprises dedicated to helping Ireland transition to the 21st Century.

A Room with a VI

Marty writes about VI: VI is an empty room. It needs painted, stud walls, electric points, heating and people to help do all of those things. It needs energy and creativity, ideas and heart. It will need money but for now it has enough to get by. It needs a good internet connection to give … Continue reading “A Room with a VI”

Marty writes about VI:

VI is an empty room. It needs painted, stud walls, electric points, heating and people to help do all of those things. It needs energy and creativity, ideas and heart. It will need money but for now it has enough to get by. It needs a good internet connection to give it tentacles to the world. It needs five businesses willing to take a risk at being all they can be. Why five? Because AirPOS, my spin out, is VI (1) and I’ll be on this journey with everyone else. And I’m very very excited about that.
…
VI has no business plan nor a strategy. It has no board of directors. It has no logo. We’re incubating the incubator too, if that’s not too surreal, and its success will be tied into those within its walls.

I disagree with Marty.

We do need paint, stud walls, electric points, internet access, desks, chairs, cork-boards, whiteboards and people to help make all of this work. And some of those people need to have energy, creativity and ideas and we want to help the people find their feet and make something of their ideas and creativity. But VI is much more than an empty room.

I snapped these pictures a couple of days ago:

Can you see it?

This room is filled with heart.

It’s leaking out the non-double-glazed windows. It’s seeping through the bare floorboards. It’s flowing out the main door and flowing down the sinks and toilets. This room is filled with so much heart that it’s alive.

In the coming weeks we’re going to have a paint party there. We’ll be there from early, hoovering up the dust and detritus, starting to paint over wood and bare plasterboard. We’re going to have power points and lights installed. A phone line will bring annoying ringing noises as well as sluggish ADSL broadband (until we raise enough money to install a leased line).

We don’t have the funds to maintain a large building out in the middle of a wasteland. We don’t have the budget to refurbish this building into a modern office suite with glass walls and an entire videoconferencing suite. We don’t necessarily have the connections to be able to call a President by his first name or have his Special Envoy over for tea. But these things don’t matter and they shouldn’t matter. We have heart to spare.

If you think of us as a competitor then I pity you. If this rag tag bunch of hobos with nothing but a little cash and a worn-out old clothing factory is a competitor then you’ve got a serious problem and you should seriously look at what you have there.

I’m thankful for a few people who have, perhaps unknowingly, pushed me to this. David, Marty, Aidan, Jason, Alex, Rob, Simon, Ian, Bill and others. Some of you will know why, some of you won’t – but all of you have contributed to me putting something on the line and making something happen. You’ve all helped and I hope you can understand that you deserve some of the credit here.

This is just the beginning.

Entrepreneurship

Fraser is absolutely right. What’s stopping you? When I was being consulted on a funding programme recently, it was made clear that funding would not be available for capital (hardware and software) purchases. My response – “Everyone already has a computer or access to one.” So, to start your company, what do you need? Sound … Continue reading “Entrepreneurship”

Fraser is absolutely right. What’s stopping you?

When I was being consulted on a funding programme recently, it was made clear that funding would not be available for capital (hardware and software) purchases. My response –

“Everyone already has a computer or access to one.”

So, to start your company, what do you need? Sound off in the comments!

To build for tomorrow, we have to plan today.

The Economist: Nokia tries to reinvent itself: ASK Finns about their national character and chances are the word sisu will come up. It is an amalgam of steadfastness and diligence, but also courage, recklessness and fierce tenacity. “It takes sisu to stand at the door when the bear is on the other side,” a folk … Continue reading “To build for tomorrow, we have to plan today.”

The Economist: Nokia tries to reinvent itself:

ASK Finns about their national character and chances are the word sisu will come up. It is an amalgam of steadfastness and diligence, but also courage, recklessness and fierce tenacity. “It takes sisu to stand at the door when the bear is on the other side,” a folk saying goes.

We have this feeling. We have it. We likely don’t have a word for it. And that’s a damn shame.

We need something to change. Northern Ireland will always have difficulties because we lack the environment we need to excel. Part of this is historical, part of it is just the way our culture is built. We have the talent, we have the brains, we just lack part of the execution. We will never have the same number of angels and funds as Silicon Valley. So we have to make better use of what we have. We will never get the massive DoD contracts that Israel secured so we’re going to need to find other ways to make our mark. We need to have the foresight to prepare for the future, the charisma to make friendships that will last and the heart to build it. Not for our own gain but for the gain of tomorrow. Well, starting from today, the first week of January 2010, we’re going to change that.

We’re going to start an incubator.
We’re going to start building a fund.
And we’re going to do it in Belfast.

So I’m looking for a word in Irish to express something. To express the passion about how I choose to spend my free time. There’s some candidates here – and the front-runner so far in bold.

dream	brionglóid
sight	radharc
To hell with you!	Go hIfreann leat!
friendship	cairdeas
The big race	An rás mór
connection, bond	ceangal
feat, achievment	gaisce
nerve, courage, morale, heart	misneach

The State of Funding in 2009 in Northern Ireland

2009 saw us deep in the grips of a recession with doom and gloom at every corner but 2009 also represented one of the most ‘entrepreneurial’ years since 2000. Northern Ireland is not Silicon Valley. We don’t have the climate, we don’t have the architecture and we don’t have the big names. The average Venture … Continue reading “The State of Funding in 2009 in Northern Ireland”

2009 saw us deep in the grips of a recession with doom and gloom at every corner but 2009 also represented one of the most ‘entrepreneurial’ years since 2000.

Northern Ireland is not Silicon Valley. We don’t have the climate, we don’t have the architecture and we don’t have the big names. The average Venture Capitalist in Silicon Valley can probably fill his term sheet 5 times over by just selecting startups within a 20 mile radius of his office.

So, where could we get investment in 2009?

The most obvious place that people first turn to is InvestNI. They’re the Regional Development Agency for Northern Ireland and they advertise heavily, encouraging people to ‘Go For It” and start their own business. InvestNI offers several programmes which may be of interest:

GAP – the Growth Accelerator Programme provides relief on vouched and approved expenditure providing up to 50% of your investment back. If your expenditure is likely to be less than £5000, then you’re going to spend a relatively large amount of time filling in forms and vouching for a maximum of £2500 (because InvestNI will attempt to argue down from the peak of 50% return). If you’re spending £20000, then it makes a lot more sense. It’s a simple, accessible programme with a very boring form.
Grant for R&D – a little more limited though the amounts can be potentially higher. I’ve not seen much evidence that this is really that accessible but I’m sure that’s just due to my exposure than any difficulty. The problem I foresee for companies I work with is that defining software development as ‘R&D’ is hard.
Trade and Export – this process is very accessible and is a short form as well. It enables a small group of companies to attend trade shows and conferences around the world and gives them around 50% of the money back once they return. Usually there’s also some facilitation when you get out there from the InvestNI teams. InvestNI should do more of this – these guys are great.
Other programmes? I hear that there’s a heap of programmes like SFA? Management Assistance? but I have so far failed to find someone who can really tell me more about it!

InvestNI also has the NISPO fund which is managed by e-Synergy. This support includes a £5 million venture capital fund, the Invest Growth Fund, which focuses on seed and early stage businesses with high growth potential and a £3 million proof of concept fund, the Invest Growth Proof of Concept Fund, which is funded by Invest NI to provide funding to very early, non-university projects. All of this money is either match funded or vouched so, like with all public funding, to achieve this you’ll need some sort of other private money behind you. The fund opened in July 2009 and has invested in two local companies: Sonic Academy and Anaeko.

Continuing with the public sector funding, there’s a potential for also getting funding from NIScreen or the Arts Council.

NIScreen has a Digital Media Fund for content (not the enabling technology) and media projects funded must have 60% moving image. This fund is currently closed (and has been closed since around September 2009). It’s pretty accessible for companies making digital films or games though NIScreen admits that they’re only really getting started in the Digital Content sector.

The Arts Council will have spent the £5 million Creative Industries Innovation Fund by March 2010 and the last trenche (from Sept/Oct) is likely to have been the last of the money. This was a seed fund specifically to embrace innovation and the arts including software, games, film, television. There was a lot of money from this fund spent on ‘startup costs’ which I think is a poor use when they could be much more specific. The funds available were between £10000 and £50000 and were certainly earmarked (on paper) for innovation. The Arts Council has a raft of other support for arts-related projects so there’s bound to be some opportunity there for some.

There’s a funding-like service offered by InvestNI called “Innovation Vouchers” which buys you £4000 worth of University research time. This has been misused in the past to get normal development done and realistically £4000 is not going to buy you very much but it’s an option for people who have ideas and who cannot build it themselves.

I’m not aware of other public sector funding which would be applicable to the Digital Content and Software Sector.

There are private sources of funding as well. The first is the three Fs. Friends, Family and Fools. Anyone you can hoodwink into giving you startup money because they trust you is likely going to be a better bet than anything. As you can match private money with public in the schemes above, it helps your buck go that little bit further. But you’re talking about friends and family. I would hope that people put more care into this than anything.

Getting a loan from the bank to finance your business is also possible in theory though I don’t have much experience of getting this. Actually – I do – but the experience was so painful that I cannot recommend it. I ended up paying exorbitant amounts of interest on a £15000 loan which very nearly put us out of business. If I could encourage you of one thing – it’s not to go to the banks. If a bank manager wants to talk to someone or offer up some time to talk to a group of entrepreneurs, then I’m very willing to hear them. As long as they’re not from the First Trust Bank in Lisburn.

Angel Investment is another option. Angels are private individuals who have personal wealth which they can invest in other businesses with the intention of increasing their investment or getting a chunk of money back when the business is sold. As a rule they’re not doing it for anything other than the money (though several have said to me they’re doing it because it stops them rotting their liver at the 19th Hole). According to Venturehacks, an Angel is someone who has capital, has good judgement and who also has ‘proprietary deal flow’; they’ve got something other than money behind them. They can provide something than no-one else can or they have an exclusivity to their investments which helps them maintain their name.
Halo NI, the only Angel Network I’m aware of in Belfast. I know they have facilitated investments over the last year

And finally, we have Venture Capital. I’ve not seen any of this in action but I know it exists with apparently some £20 million in play in Northern Ireland (a very small amount compared to other regions) and apparently most of it is already invested. I’d welcome comment about the NI Venture Capital Markets.

There are other options out there and I’m working with some organisations out there to see if we can improve the situation for local entrepreneurs and company founders in accessing private finance for their startups. I’d welcome your input.

Make no little plans. Think Big.

“Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency. … Continue reading “Make no little plans. Think Big.”

“Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency. Remember that our sons and grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us. Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty. Think big.”
—DANIEL BURNHAM, CHICAGO ARCHITECT. (1864-1912)

[I got this from Gruber’s detailed treatment of the Tablet]

e-Synergy Committees and Panels openings

e-Synergy runs “NISPO” The Northern Ireland Spin Out Initiatives support start up businesses in Northern Ireland. A venture capital fund, the Invest Growth Fund (IGF) focuses on seed and early stage businesses with high growth potential and the Invest Growth Proof of Concept Fund (IGPoC) provides funding to very early, non-university projects. e-Synergy are seeking … Continue reading “e-Synergy Committees and Panels openings”

e-Synergy runs “NISPO”

The Northern Ireland Spin Out Initiatives support start up businesses in Northern Ireland. A venture capital fund, the Invest Growth Fund (IGF) focuses on seed and early stage businesses with high growth potential and the Invest Growth Proof of Concept Fund (IGPoC) provides funding to very early, non-university projects.

e-Synergy are seeking applications for their Committee and Panel for both the Invest Growth Fund and the Proof of Concept Fund. They’re looking for entrepreneurial individuals with impressive track records of success and sound judgement. Neither position is salaried.

Download As A PDF (152K)

For my part, I’ve asked for the forms but I’d be interested in being on the Assessment Panel for the Proof of Concept fund. It’s core to my desires of helping to generate a dynamic knowledge-based digital economy in Northern Ireland – a desire which is both separate but complementary to my day job as Facilitator for the Digital Circle.

Ten Apps I Want…

Ten Apps that I’d like to see on the iPhone. I’m also suggesting names for these. To be honest, I’d like to pull together a team to build them but that seems to be a lot more difficult than I’d hoped. If anyone wants to call me and work with me to pull together funding, … Continue reading “Ten Apps I Want…”

MeetFreak/TrendSeek
Helps people find each other by abusing Twitter trends and trying to suck Location Data in there. This is a lot easier now that Twitter is supporting GeoTags. So, let us see a map of trends? People are talking about #RED, where are they talking about it? Let us see every tweet with the Trend on a map that we can see. Then you’re more likely to be able to congregate with people
Multitool
Uses the five tabs along the bottom to give you a view of
1) IMAP account
2) Web Browser
3) Twitter
4) Mapper
5) Converter/Calculator
Redirects all http:// and mailto: seen inside the app, to the app and not outside so doesn’t launch Safari or Mail. A lot of this is kinda redundant when we have decent clients for much of this inside Safari. But some offline caching is a big deal for those of us who tend not to be inside the city centres where you can get decent 3G.

Verifriend, Reputato
This is an online reputation profiler. Yes, it’s going to be a popularity contest but essentially it all depends on trust. Adding your rating to someone is not something to be done lightly. In some ways it needs to be a trust engine – and it can be as simple as giving a trust rating to a new friend based on the trust ratings that others have provided. There needs to be some sort of anonymity (maybe like the reviews process on iTunes you only get a rating when a certain number of reviews have been processed) but unlike FaceBook it should provide that extra level of security.

Director
Allows me to text directions to someone who asks me on the street. In plain text. Or Bluetooth them. Or even just email them. Or something. Or magic them straight into their brain. Any of these things would be fine. Just so I don’t have to try to explain the directions to someone.
REDACTED
This one was so good, someone asked me to take it down. 🙂 Suffice to say it was AR related.
Tweet16
Twitter lists are all very well but they don’t solve th problem I have. I follow about 1000 people but there’s probably less than 150 or so (that magic Dunbar number) whom I regularly interact with. There’s probably only 10% of those whom I really want to pay attention to. I’d like a Twitter client that shows me my timeline, my mentions, my DMs and finally, my Tweet16 – 16 people from whom I see all of their public messages rather than not seeing the ones who are at people I don’t follow.
Plannity
So, I fill in all of this information into my calendar and that includes times and dates and, most crucially, locations of my meetings. Why hasn’t there been a social app that runs via Exchange/Outlook, on iPhone, iCal and other formats which takes this location information, munges it up with my social network and allows me to see when I can grab lunch with friends or when I’m in the same town as someone I like. I think that Tripit is meant to do this and today I read about Plancast which promises to do something about this. But this is a hot topic, guys. Location is the big thing for 2009/2010.
Echelon (or TwitterBug)
I mentioned this a week ago – a cool idea for Twitter and other social networks which again uses location. So – get this – all of your messages are geotagged, or if not now, a lot of them will be. So, Echelon ‘listens’ in for anything said in an area rather than things said about trends or by your friends. The default set is seeing tweets which are in your immediate area – the killer part though is being able to drop a ‘bug’ (for bug, read ‘pin’) on a map and be able to sample the Tweets going through that area and the surrounding radius. So, in effect, you’ve dropped a Twitter Bug somewhere and you’re able to listen in. The Freemium version could monitor one location, the PayFor version could monitor several. ( ECHELON is a name used in global media and in popular culture to describe a signals intelligence (SIGINT) collection and analysis network operated on behalf of the five signatory states to the UK-USA Security Agreement (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States)

The Official CIA Manual of Trickery and Deception
Perfect for the Sandbagger or Spook among us, this is a recently published book derived from an official manual. As most of them are small pictorial sessions, they’re ripe for viewing on the iPhone, turning the iPhone into the ultimate tradecraft manual. You can see clips from the book on Gizmodo. So scan it, make it searchable so you can quickly flick through and find the perfect tradecraft for the perfect moment.
Pollenator
For public debates, a simple push notification which opens the app and gives you a simple couple of choices accompanied with text, audio or video. Push one, it’s recorded (with time, place, ID, IMEI and whatever other data you have collected and after a certain amount of time, the poll times out. Poll answers should be “Yes”, “No” or “Whatever”. If you choose to ignore or “Whatever” it, then you’re counted as an abstention. I’d love to see this app running and see visualisations of what it could bring in terms of demographics, location and other meta data. I sat with Stuart and Phil (and with PJ on the end of a Skype call) one evening and we mocked up some stuff for this based on Stuarts idea of “Pirates versus Ninjas”. But the actual implementation could have led to entirely other applications.

Polls widget from Google Wave

I’d love to see all of these on my iPhone. Id love to talk more about these apps to people who are interested. I’d love even more to be involved in the group/company/whatever that was going to make some of these.

Please comment if they inspired you or if you’re working on something similar.

Workplace 2010

Workplace 2010 is an initiative within the Civil Service. I recently met with Mark Bennett, who works for the Department of Finance and Personnel (DFP) and is specifically charged with OpenDataNI along with a team of talented anarchists within the walls of the Civil Service. Mark took the time to show me around Clare House … Continue reading “Workplace 2010”

I took a short video:

This shows some of the facilities, including the circular meeting rooms, a glimpse of some of the ‘standing room’ for visitors as well as the copious amounts of hot-desking space and collaboration areas. This, a booth not dissimilar to that found in a restaurant, was my favourite:

A booth with ethernet, power and a monitor. Plenty of room to spread out or work with someone. Perfick!

Did I mention the entire place was flooded with WiFi? (BTOpenZone so not perfect but still, progress, and from somewhere you would not expect).

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