Fuelling Your Spooky Startup; a Halloween Special

We had a great event last night at TechHub Manchester which explored the different funds that are available to startups. On our panel to discuss this was Doug Stellman from Enterprise Ventures, Darren Westlake the CEO of CrowdCube, Andrew Ko the co-founder of Manchester startup Moment.Us, and Rose Lewis the co-founder of Collider. With representation ranging from venture capital to crowd funding, the discussion was lively with plenty of questions from the audience. There was a lot of discussion around what investors look for in startups, what stage a startup needs to be at to raise finance, as well as more grueling questions concerning the pros and cons of accelerators, crowd funding, and venture capital. There was a lot of tweeting, so be sure to head over to our account to take a look at some of the responses.

We love coming to Manchester and will definitely return soon with more pizza, beer, and lively startup debate. Thanks to TechHub for putting us up for the evening, and thanks to everyone who came along instead of trick-or-treating!

As a final reminder, there are only SIX DAYS left until our application closes, so head over to our application page to apply!

Collider Announces Brand Partners

Digital companies in the North West are being called on to apply for funding and mentoring through a startup accelerator programme. Collider, launched by Pembridge Partnership and Creative England and backed by the government's Regional Growth Fund, aims to partner fledgling companies with established brands. Brands taking part include Bauer Media, BBC Worldwide, CBS Outdoor, Unilever and William Hill. The programme provides startups with £100,000 funding in a mix of loan and equity, plus access to mentoring for a year, office space and technology testing facilities.

Jim Farmery, Creative England’s director of  investment, said: "Creative England is delighted to launch Collider and I'm looking forward again to seeing what fascinating technologies and products we see from the teams that take part this year.

"We are leveraging significant private sector investment of £600,000 against our Regional Growth Fund investment of £400,000, and we also looking to create and safeguard almost 70 jobs."

Businesses interested in Collider can attend an event at TechHub Manchester from 6.30pm on 31 October 2013 or apply on F6S.

Calling All Startups

Collider13 is coming to regions across England to find and accelerate the best startup’s!

Collider is a startup accelerator that provides money, mentoring and market access to young tech companies to help them achieve quick growth. We specialise in helping a select group of startups which operate in the B2Brand area. This means they have technology which solves the problems brands face, such as marketing goals, consumer engagement, or selling more stuff.

Our first programme, Collider12, launched earlier this year to great acclaim, investing in 9 of England’s best startups and developing technologies that helps big brands. Over a 3 month period they were introduced to over 20 brand and marketeers from brands such as Unilever, William, BBC WW and CBS. They were also extensively mentored by entrepreneurs who have all been there before, allowing us to help build some solid startups in the ad tech space.

The results speak for themselves – already 4 of the 9 have received more investment and 5 of them are negotiating commercial deals with the brands involved. Now, Collider13 is focusing on startups based outside of London.

If you are a talented team with a prototype or product that can help brands, come and talk to us and hear how we can collide.

• -Bristol: Tues 10th -  Weds 11th September, book your slot here
• -Manchester: Weds 18^th Sept – 3-5pm, book your slot here
• -More dates and locations to be added soon, so keep checking back!

Guest Post from Moment.Us

Last week one of our startups, Moment.Us, held a private testing session at  TechHub Manchester. Fueled by pizza, music, and the chance to play with new technology, the testers scrutinised every aspect of the app and wrote all their thoughts down. These types of events are crucial to a startups growth, and so it's always worthwhile to reflect back on how it went, what was learnt, and what to do next time. Over to Ioana Craescu, the Marketing & Comms Lead, to tell us how it went. 

"Recently we had our second Private Beta testing session for the Moment.Us music app at our lovely office at TechHub Manchester. We’d like to thank again everyone for attending the session! The things that we loved the most were not only your enthusiasm and curiosity to play with the app, but also that this lead to great questions and great conversations.

The highlights of the afternoon:

• We had some time before we started the testing session to chat a bit with Bernardo, Niyati, Karen, Katie, Haider, Carys and Adam. Hope you guys will also keep us updated with your projects!
• We made a bit of noise in the office, but this is one thing that we love about TechHub – creative environment all the way!
• The Moment.Us team all wore for the first time the white t-shirts Fiafo made for us (thanks guys!)
• It was lovely to see Max, Vlad and Toni so relaxed, confident and communicative!!
• On the same note, the members of the Moment.Us team who talk a lot (who could that be?) welcome Max into the gang! Don’t ever interrupt your flow.
• We were happy to have David online from Toronto, even if he was conditioned by where we would take the flat screen to
• Thanks everyone for trying to be as critique as possible – we need  the things that you don’t like the same way we need the ones that you love!
• Thanks for being patient to go through some steps more than once
• Thanks for putting down on paper every detail that you found relevant (yes, Katie, even wondering if it’s your finger or our app). You’d be surprised to know how helpful that can prove to be!
• We appreciate that everyone asked us questions whenever they felt we could help with more information
• Thanks for feeling confident to share any idea about what features you’d like to see build in future versions (like radio stations from World War II – crazy, but neat!)

If you’ve enjoyed it, come again! You’re always welcome to stop by TechHub or drop us on email for a coffee downtown. And don’t forget to tell us that on Twitter or on our Moment.Us Facebook page with a Like, comment, share or however you feel more comfortable expressing it.

Soon enough we won’t be talking about testing sessions, guys! You’ll be able to download the app yourselves and your friends and, wow.. isn’t that exciting!? Don’t forget to Subscribe to our mailing list (you’ll find the form at the bottom of our website) to be the first who finds out when we release more exciting stuff.

Keep in touch

Ioana

You can see the original Moment.Us post and lots more on their blog, here. 

Moment.Us adds 3 new people to their team

Moment.Us have added three new talented people to their team. Andrew Ko, the CEO and co-founder of Moment.Us, met two of the new recruits from our Brand and Recruitment Day we hosted at TechHub Manchester.

I caught up with Andrew and asked him about Manchester, startups, and new talent. Here's what he had to say.

"Having been living in Manchester for the past three years, I've had a lot of time to chat with established developers and university students alike and the one common thread I've noticed is that they all have that drive to want to work for an exciting startup, especially one that's located here in the Northwest. And that's one of the biggest reasons why we want to base our headquarters here because its very rare to have such an abundance of talent located right at your doorstep via three top universities and MediaCity UK.  The university factor should not be overlooked as that is the best source for talented individuals who are hungry to learn, which is the biggest thing we look for when recruiting for Moment.Us.  It's not about what you know now, but what you want to know tomorrow and the steps you're wiling to take to learn it.  That's why Manchester is such a great city to be based in."