A Christmas Collision

Last night the Collider family had a private event at Unilever House to celebrate the success of 2013 and look toward an exciting 2014. We had a great mix of familiar friends and new connections, and it was truly rewarding to see our network come together in one room. Our new brands, some who have never worked with startups, told us that the evening was the perfect opportunity to meet the companies and they are now even more excited for the programme to begin. Here are a few photographs to give you a glimpse of the evening...

Last Chance to Apply!

There are only a few days left until our applications close for our next round! If you haven't yet applied, get yourself over to f6s.com/collider13 for the chance to work with Unilever, BBC Worldwide, CBS Outdoor, William Hill and Bauer Media. Good luck!

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.

Moment.Us Teams Up with 7digital to Deliver a Unique Music Experience

7digital provides Moment . Us, a new streaming radio and music discovery app, with over 25 million tracks. The Moment.Us app allows users to discover music using emotions, environments, and experiences to tailor playlists.

7digital, the leading open digital music platform, today announced a partnership with Moment.Us Ltd., making its library of 25 million tracks available via Moment.Us’ streaming radio and music discovery app. The Moment.Us app allows users to discover music in a new way by using emotions, environments and experiences to tailor playlists. Unlike other streaming radio services that only use musicology, the app learns from contextual data such as pictures, locations and weather to personalise music.

“We wanted our app to be as simple as turning on the radio, but smart enough to deliver music that is personalised to what you want to hear, exactly at that moment”, says Andrew Ko, CEO of Moment.Us.  “The Moment.Us app offers a different kind of music discovery experience. The app can visualise how each song has touched the user’s life by capturing their most significant moments with music.  Our aim is to bring playlists to life!”

Ben Drury, CEO of 7digital comments, “We want to work with companies like Moment.Us that concentrate on delivering the best music experience in a creative way. The history of music and radio demonstrates that targeted services for music fans have an important place in the market. The Moment.Us app will offer a new music experience and we are excited that our API and streaming platform is behind this.”

7digital’s feature rich API allows partners a legally licensed offering to choose between a number of software methods and a global catalogue of over 25 million songs from all the major and independent music label distributors and aggregators. The 7digital API already provides digital music services to hundreds of partners globally including Samsung, BlackBerry, Microsoft, HTC, Sonos and now, Moment.Us.

The Moment.Us application is available to download free from the UK iTunes App Store.

Read the press release here.