You may not have noticed, but the CONNECT North East website has this week undergone an evolution. This post is to point out the minor changes, and help get any feedback you might have.
Big Picture
CNE has recently partnered with bgroup to take our graphic design and website on to the next stage. As a result, there have been some technical tweaks and design changes, mainly to the RSS feeds and the Connect 4 / connected dots logo [which I think is rather good].
The updated site highlights the lead role that The Bridge Club has had in delivery CONNECT in North East England. The team is:
Led by Caroline Theobald
Project managed by John Sargent
Operated by Toni Allen
Inspired by Jane Reynolds, and
Techno-kludged by me
Other stuff
The Events calendar is smaller (but still perfectly formed), and the grey menu bar doesn’t have drop-downs any more – look for sub-pages under the ‘Elsewhere’ menu above the calendar, on the right-hand side. Thankfully we’ve been able to tidy up the Social Media News Room.
Wash up – please join in!
Getting you, our stakeholders, involved is what it’s all about. Please sign up for our newsletter (aka the grey “Register for Updates” box), follow us on Twitter, subscribe to our RSS feeds, check out our other online materials, maybe even call the office (0191 230 5742). We’re here to help.
We’ve been contacted by North East Access to Finance to help them highlight a new service to help early-stage business contact the money people behind the various funds.
Summary – upload a video about your business to their website.
The Nub
This a fairly shameless copying of the their Elevator Pitch page, but happily it spares you my waffle[!]:
We have identified a segment of the growing SME population in the North East that would welcome a less formal first step in the process of seeking external commercial investment.
These, typically young, high growth businesses are keen to get access to a broad range of professional financial investors; be they fund managers, business angels or others.
Through the addition of a simple elevator style pitching facility; NEA2F has enabled users to upload a video pitch to attract the interest of potential financial investors.
Businesses have 90 seconds, (the length of an average ride in an elevator), to concisely pitch their business plan and state the amount of funding they are seeking.
Hugh Morgan Williams, Chair of North East Access to Finance says:
“We have close relationships with a broad range of financial investors across the North East region and beyond. All of the VC fund managers and business angel groupings can be found on our site and are a part of a process expected to grow that investor community even further. We are hoping businesses will adopt a “Dragons Den” style to their pitches”
The simple elevator pitch functionality aims to bring together the value creators and the value investors in an informal way. Just click on start pitching and you will be guided through the process.
We welcome any feedback you may have on the elevator pitch.
A post to highlight the packed programme of Autumn activities here at CNE, mainly in the south of the region. At the bottom, I’ve taken the liberty of re-starting what we’re all about.
@ IDI Building, Teesside University – it’s the ‘Innovation Building’ in the interactive Campus Map
For more information about CONNECT North East’s upcoming events, contact Toni Allen.
What we do
Our strapline is “Connecting your business to money, management and new markets”. You’ll also notice from the flyer that the role of The Bridge Club has been picked out – “Delivering CONNECT in North East England”, in case it hasn’t been clear until now…
In more detail, CNE:
Facilitates experience exchange, peer to peer learning, introductions to professional services, business support and investment for early stage technology start-up companies
Develops face-to-face approaches and virtual introductions which add value
Co-ordinates workshops, seminars, conferences, debates, mentoring and coaching facilities, advice and information provision and networking opportunities which focus on business growth
Harnesses the expertise of its sponsors, partners and members to create an appropriate, effective and demand-led programme
Maximises the national and international traction of the CONNECT brand to bring speakers, specialists, and inspirators to the region.
Hopefully now that’s clear then! Do let us know if you’ve got any feedback, by leaving a comment.
I’m also including a PDF of the paper from North East Finance that was on our chairs at MIMA (the event was at the far end of the main hall).
Blurb from the Invite
Although it was Alistair Smith who gave the overview on the day, I thought this excerpt from the invite would help round out readers’ understanding:
North East Finance for Business Investment Funds
– your chance to find out more
The North East’s groundbreaking £125m suite of venture capital funds, which was launched in January, will be a major driver of future economic growth in North East England.
All six funds are now actively looking for investment opportunities across the North East, and this is your chance to find out more.
If you are looking for equity and convertible loan funding for a growing SME, work for someone who does, or provide services to clients who may qualify, this event is a must.
Andrew Mitchell, Chief Executive of the Finance for Business holding fund, will give an overview of the funds and the opportunities they offer, and a panel of fund managers will be on hand to answer your questions.
The event is co-hosted by Jane Reynolds, of CONNECT North East, which facilitates fruitful business conversations.
Photos
Video
This is a 4 minute intro to the funds by the Managers themselves.
More info on the Funds
A list of the funds in the order of the clips from the video:
Fyi, first link on each line is to the relevant Finance for Business North East / North East Finance page, and the second one is to the Fund Manager’s site itself.
Slides
Funding options paper
“North East Access to Finance Guide 2010” – a document setting out the finance and business support schemes for the North East of England
Click on the this link which will pop up a new window (you may need to allow this in your browser). You will find a gizmo which allows the person running the live-blog (me) to provide a written running commentary on proceedings. You should be able to make comments yourself, and with a bit of technical wizardry, it should also integrate with Twitter as well.
If you click on the link before proceedings, then you can set a reminder for yourself. If you view it afterwards, you will get a record of what happened.
btw I’ll update this post if I can get hold of a video showing how the tool works.
Get involved!
I realise it’s first thing in the morning and therefore not everyone is in front of a computer… :-s
However, if you *are* up with the lark, please feel free to join in the proceedings – we’ll try and get any questions to the panel (in the real-life session) if at all possible. Let us know via Twitter if you have any issues on the day / morning.
UPDATE: I’ve updated the link above, as I’ve learned there isn’t wifi at MIMA, so accidentally kicked off the session using the mobile version of Cover it Live on my Blackberry! :-s
I’ll try and tweet / live-blog as circumstances allow…
If you haven’t already heard of this, the following hopefully gives you a flavour:
The new £125m Finance for Business North East programme is a groundbreaking suite of investment funds designed to drive future economic growth in North East England.
As the first of its kind in the England, the ‘super-fund’ will blaze a trail over the next five years by providing vital investment to hundreds of fast growing SMEs and increase the momentum of business enterprise and SME development.
The aim is to support 850 businesses across all sectors through loans and equity investments before 2014 from Tyneside to Teesside.
Ambitious companies based here can access finance from six different funds giving genuine choice and opportunity. These six funds are managed by five different fund managers and target funding at companies from different sectors and stages of growth.
Finance for Business has been made possible by a unique collaboration between the European Investment Bank (EIB), European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and regional development agency One North East (ONE). The EIB has provided funding of £62.5m with ERDF and ONE supplying the remaining £62m.
To help aid awareness and engagement in the Tees Valley area, Jane will be involved in the FFBNE roadshow:
A follow-up event is planned by CNE for late August / early September to help those seeking funding get further information.
Our goal
We aim to help match up early-stage high-growth technology businesses, and those who seek to fund them. Jane is therefore getting out and about as much as possible to bring this mission to a wider audience in the Tees Valley.
Clearly the Finance for Business North East has a key role to play, but we can also connect tech businesses with private finance. Please get in touch if we can help you.
We hope to see you there, and will hopefully engage with you on Twitter soon!
You may recall some blog posts back in April looking at our second annual investment conference, e.g. this one.
I recently blogged about Curictus, and fingers crossed the recent coverage about Generic AI could be another success story in the making [though not wanting to put any sort of curse on them…]
INTELLIGENT technology developed by a North East firm has been chosen by the Government to help it fight terrorists.
Newcastle-based Generic AI has won a six-figure contract with the Home Office to develop its artificial intelligence to spot hostile situations in crowded places such as airports and railway stations.
The contract arose after Generic AI pitched for funding at an investment conference held by networking organisation CONNECT North East in Sedgefield, in April.
Representatives of the Government’s INSTINCT (Innovative Science and Technology In Counter-Terrorism) programme were at the event and were impressed by the firm’s cutting-edge artificial intelligence.
I realise we’re not being particularly modest and blowing our own trumpet, but I don’t think we’re much different from other folk!
Online clips
It’s also a chance to give a big shout to Lindsay at Mike Parker Media, for spreading the word about Generic AI far and wide:
Amongst the team at CONNECT North East, there is a quiet determination and sincerity to help our local high-growth technology sectors – by matching them up with funding.
There’s much beavering away in the background, so it’s good to get some feedback about the power of our growing network.
As a result of the activities in the SEAGULL project the Swedish company Curictus – www.curictus.se – has now […] been brought into several concrete contacts at the universities in the North East. […] they have also received an additional contact at Sunderland University, where they run a stroke management course in collaboration with the NHS trust.
The background is that the inventor Martin Rydmark from Gothenburg University visited Newcastle in connection to the first Connect Northeast conference on April 23-25, 2008, where he was one of the 3 Swedish speakers. Martin and a colleague have also met Kenny Lang, Barry McLeer and Martin Cox from CELS in Gothenburg on October 2, 2008.
Curictus has now a new CEO, called Pehr-Johan Fager, who has started on August 1. Pehr-Johan has before worked as the deputy CEO for the Swedish company Reachin – www.reachin.se – which has been cooperating with the northeast company UK Haptics – www.ukhaptics.co.uk in the development of their product Virtual Veins and Clinical Skills Trainer. It means that Pehr-Johan knows the CEO and founder Gary Todd, who also was one of the speakers at the Connect conference in Newcastle in April 2008. Pehr Johan has also been to Northumbria University before and he had now also seen that one of the interesting university contacts had worked for UK Haptics before.
Curictus is just now developing their stroke rehabilitation product, which is called VRS Virtual Rehabilitation System, in different ways among other it will be CE-marked in the autumn. They are also just now discussing to go abroad with the product with the UK as the first country.
Pehr Johan has now taken contacts with all the five universities in the northeast and we are also discussing a visit in Newcastle in the beginning of December.
You may seen a post last week asking for your input into our feedback questionnaire.
The good news is that the survey is now live - there are six pages containing ten questions, so hopefully it should only take 3-4 minutes, 5-6 mins if you give detailed feedback.
We’re interested in what you think of us in terms of what we do now, but we’d also love to know what we could do better or differently in future.
Your feedback is key for us to understand the views of our stakeholders, and what we can do to help you.
Please click here to go through to the survey. It will probably be open for 10 days or so.
We’re building a conversation with various stakeholders, but at CNE Towers, we felt it would be good to know more about you and what we can help you with.
CONNECT North East […] brokers introductions between young technology companies and investors.
CONNECT North East’s role is to strengthen the links between the region’s young technology businesses and the people and organisations they need to know if they are going to attract investment and grow.
CONNECT North East facilitates introductions to encourage partnership working, joint ventures, knowledge transfer and financial investment.
What do you do – are you an Investor, or a Tech start-up
btw we’ve recently created a CNE group on Digital Dockyard, and will be putting an invitation to input to the survey on there.
Please help us to help you
You might argue that should know this stuff already! However, we feel that consulting with our stakeholders, and be open to feedback and good ideas is important in itself.
So – please could you give some feedback about the questions above, and whether you have any amendments and / or additions – that would be fantastic.
Rather than second-guess what you’re after – we want to use these tools to better serve you and your needs.
Thanks for reading this, and thank you again for your support.
Welcome to the online home of CONNECT North East. CONNECT North East is the newest branch of the highly successful CONNECT network, which brokers introductions between young technology companies and investors.
![bridge-club[1]](http://connectnortheast.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/bridgeclub1_thumb.png?w=100&h=127 "bridge-club[1]")
Bridge Club credit![bridge-club[1]](http://connectnortheast.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/bridgeclub1.png "bridge-club[1]")
