Pitch for funding in a 90 second video – NEA2F

Intro

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.

The What’s Needed page goes into more detail.

So, dust off your webcams, your Flip videos and your camcorders, and maybe even some editing software – and get uploading! 😀

Autumn events with CONNECT North East

Introduction

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. 🙂

Upcoming Events

Flyer

A document with details of all three events.

View this document on Scribd

“A Spark of funding for Inspiration”

• Thursday 2nd September
• @ Teesside University Business School – I believe it’s in the Clarendon Building

View this document on Scribd

Blueprint “Meet the Finalists”

• Thursday 16th September
• @ Calman Lecture Theatre, Science Site, Durham University (Building 43 in squares E6/7 on this map)

View this document on Scribd

Codeworks DEV event

• Thursday 23rd September
• @ 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.

Follow-up post to Finance for Business North East event

Introduction

This post is to provide further information about the Finance for Business roadshow event in Middlesbrough, which I blogged about recently.

If you missed the event, you can catch up with proceedings via:

• the live-blog transcript
• photos
• video (once I’ve edited & uploaded it)
• by checking out the slides

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

Vodpod videos no longer available.

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:

• Growth Plus – Andrew Coles of FW Capital Ltd
• Growth – Simon Johnson of NEL Fund Managers Ltd
• Technology – Duncan Lower of IP Group plc
• Angel – Jonathan Gold of Rivers Capital Partners Ltd
• Accelerator – Alasdair Greig of Northstar Ventures, who also manage:
• The Proof of concept fund

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

View this document on Scribd

UPDATE 28/6/10:

• Inclusion of information from the invite
• Links to fund information after the video
• Video updated on Blip.tv

Live-blog for Finance for Business North East event at MIMA

Introduction

A blog post which acts as a placeholder for our live blogging tool for the roadshow event in Middlesbrough:

Middlesbrough Roadshow – Taking the Finance for Business Programme across the region.

Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art

Tuesday June 22, 8.30am – 10.30am

Contact Stephen.warren@northeastfinance.org or Tel: +44 (0)191 211 2300

How it works

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.

That link again – Click Here.

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…

CNE on Teesside and the Tees Valley

Introduction

A blog post to make you aware of activities Jane Reynolds is undertaking in the southern part of the North East, aka Teesside and the Tees Valley.

Regular events

Look out for Jane and the CONNECT North East banner at events like:

• Quarterly meetings of the Tees Valley Finance Forum – next is 7^th July
• Middlesbrough Business Forum – The Breakfast Exchange: next is 24^th June
• Hartlepool Business Forum – next event is Thursday 1st July 2010: Start Up Road Show

Finance for Business North East

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:

Middlesbrough Roadshow – Taking the Finance for Business Programme across the region.

Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art

Tuesday June 22, 8.30am – 10.30am

Contact Stephen.warren@northeastfinance.org or Tel: +44 (0)191 211 2300

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! 🙂

Generic AI coverage

Introduction

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…]

Anyway, recent coverage in The Journal appears to bode well:

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:

Security Park Net

Generic AI helps UK Government fight the war on terror – 2.12.09

Bank Security Portal.com

Generic AI helps UK Government fight the war on terror – 2.12.09

Transport Security Portal.com

Generic AI helps UK Government fight the war on terror – 2.12.09

Infrastructure Security Portal.com

Generic AI helps UK Government fight the war on terror – 2.12.09

[Ok, so these seems to be a re-skinning of the same content, but you get the idea! – Ed.]

Security system management online

Generic AI wins six-figure counter-terror contract with Home Office – 2.12.09

Please let us know if you have seen any other good news stories like this – more than happy to publicise them if appropriate.

We’d love to know what you think of CNE

Intro

We’ve been re-working our website, and also reviewing our wider web presence (YouTube, Blip.TV, Slideshare, Twitter etc.).

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.

Photo credit to City On Fire

CONNECT North East mission

The home page of our websites states:

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.

You have come across us

• At the Secure Futures conference
• At events – e.g. Meet the Investor
• At various places online etc.

With these activities in mind, we’d love you to tell us how / what we could do better!

The Nub

We’ve also been doing market research, which we’ll hopefully be able to talk more about soon.

In the meantime, I’m putting together an online survey, and hope you might be able to help with the questions. Ones I’ve thought of so far include:

• What you think of the following, and whether / how they could improve:
  • Events – although you have might have given feedback already in writing (in which case – thanks very much!)
  • The website
  • The blog & social media presence
  • The newsletter
• We try to find out what people are saying about us online, but please feel free to suggest
  • What forums we should be contributing in
• Also, who could you refer to become part of the network
  • E.g. we’d love you to follow us on Twitter
• How we can integrate online and offline better
• Anything else – e.g. what’s missing / wrong
• What services would you like to see that we’re not doing already – what would add value for you?
  • One thing we picked up at the Meet the Investor event was to know how best to win over investors
  • If you’re an Investor, how can we help you?
• 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. 🙂

Technorati Tags: business angels,conference,connect north east,finance,funding,investment,north east england,venture capital,technology,start-up,start up

How we caught the eye on an Angel

A post to give you some feedback about the CONNECT North East event last Tuesday 13th October.

Introduction

As you’ll know if you read the post publicising the event, Andrew Burton is a successful investor – based in Yorkshire.

His presentation was basically a list of do’s and don’ts when trying to raise money through Business Angels; also what makes them tick, and how they operate.

I understand that Andrew had 30 phone calls the day after the event – showing clear demand in the North East for funding, and probably that Andrew’s call to action was effective! 😉

Hopefully by viewing the slides and the video together, you will gain most of the understanding garnered by participants.

Slides

Here is Andrew’s deck. Btw there’ll be some guesswork needed to match up Andrew’s slides with the video, as he doesn’t call out which slide he’s talking about, but I’m sure you’ll work this out for yourselves!:

Video

Andrew’s presentation

The video has a couple of moments where the footage skips a second or so, but I believe the message should still be undiluted.

Also, please let me know whether the sound is ok – when I did the initial .wmv file, the sound seemed rather faint, so I upped it & created a new file (the one I uploaded).

Reflections on a successful event

Thoughts of Caroline Theobald and John Sargent on the evening’s activities.

Photos

Vodpod videos no longer available.

more about “Catching the eye of an Angel“, posted with vodpod

Wash-up

I hope Andrew’s presentation and video give you an insight in how to tap one route for funding.

If you would like to know more about CONNECT North East and our events, please visit our website.

Technorati Tags: business,business angels,connect north east,finance,investment,venture capital,how to,helpful,technology,small business

Grab a place on Tech Mission London 2009 – Part II #TML09A

UPDATE: Tech Mission II has been postponed – more asap.

UPDATE 2: Apparently there have been some practical issues in getting the Tech Mission organised, and we are working on doing the mission as soon as they are resolved. Thanks for your understanding, and we’ll keep you posted when we have news.

Seconds away, Round 1

You may have heard of the original Tech Mission London 2009, as a result of the fall-out from a now infamous article in the Daily Telegraph.

In the best traditions of polemic, Milo Yiannopoulos wrote:

Companies in the North of England still suffer from a lack of expert advice and connections, despite some great ideas.

The article must have made Milo’s editor very happy because, at the time of writing, there are 67 comments. North East businesses made a point of responding to Milo’s article.

To be fair, Milo then visited the North East to see conditions for himself – but I see he’s now off to Cambridge (I think to do a Masters in English).

Ding Ding, Round 2

Undaunted, Manoj Ranaweera founder of Northern Startup 2.0 (NS20) and organiser of June’s Tech Mission, is organising the next event in what could be a series. Fyi he responded to Milo’s article here, of which this should hopefully give you a flavour:

The key objective of this event was to provide an environment for tech companies and investors from both the north and the south to share knowledge and best practise and explore partnership and investment opportunities. The event featured a keynote speech by Michael Birch, a free-flow workshop (3 break-out groups) and Dragons Lair.

*Anyway*, round two is billed as:

Tech Mission London 2009 – Part II (#TML09A) provides a dynamic environment for Northern Tech community (tech entrepreneurs, investors, deal makers and service providers) to engage with their counterparts from London. Key objectives of this mission are to build new relationships and partnerships, share knowledge and best practices, and explore investment opportunities. The Mission includes a 3-hour workshop and a Dragon’s Lair, where 8 tech startups will pitch up to 6 Dragons.

[I realise these two quotes are quite similar, but hopefully you held your nose & you’ve got the general idea!]

According to NS20, the following will meet you at Sun Microsystems’ offices in London – and be hosted by Stewart Townsend

Investors

• Andrew Nutter – Balderton Capital
• Ed French – Rising Stars Fund (Enterprise Ventures)

Mentors

• Damon Oldcorn – CEO, Zebtab and StuffedAnimalsMedia
• Ian Gotts – Founder and CEO, Nimbus

Details of #TML09A

[#TML09A is the Twitter hashtag, btw]

CONNECT North East, delivered by Bridge Club Limited, is pleased to announce it has 10 places on #TML09A up for grabs.

Priority will be given to those wanting to pitch at the event, although the final decision will be taken by Manoj and the Dragons themselves.

Contact Toni Allen & attach anything you need to support your application over to her asap!

UPDATE: Tech Mission II has been postponed – more asap.

UPDATE 2: Apparently there have been some practical issues in getting the Tech Mission organised, and we are working on doing the mission as soon as they are resolved. Thanks for your understanding, and we’ll keep you posted when we have news.

Technorati Tags: business,business angels,conference,investment,funding,finance,north east england,technology

Next event: Andrew Burton – catching the eye of an angel

Introduction

I was talking with Caroline yesterday about the upcoming CONNECT North East event, featuring Andrew Burton.

At the Meet the Investor event back in July, delegates were asked what event they would most like next. Caroline tells me:

I gave them a choice, and this come top of the pile – by a long way. It’s about how to put your best foot forward to attract investors

[Caroline adds that the rapidly approaching Tech Mission London 2009 – Part II, on October 22nd, is part of a parallel track to help North East businesses meet investors (more on this in a future post)].

Andrew’s background

Why we think Andrew can help you:

Andrew has spent the last 25 years working with entrepreneurs and high growth firms in the UK and overseas advising and coaching them on how to deliver success… He’s been there and done it himself too – a qualified engineer he launched his first company at 24 and sold it within eight years! He has also just sold Inkopo, the Yorkshire technology consultancy he founded in 2002, to Braveheart Investment Group plc.

Event Details

The Billing

Andrew Burton, managing director of the Viking Fund – which co-invests with private firms in fledgling technology businesses in Yorkshire and the Humber – will give a valuable insight into what investors are looking for during the ‘How to catch the eyes of an angel’ event. His presentation will cover the importance of a compelling proposition; preparedness to accept investment and whether early stage companies are really ready to deploy the money.

Organised in partnership with CELS and North Star Equity Investors, ‘catching the eye of an angel’ has been timed to help companies prepare for the £125m JEREMIE super-funds that come into the region in January 2010. Andrew has a wealth of experience working with technology start-ups. The Viking Fund has made a real tangible difference in the financing of Yorkshire’s young technology firms. We know his advice will make a difference to firms in the North East and help them prepare to bid into the JEREMIE funds coming on stream in early 2010.

The Nitty Gritty

• Where: Brewin Dolphin’s offices in Time Central
• When: October 13th between 6pm – 8pm
• For whom? – Early growth technology companies, North Star Equity Investors Clients; CELS clients; University Spin-outs. Any early stage company wanting hints and tips on how to attract investor attention
• How much? – £10 to cover catering
• What’s your return on investment? – Lots – how to prepare for the JEREMIE funds for starters
• How do I Register? – To register for this event contact Toni Allen at t.allen@bridgeclubnorth.comor telephone  0191 2305742.

Technorati Tags: business,business angels,investment,finance,venture capital,north east england,CONNEct north east,funding