Edition 8, Q4 2017
Meet the tech companies taking the
universe by storm
LEAH VIATHAN
THE QUEEN OF
LIVE STREAMING
p24
GORDON
BURNS
THE ART OF
PRESENTATION
p47
101 FEMALE
FOUNDERS
DRIVING GROWTH
THROUGH TECH
p9
CONTENT BUSINESSCLOUD EDITION 8, Q4 2017
BUSINESSCLOUD.CO.UK
// COLUMNS
23 Lawrence Jones on being first to market
"One of the reasons I am so proud to call Manchester our
home is its extraordinary history of technological firsts"
47 Gadget Gavin on Christmas gadgets
"Amazon Key, Sphero, Magni-viewer, Beeline Smart Bike
Compass, Smartphone Projector 2.0 and SNES Classic"
76 Graham Pearce on start-up funding
"NorthInvest fills gap in Northern Powerhouse investment
scene by making it easier to access funding and support"
81 Rachael Fish on Blow LTD
"We went out feeling special I can't believe it's taken
this long to make beauty simple"
06
28 09
73
CONTACT US
Editor Chris Maguire: 0161 215 7144; chris.maguire@businesscloud.co.uk; @editor_maguire | Deputy editor Jonathan Symcox: 0161 215 7143;
jonathan.symcox@businesscloud.co.uk; @jonathansymcox | Katherine Lofthouse, senior writer; katherine.lofthouse@businesscloud.co.uk |
Mo Aldalou, multimedia journalist ; mo.aldalou@businesscloud.co.uk | Events: 0161 215 7142; andrea@businesscloud.co.uk |
Advertise in BusinessCloud: 0161 215 3877; sponsor@businesscloud.co.uk | Subscriptions: subscriptions@businesscloud.co.uk |
Contributors: Jenny Brookfield, Lowri Williams | Designers: Erica Cheung, Billy Evans | Website: www.businesscloud.co.uk |
Twitter: @BCloudUK | Address: BusinessCloud, UKFast Campus, Birley Fields, Manchester M15 5QJ
// FEATURES
04 Profile-building with Pixoneye
06 Michelle Mone: From bras to Bitcoins
09 101 Female Founders of Tech
24 Meet queen of stream Leah Viathan
28 51 Tech 1sts
34 There's a buzz about Birmingham
38 The 'Netflix of indie films'
exclusive content to digital edition
42 Are you ready for GDPR?
46 Microchipping humans
48 What can we believe on social media?
49 Gordon Burns on art of presentation
61 Saving a life in 280 characters or less
62 Boost employee morale with tech
70 Synap: From medicine to taxis
71 All round protection with Cocoon
72 Daniel Bobroff: What's next for retail?
73 GoInStore puts a face to online shopping
75 Mark Pollock: Can tech cure paralysis?
78 Reason Digital and social enterprise
exclusive content to digital edition
80 UX 'God' on empowering techies
exclusive content to digital edition
// EVENTS
50 Learn to present in 10 top tips
52 AI: Will machines put you out of a job?
55 Leadership: 5 Live, health and football
58 Video games: The $100bn question
63 24 Hours in South Wales
64 Future-proofing through tech
69 Why Leeds needs to shout more
BUSINESSCLOUD EDITION 8, Q4 2017
4
BUSINESSCLOUD.CO.UK
PIXONEYE
Take a quick scroll
through the photo
album on my iPhone
and you'll discover I
have two kids, play the
occasional round of
golf and recently took a trip to meet
Mickey and Minnie in Paris. There
are a few screenshots of wallpaper
samples too, which may give you
an idea that we recently did some
decorating at home.
Like many people, I would imagine,
the most used feature on my phone is
undoubtedly my camera a quick scenic
snap for Instagram that I'll fi lter later or a
group shot for the family album (well, the
online one anyway). Photos by far take up
the most storage on my handset, so much
so that I often have to start deleting some
before I can take anymore.
That's a marketing manager's goldmine
according to Pixoneye, the London and
Israel-based start-up that believes it has
come up with the most accurate way of
personalising content to customers.
YOUR LIFE THROUGH
YOUR LENS
Tech provider Pixoneye believes marketing could be done better by taking a look
inside your mobile phone's photo album. Jenny Brookfi eld reports.
The albums on our phones paint a
detailed picture of who we are, what we're
into and what's happening in our lives. Our
social media posts are what we choose
to share with the world often heavily
fi ltered and edited whereas a phone is an
untapped resource off ering a true image.
What if brands could use that information
to fi nd out more about their customers?
That was Ofri Ben-Porat's goal when
he set up Pixoneye after working as
a marketing specialist with the Israeli
government. His puzzle there was in
marketing the country to the two very
diff erent groups of tourists it drew in
evangelical visitors who travelled to the
country on pilgrimage and the LGBT
community, drawn to Tel Aviv because of
its liberal outlook. The challenge was to
fi nd a pure data set to distinguish the most
relevant information to market to each
particular tourist.
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
While chatting to a friend who had helped
build the facial recognition algorithm for
the Samsung Galaxy, he and co-founder
Nadav Tal-Israel hit upon the idea of using
imagery to understand the end user with
the help of AI.
"One thing we all have in common is that
the smartphone is a portal to our lives and
photos have become a social currency,"
says Pixoneye's chief commercial offi cer
Richard Jones (pictured, opposite). "People
who go to gigs tend to watch through their
phones and if I was to send a message
to my team I'd probably send a photo to
go with it rather than just a text. We're
creating an incredibly detailed trail of who
we are as people on our phones."
The result has been a software
development kit (SDK), a program that
operates in the background of a brand's
own app, which gleans information about
the customer or user via their photo album.
The SDK analyses the images to come
up with feature vectors, presented in the
form of a graph. The software can reveal
up to 150 detailed characteristics about a
person, enabling brands to produce fi rst-
party data that belongs to them rather
BUSINESSCLOUD EDITION 8, Q4 2017
5
@BCLOUDUK
PIXONEYE
than having to buy in third-party data. They
then choose how to use that data to shape
the in-app experience.
"The businesses using the SDK have a
highly visual dashboard that breaks down
all the different characteristics, so they
know whether the customer is male or
female, whether or not they have children
and pets, their propensity to travel and
where they live, for example," says Jones.
A brand could then personalise content
or adverts on the app: for example
optimising a homepage or tailoring push
notifications to the person.
Building a detailed picture
of its customer base
could also generate
more custom by
targeting people
from a similar
demographic.
"One of the most
exciting features
is not just about
understanding who the
customers are, it's about
understanding their intent,"
Jones says. "I started to take images
of furniture and floor plans and share
them with my other half recently, a clear
indication that we were about to move
home. Knowing that such a significant
life event is coming up gives an incredibly
unique understanding of that end user.
"We're creating characteristics based
on client feedback, but also finding a lot of
traction around the core characteristics
we've identified. We're an evolving
organisation and we can train our
algorithms to look for different things."

WIDER USES
Clients in financial services, retail and the
insurance sector are offering positive
feedback and there is huge potential for
utility businesses. "Within the utilities
sector, 25 per cent of end users leave every
year because it's a price-driven purchase,"
Jones says. "Using our technology, a
utility business could be alerted to when a
customer is about to move home so they
can change their dialogue accordingly."
Then there is the potential for credit
companies to use the technology to
help build a risk profile of a borrower a
use Pixoneye anticipates in developing
countries. "Some countries don't have the
data trail over somebody's lifetime and that
could mean the difference between them
not getting their credit extended," Jones
says. "This kind of personalisation could
be a game-changer. You could find out
whether somebody is married or has a job
[for example]".
Though some of the examples are
speculative, there have been some proven
results. Nestle wanted to target its pet
food ads specifically to cat owners or dog
owners and called on Pixoneye to help. The
SDK was integrated into the Daily Mail
app for one month and analysed
the photo albums of 1,000
users to gain feature
vectors. Using this
information, Pixoneye
was able to determine
which users were cat
owners and which were
dog owners, and both
groups received Nestle
Purina ads specific to their
pets. A test using standard
marketing methods ran alongside
this. The test with Pixoneye installed
increased click-through to purchase by ten
times, from four in 1,000 to 40 in 1,000, a
huge increase in engagement and revenue.
A similar study with Tesco's shopping
app used the SDK to analyse the photo
galleries of 10,000 shoppers over a month.
Ninety per cent of the feature vectors were
matched to the corresponding shopping
carts of those customers. The remaining
ten per cent were used to predict future
shopping cart contents, with 92 per cent
accuracy.
PRIVACY
It all sounds like good news for businesses,
but what about customers? Could the
thought of an app scanning your personal
photographs while you use it be a step too
far for some?
"The user can opt out and we're very
conscious about the importance of
engaging effectively with them," says
Jones. "We're in a time when privacy is a
significant concern and people are learning
more about how their data is used." To stop
your album being used in such a way, you'd
have to go into settings and prevent access
to your photos by the app, although you
have no way of knowing if that particular
app uses Pixoneye. The other important
thing to note, Jones says, is that your
photos are not uploaded to the cloud as
the SDK runs within the app. The feature
vectors also wouldn't reveal exactly what
was on your photos, but merely a 'profile'.
Jones believes this can only be a
positive for the customer. For now,
Pixoneye is broadening its product,
improving delivery of the results to the
customer and gaining traction in a variety
of markets. Research and development
is carried out from Tel Aviv, while the
commercial side is run from London. He
admits they have "other innovative tech
plans up our sleeves as well".
"The key thing is improving the
experience of an app and enriching users'
lives with better content and products,"
he says. "From the perspective of the end
user, it's very secure.
"I liken it to having a true personalised
shopper in your pocket, having the best
shopping experience you can have."
BUSINESSCLOUD EDITION 8, Q4 2017
6
BUSINESSCLOUD.CO.UK
THE BIG INTERVIEW
Bras to
Bitcoins
Michelle Mone made her name from underwear but the entrepreneur
now known as Baroness Mone has swapped bras for Bitcoins. Lowri
Williams spoke to the business mogul about her move into technology.
Michelle Mone never
ceases to surprise.
The Scottish-born
entrepreneur's
rollercoaster life first
saw her rise to fame
after founding lingerie company
Ultimo with her husband Michael.
Her profile rose even further when she
was appointed by the then Prime Minister
David Cameron as a business tsar with
special responsibility for start-ups and the
girl born in the east end of Glasgow joined
the House of Lords in 2015.
A high profile marriage break-up saw
her exit Ultimo but now the 46-year-old is
back with a bang in both her professional
and personal life with the launch of a
250 million Bitcoin-priced property
development in Dubai.
The new business venture follows her
relationship with Scottish billionaire Doug
Barrowman. Barrowman is the chairman
of the Knox group of companies and the
"The world has changed
massively. People like
to communicate and
you can hear what
your customers are
thinking there and
then. I've always,
always been a lover
of social media."
MICHELLE MONE
pair have been inseparable since meeting
in 2016.
The couple enjoy all the trappings of
wealth and are regularly photographed on
a superyacht, in one of their mansions or
behind the wheel of one of their luxury cars.
But for now their focus is on the first
international luxury property
development to be priced
in cryptocurrency. They
see Bitcoin as the future
of currency, bringing
it into the mainstream
in a move that merges
property development
and the tech sector like
never before.
The world's online currency,
Bitcoin, has soared in value and is
now worth more than a nugget of gold. To
give you an idea a single Bitcoin is currently
valued at today's date at 4,351 while an
ounce of gold is worth 968.
The controversial currency has sparked
debates due to its anonymity, as well as its
lack of government control. However Mone
and Barrowman are certain that it's the
future.
Dubbed the 'digital gold' for millennials,
the business moguls are certain this
unconventional and futuristic currency is
changing our financial world as we know it.
"Bitcoin has been around since 2009
and it's become established as the gold
standard of cryptocurrency," Mone tells
me.
Barrowman is equally convinced by
Bitcoin. "Half a billion transactions are
going through every day with Bitcoin
and it's grown to a
valuation of 95 billion,"
he explains.
"You've got institutions and
major players investing in this sector now
more than ever. The industry has moved
beyond the five per cent of earlier adopters,
the techies who had faith
in it, to the serious
businesspeople in the
suits and ties eager to
invest.
"Obviously there
is a multitude of
cryptocurrency
out there, but we
see Bitcoin as the
gold standard and what
we wanted to do was give
the crypto community world out
there, many of them who have made
significant gains out there in crypto land,
the opportunity not just to diversify digital
currency but diversify conventional assets.
I can think of no other way than diversifying
into bricks and mortar."
Despite the growing success of Bitcoin
there remains a fair degree of suspicion
about the cryptocurrency.
"Having the two of us at the helm of the
business will hopefully bring that much-
needed trust," Mone adds.
"The business venture is very
disruptive. It changes the way we think
about things. The way we think about
this is that if serious businesspeople and
developers like ourselves are prepared
to do it, then ultimately it's a massive
investment into cryptocurrency and
BUSINESSCLOUD EDITION 8, Q4 2017
7
@BCLOUDUK
THE BIG INTERVIEW
Pictured left: Michelle Mone and Doug Barrowman.
Pictured below: Michelle Mone Dubai towers sketch.
others should follow suit.
"We're not daunted at the prospect
of the new business. That's why we're
entrepreneurs. Doug is a very successful
businessman, and with myself in the House
of Lords we bring that trust element. I can't
think of anything better than what we're
offering to this world."
Barrowman says Bitcoin is part of the
unstoppable move towards technology.
"For young people, the internet is just a part
of their everyday lives," he says. "Blockchain
technology will soon become a part of
their everyday life, too. Soon the world will
be doing conveyancing contracts through
Blockchain, we'll be looking at contracts,
insurance contracts, medical contracts;
every aspect of their lives will be changed
by Blockchain technology. The kids of today
and tomorrow will grow up with it being an
everyday part of their lives. Of which the
financial application of Blockchain is Bitcoin
and cryptocurrency in general."
The move into tech is certainly a
relatively new experience for the former
lingerie entrepreneur and financial investor.
"I started off training as a chartered
accountant in the mid-80s on a very retro
machine," Barrowman reflects.
"Then it was the fax machine, then I saw
the advent of the internet and email. So,
technology for me has been an evolution.
"In
the 90s I
was backing
a manufacturer
company and then
in the Noughties I
started to buy and invest
in tech companies. So tech has
become increasingly a major part of my
business life over recent years."
The highly-anticipated selection of 1,133
studio, one- and two-bedroom apartments
is due for completion in September 2019.
Apartments offer floor-to-ceiling windows
with unobstructed views of the Dubai Hills
and the iconic city skyline.
The studios start at $130,000, which
amounts to 30 Bitcoins, a one-bedroom
apartment is $240,000, or
50 Bitcoins, and a two-
bedroom is $380,000,
or 80 Bitcoins.
Industry-
leading Bitcoin
payments
platform BitPay
will process
the Bitcoin
transactions, a
company that
already provides
Bitcoin payment
tools to companies
such as Microsoft and
Richard Branson's space
venture Virgin Galactic.
Not one to let a business opportunity
pass her by, Mone is combining her
separate business, Michelle Mone Interiors,
into the build of the development.
"It'll be right bang in the middle of the
science park in a place called Dubai Hills
known as the Beverly Hills of Dubai," she
says. "When you buy an apartment in Dubai
it tends to just come as a shell so we have
taken on famous British architects. This is
the first development in the world where
you can buy your apartment in Bitcoin."
A lot of Mone's profile comes from her
social media presence and she has more
than one million Twitter followers.
"Social media is vital in any business,"
tells me. "The world has changed massively.
People like to communicate and you can
hear what your customers are thinking
there and then. I've always, always been
a lover of it. Sometimes it's been a
nightmare, because you know, you hear
things, and you shouldn't or don't want
to. I've stopped doing that now when I've
got a glass of wine in my hand. It's banned
after alcohol. Every single company
has to embrace it and take
it forward. It makes
such a difference
to your business
when you start
connecting
with people
around the
world."
Despite
their vast
wealth
Mone insists
she and
Barrowman will
never get "too big
for our boots". She
says: "Our parents would
absolutely wring our necks. Everything
we've achieved has been worked really
hard for. You've got to adopt a philosophy
in life and in business: to remember on the
way down how you treated people on the
way up. My success is largely down to the
thousands of people who have been a part
of my business."
More exclusive interviews at
businesscloud.co.uk
BUSINESSCLOUD EDITION 8, Q4 2017
9
@BCLOUDUK
FEMALE FOUNDERS
Female Founders
OF TECH
BUSINESSCLOUD EDITION 8, Q4 2017
11
@BCLOUDUK
FEMALE FOUNDERS
Bonner-Cooke, Leanne,
Evolve-IT Consulting
Having raised the funds to start her
business in 2007, a decade later Leanne
Bonner-Cooke's business Evolve has
grown into a global multiple award-
winning software solutions provider
across many industries. Her awards
cabinet includes Business Woman of the
Year and Entrepreneur of the Year.
Bretland, Julie, Our Mobile Health
Julie Bretland has many accolades
to her name, including winner of the
Deloitte's Institute of Innovation and
Entrepreneurship Founders Award, and
being a founding member of the GSM
Association's 'Connected Women'
programme. Her company Our Mobile
Health assesses health apps so that
organisations know which are the best
for their patients.
Brock, Vicky, Clear Returns
Vicky Brock won Innovator of the Year at
the 2014 FDM everywoman in Technology
Awards and led Clear Returns to the spot
of top Tech StartUp in Europe according
to the European Commission. She has
two non-tech businesses alongside Clear
Returns, which uses data to help retailers
to predict and prevent returns. Her latest
business is called Get Market Fit.
Brockwell, Holly, Gadgette
Editor Holly Brockwell started non-profi t
website Gadgette to be an inclusive site
that believes technology is for everybody.
Holly also works at journalism start-up
WikiTribune where one of her roles is to
increase the diversity of the audience and
community through direct outreach.
Brooke, Emily MBE, Blaze
Emily Brooke is on a mission to make
cycling safer for London through Blaze,
a tech and design start-up which creates
products for urban cyclists. She and
her 12-strong team launched both
items in Blaze's product range through
crowdfunding investment and was
awarded an MBE for services to the
Economy and Transport.
Adelman, Sophie, WhiteHat
Sophie Adelman is supercharging the
next generation of tech talent as a
mentor and advisor, and co-founder and
general manager of talent accelerator
WhiteHat. The company helps young
people launch their careers at the
best possible companies through
apprenticeships.
Alys, Stephanie, MysteryVibe
Sporting possibly
the best job title
ever, Stephanie
Alys is co-
founder and
Chief Pleasure
Offi cer (CPO) of
award-winning
smart tech
pleasure brand
MysteryVibe. She has also been
featured in major publications
such as the Times and WIRED and
regularly appears as a keynote
speaker on international stages.
Aslam, Mevish,
Terminal 3/Sprinters
Ex-lawyer turned entrepreneur Mevish
Aslam has spent over fi ve years
developing start-up ecosystems around
the world. Terminal 3 reinvents traditional
learning and development while Sprinters
is a women in tech social enterprise.
Mevish is also a coach, strategist, talent
advisor and business developer.
Black, Dr Sue OBE,
#techmums
Tech royalty Dr Sue Black is an honorary
professor, a Government Digital
Service advisory board member, social
entrepreneur, writer and acclaimed public
speaker. Her company #techmums
teaches mums the tech skills they need
to get back into business and she set up
the UK's fi rst online network for women in
tech BCSWomen in 1998.
Bumbra, Rav,
Structur3dpeople
Following a
20-year career
in tech, working
mum Rav Bumbra
decided to move
into recruitment
to get a better
work-life
balance. It was there she realised
how few women were getting
into the tech industry and
started tech recruitment and
career development consultancy
Structur3dpeople.
Proving that tech is no
longer 'male, pale and
stale', BusinessCloud
was inundated with
nominations for its
Female Founders of
Tech list.
Historically tech has been a male-
dominated industry, which is why
BusinessCloud launched a mission to
fi nd examples of women who have
used tech in some way and turned it
into a fi rst-rate business.
Publication of the list builds on the
incredible reception BusinessCloud's
100 Female Role Models in Tech list
enjoyed in 2016. The list received over
3 million impressions on Twitter and
won widespread praise but we decided
to tweak the criteria this year to focus
on women who have been involved in
founding a tech company.
The judges wanted the 101 fi nalists
which they ended up pushing to
104 due to three businesses being
co-founded by a female team to be
a celebration of the incredible women
across the UK that are driving growth
and innovation through tech. We think
they more than achieve that.
The age of entrants ranges from
17 to 83 and the list is in alphabetical
order. If you want to comment on
Twitter you can use the hashtag
#FemaleFounders101.
Join the discussion on #FemaleFounders101
BUSINESSCLOUD EDITION 8, Q4 2017
12
BUSINESSCLOUD.CO.UK
FEMALE FOUNDERS
Butkovic, Marija, Women of
Wearables/Kisha Smart Umbrella
Marija Butkovic has many strings
to her bow: a law degree, starting
Kisha Smart Umbrella the world's
smartest fashion tech umbrella and
co-founding Women of Wearables,
the UK and Europe's fi rst organisation
supporting, connecting and mentoring
women in wearable tech and more.
She is a mentor, investor and STEM
ambassador.
Cabili, Karin, Dropit
After founding
her fi rst
company at
the age of 20,
Karin Cabili
started Dropit
in 2014 after no one could deliver
a pair of boots from the store to
her hotel whilst on business trip
in New York. This formed Dropit's
strategy using technology to
connect businesses and enhance
the customer experience.
Camisotti, Cristiana, Silicon
Milkroundabout & SMR Scotland
After fi ve years as co-founder and
CCO at Silicon Milkroundabout and
SMR Scotland, the UK's number one
tech job fair, Cristiana Camisotti is now
COO at EDITED. She is passionate
about helping under-represented
groups get into the tech industry.
Carrell, Rachel, Koru Kids
As the former CEO of DrThom.com,
the world's largest online doctor
service, Rachel Carrell grew the
business to 1.3 million paying patients
in the United Kingdom, Ireland and
Australia. However it was when she
had her fi rst baby and saw how diffi cult
and expensive childcare was that she
decided to found childcare platform
Koru Kids.
Cerrone, Emma, Freeformers
Emma Cerrone is co-founder and partner
of Freeformers, a workforce technology and
transformation company. She is an award-
winner who was previously named as the
Duke of York New Entrepreneur of the Year
at the National Business Awards as well as a
2016 NatWest Women in Tech to watch.
Chakraverty, Julie, Rungway
Julie Chakraverty is the founder of
Rungway, a platform that helps employees
give and seek advice on work and life
challenges. She is also a non-executive
director at Standard Life Aberdeen
and a trustee for the Girls Day School
Trust. She has been a board member of
UBS Investment Bank, winning multiple
industry awards for innovation.
Chaletzos, Nena, Luxtripper
Nena Chaletzos co-founded Luxtripper
four years ago and has grown the company
every year as CEO. She is also part of the
Mayor of London's International Business
Programme, and is also launching another
business, Travel Genetics, this year.
Clark, Elizabeth, Dream Agility
Elizabeth Clark is the larger-than-life
co-founder and CEO of Dream Agility,
which matches retailer data to Google
keyword searches without changing
the site's wording. She is also a
mentor, multiple award winner,
an accomplished international
speaker and author of Flirting
for Dummies.
Clegg, Judith,
Takeout Innovation Agency
Serial entrepreneur Judith Clegg is
a Fortune 500 board-level strategy
consultant and an angel investor. She is
also the founder of boutique business
solutions consultancy Takeout and The
Glasshouse, which off ers support to tech
entrepreneurs and investors. She co-
created the #HANDSOFF campaign and
is the founding director of Moonfruit.
Cockerton, Claire, Plexal
Claire Cockerton is the founder and
CEO of Plexal, the 68,000-square foot
innovation ecosystem for start-ups,
scale-ups and enterprises. She also
founded ENTIQ, an innovation advisory
and delivery fi rm, and was founding
director and CEO of Innovate Finance.
Cook, Jodie, JC Social Media
After founding JC Social Media Jodie
Cook was determined to raise the
standards of social media marketing and
inspire others to start their
careers in the sector.
She developed Flaunt
Report, which social
media agencies now
use for their reporting
and wrote a series of
books to develop
enterprising skills
in primary
school
children.
Celestial-One, Saasha & Cook,
Tessa, OLIO
Tessa Cook is a farmer's daughter from
North Yorkshire while Saasha Celestial-One
was born to 'Iowa hippy entrepreneurs'.
Saasha is ex-McKinsey and while on
maternity leave in 2012 she opened her
fi rst business in London. Tessa has worked
at Dyson and Wonga UK, where she kick-
started the turnaround of the business. The
pair launched food-sharing app OLIO in 2015.
BUSINESSCLOUD EDITION 8, Q4 2017
13
@BCLOUDUK
FEMALE FOUNDERS
Cordwell, Lou, Magnetic North
Instrumental in the North's digital scene,
Lou Cordwell set up digital design agency
magneticNorth 17 years ago in response to
the changing digital landscape. Now she's
also director of the North for female funding
platform AllBright, a board member for the
Manchester LEP and advisory board chair of
Design Manchester.
Coutu, Sherry CBE,
Founders4Schools
One of tech's most
familiar faces, Sherry
Coutu has been
founding companies
for over 20 years. Two
of the most well-
known are Founders4Schools, which
helps students fi nd jobs at start-ups
and scale-ups, and The Scaleup
Institute. She is also an angel investor
and philanthropist.
Cummings, Susie, Nurole
Susie Cummings
used to be a top-
tier headhunter
and is now founder
and CEO of one
of Europe's most
successful retained executive search
fi rms, Nurole. She is also a patron of
the Academy Ambassadors, a not-
for-profi t programme funded by the
Department for Education.
de Tusch-Lec, Vivien, Bubele
Vivien de Tusch-Lec started her career
as a journalist for the Financial Times and
Reuters, then in 2015 founded parenting
start-up Bubele, where she is still CEO.
Over 18 months the company built a
network of 50 local editors across the
UK generating content for its 150,000
subscribers. Its clients included Made.
com, Ocado and Hello Fresh.
Depledge, Alex MBE,
BuildPath
Alex Depledge is on a roll. After selling
cleaning tech fi rm Hassle.com in 2015,
she is now CEO of her second business
BuildPath - an online architectural
platform - which became profi table in
four months. She also received an MBE
for services to the Sharing Economy
2016 and is Chair of Coalition for the
Digital Economy Board.
Deschamps-Sonsino,
Alexandra, Good Night Lamp
Her Good Night Lamp IoT company
helped Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino
scoop top place in Postscapes' list of
100 Internet of Things Infl uencers in
2016 and her work has been exhibited
at the V&A and galleries around the
world. She is a start-up advisor and
was also part of the Mozilla Leadership
Network Advisory Group.
To subscribe to BusinessCloud for free email subscriptions@businesscloud.co.uk
Details of how to nominate can be found on the BusinessCloud website.
For more details email Katherine.lofthouse@businesscloud.co.uk
In the next edition of BusinessCloud
we'll be publishing our inaugural list of
101 Pioneers of Health Tech.
We'll be showcasing the individuals and companies
who are using technology to improve patient care.
The list is open to everyone including surgeons, GPs,
NHS Trusts and private companies who are disrupting
the health sector to improve patient care.
Join the discussion on #FemaleFounders101
BUSINESSCLOUD EDITION 8, Q4 2017
14
BUSINESSCLOUD.CO.UK
FEMALE FOUNDERS
Doyle-Morris, Dr. Suzanne,
InclusIQ Institute
Dr. Suzanne Doyle-Morris is an
academic, author and built a self-funded
company from the ground up. InclusIQ
builds online games used in training
groups to help people adopt inclusive
leadership best practice. She is also one
of the very few female entrepreneurs
to have received SMART funding from
Scottish Enterprise.
Egorsheva, Olga, Lobster
Olga Egorsheva's
fi rst taste of
entrepreneurship
came via a family
photography
business which
she founded with her father in
2005. Joining forces with her two
co-founders in 2014 she became
CEO of Lobster, a marketplace for
creatives to search and license
social media content directly
from real people, and computer
generated music.
Eltz, Stephanie, Doctify
Doctify co-founder Stephanie Eltz was
an orthopaedic surgeon before she
moved into entrepreneurship two-and-
a-half years ago. She is currently head
of growth and strategy for the start-up,
which connects patients with doctors
and has been described as the 'booking.
com for the health industry'. She is also
on the board of pharmaceutical start-
up Hamoedica.
Evans, Bec, Prolifi ko
With over 15 years' experience in
publishing and communications most
of Bec Evans's career was traditional,
in-house, senior management. Then
she got the idea for Prolifi ko, a digital
productivity coach which helps people
start and stick at their writing projects.
In July Bec and her co-founders pitched
to Ignite and were accepted on their
accelerator programme.
Feldman, Hannah, Kidadl
Ex-Linklaters lawyer and UBS banker
Hannah Feldman worked for Dragons'
Den's James Caan before founding Kidadl
in 2016. The site is the place for families
to dig out the best things to do in and
around London and since launching in
July 2017 has added 12,000 parents to its
online community.
Fenichell, Sofi a, Mrs Wordsmith
Serial entrepreneur Sofi a Fenichell
founded video app companies Rockpack
and WonderPL and was a tech analyst at
investment banks before starting Mrs
Wordsmith. The company is illustrating
the English language with the lead
artists behind Madagascar and Hotel
Transylvania, and creating products to
accelerate vocabulary development and
literacy.
Fish, Helen, Beatstream Media
After starting several businesses and
spending six years living in Milan, Helen
Fish moved back to Manchester to focus
on her fi rst tech business, music start-up
Beatstream. The company has developed
a streaming app which lets viewers watch
music from bars, clubs and music venues
as it happens around the world.
Follows, Tracey,
Female Futures Bureau
Female Futures Bureau is a not-for-profi t
which connects female futurists with the
press and events media to help create
gender diversity in the media. Tracey is a
professional futurist, regularly writes for
the press, has spoken at the UN on the
future of gender, and at events like TEDx.
Freeman, Cherry, LoveCrafts
Since co-founding popular online crafting
hub LoveCrafts in 2012 Cherry Freeman
has helped grow the business to 140
employees. She has also been a strategy
director and software business unit director
at Computacenter, done advisory work with
Mimecast, New Voice Media and Symantec
and been a non-executive governor of City
University for nine years.
Godfrey, Gemma, Moola
Ex-quantum physicist
Gemma Godfrey's Moola
helps people achieve their
money goals. Featured
by The Times as a "route
to the best fi nancial
advice", Gemma was also advisor to
Arnold Schwarzenegger on Celebrity
Apprentice and is the money expert on
the hit ITV show "Eat, Shop, Save".
Gold, Sarah, Projects by IF
Sarah Gold is a designer who is forming
and creating our digital rights. Winning a
Creative Conscience Gold prize, she also
founded IF, a design studio that specialises
in privacy and security. Sarah sits on the
board for Tech for Good and is a practitioner
for the Research Institute in the Science of
Cyber Security.
Griffi ths, Jenny, Snap Tech
As the founder of Snap Tech, Jenny
Griffi ths' fi rst product is Snap Fashion, which
lets users take pictures of products to fi nd
where it, or something similar, is sold. She
incorporated Snap Fashion at just 23 and
was awarded an MBE in 2015 for services to
digital innovation in the fashion industry.
Farrell, Alex & McAra, Rebecca,
Gift Wink
Gift Wink was co-founded by two women
on a mission to start a gifting revolution.
Alex Farrel and Rebecca McAra want
to make gift giving easier with their
online gift matching platform. Alex also
previously launched one of the biggest
tech careers platforms in Europe, The IT
Job Board, and is an active angel investor.
BUSINESSCLOUD EDITION 8, Q4 2017
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FEMALE FOUNDERS
Gross, Karoline, Smartzer
After attending medical school Karoline
Gross started an LA-based production
company. She then launched Smartzer in
2014 and has built the video ecommerce
and analytics platform into an award-
winning start-up boasting clients like
Puma and Adidas.
Grover, Riya & Swanton, Lyz,
Feedr
Feedr CEO Riya Grover is the
marketing, sales and product brain
of the business. She launched her
fi rst tech start-up whilst at Harvard
Business School. The food tech
start-up's COO Lyz Swanton is the
operations and analytics brain of
the business and has previously
implemented mobile health
technology in rural Africa.
Guderley, Jacquelyn, Salom
Jacquelyn Guderley has an impressive
tech legacy as co-founder of Stemettes,
which she left to start Salom, a literary
magazine for emerging female writers.
She is also in the steering committee
and management group for Tech Talent
Charter and a Tech London Advocate for
Women in Tech.
Hardwick, Liz, DigiEnable
Liz Hardwick is co-founder of DigiEnable,
a digital training & SEO services company.
She designs and delivers tech-based
and online marketing workshops, and
regularly speaks at events across the
UK. Liz is also chair of the UK Women's
Equality Committee for BECTU and one
of the organising team for Women in
Tech North UK.
Hodges, Jill, Fire Tech Camp
Jill Hodges has inspired hundreds of
children with technology through Fire
Tech's courses. As the UK's largest
provider of tech courses and camps for
9-17-year-olds, Jill's company is creating
a collaborative community of innovators,
creators and makers.
Hubbard, Joanna, Electron
Joanna
Hubbard is
the COO and
co-founder
of Electron: a
digital energy
start-up,
building
blockchain
platforms and ecosystems for and
with the energy industry. Before
Electron she spent four years in
renewable energy investment
banking, worked in a cleantech
VC and consulted on digital
transformation at McKinsey.
Hutcheon, Leah, Appointedd
Leah Hutcheon is the founder and CEO of
Appointedd. Following an eclectic career
from theatre management to journalism,
she is now an ambassador for Women's
Enterprise Scotland, director of Future
Leaders for Entrepreneurial Scotland
and a #ScotEDGE Award winner who
was featured in BBC documentary The
Entrepreneurs.
Imafi don, Anne-Marie,
Stemettes
After passing two GCSEs aged ten,
Anne-Marie Imafi don was destined
for great things. She is CEO, 'Head
Stemette' & co-founder of Stemettes
which has inspired over 14,000 girls
& young women into STEM. She
co-founded the world's fi rst tech
incubator for teenage girls and at 27
was awarded an MBE for services to
young women and STEM.
Inglesby, Iona, Dot One
Iona Inglesby has a background in textile
and product design but a passion for
genetics, making Dot One which
creates personalised apparel based on
your DNA her perfect match.
Jessup, Beau, Special Name
17-year-old Beau Jessup helps Chinese
parents pick British names for their babies
based around characteristics they value.
She started the company after a visit to
China and realising parents were calling
their children names like Gandalf because
of a lack of access to Western culture.
To date the company has named over
390,000 babies.
Jones, Gail, UKFast
Gail Jones
co-founded
managed hosting
and cloud fi rm
UKFast with
her husband
Lawrence in a
back bedroom in 1999. She has been
instrumental in the tech company
reporting 16 continuous years of
growth and was recently announced
as one of the company's two MDs.
Join the discussion on #FemaleFounders101
BUSINESSCLOUD EDITION 8, Q4 2017
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@BCLOUDUK
FEMALE FOUNDERS
Jordan-Wrench, Harriet,
Secret Sessions
Harriet Jordan-
Wrench helps
brands connect
with consumers
through Secret
Sessions a music
platform dedicated
to nurturing new
and emerging
artists with the help of brands who wish
to contribute meaningfully to culture
and the arts. She has worked with artists
like Ed Sheeran and her content has
gained over 20 million views.
Karia, Bindi, Bindi Ventures
'Super connector' Bindi Karia started
boutique technology advisory Bindi
Ventures in 2016. She also sits on the
advisory board of eight start-ups (seven
of which were founded by women), one
venture debt fund, the digital board of
one corporate and is sitting on two high-
profi le EU boards.
Kenyon, Anastasia, Lifestyler
25-year-old Anastasia Kenyon is founder of
Palette Offi cial (now Lifestyler) and Kandi
Cosmetics. Over the last two years she
has worked to develop Lifestyler, her social
media and booking platform for beauty
professionals and beauty lovers. She is
currently working through the acquisition of
her fi rst company and is soon to become
the CEO of a 4m valued entity.
Khan, Aneeqa, eporta
Aneeqa Khan founded eporta.com in
2015, which has since grown to be the
leading online interior sourcing
platform. She started out as
the youngest ever employee
at top Private Equity fi rm
CVC, before joining Zoopla
as strategy director and
leading the company's IPO
for over 1 billion aged
only 25.
Kingston, Samantha,
Virtual Umbrella
Samantha Kingston is co-founder and
client director at Virtual Umbrella, a
marketing and PR agency specialising in
virtual reality. At just 26 she is an advocate
for women in tech and VR. In 2016 she
also won the regional and national 'New
Business' award at Venus Awards.
Koby, Bethany,
Tech Will Save Us
Bethany Koby is the CEO and co-
founder of learning toolkit start-up
Tech Will Save Us. She has over 15
years of experience building brands
and purpose-driven businesses like
Skype and is one of Wired's Designers
that Matter.
Kohli, Nidhima, My Beauty Matches
Former Miss Commonwealth Asia Pacifi c
Nidhima Kohli attended professional
dance school and worked in investment
banking for seven years. She then
started the world's fi rst
intelligent beauty
matching engine, My
Beauty Matches, in
2013, working and
sleeping in her living
room whilst renting
out her bedroom to
earn some money.
Kumar, Madhuban, Metafused
Metafused CEO Madhuban Kumar has
helped raise over $1m in VC and angel
funding for her company, which makes
AI-based predictions for fi nancial
service and logistics. She has VC,
entrepreneur and corporate experience
in three continents and has worked with
bleeding-edge technologies building
innovative products, including the
Barclays Oyster card.
Lakhani, Priya, CENTURY Tech
Priya Lakhani launched FMCG business
Masala Masala in 2008 and CENTURY
Tech, an AI learning platform for students
and teachers, in 2015. She was also a
founding entrepreneur of Gazelle Group
Colleges and was awarded Business
Entrepreneur of the Year by the
Chancellor in 2009 and an OBE in 2014.
Lindsay, Sandy MBE,
Tangerine/The Juice Academy
Manchester mainstay Sandy
Lindsay was
honoured in 2015
for services to
business and
young people.
The same year
also saw her named the IoD's
NW Director of the Year (SME).
Sandy chairs award-winning
communications consultancy,
Tangerine, the social media
apprenticeship, The Juice
Academy, and skills groups for the
NW IoD and the NWBLT.
Lloyd, Estelle, Azoomee
Estelle Lloyd is co-founder of Azoomee,
the safest entertainment service for
kids. The app's online safety curriculum
- Smart Safe Kind Online - has won
Azoomee the support of the NSPCC,
a BAFTA nomination and multiple
industry awards. Estelle founded her
fi rst start-up in 2006 which she sold to
FTSE 250 Centaur Media plc in 2011.
Join the discussion on #FemaleFounders101
FEMALE FOUNDERS
BUSINESSCLOUD EDITION 8, Q4 2017
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BUSINESSCLOUD.CO.UK
Lucca, Roberta, BOLDR
Roberta Lucca's passion for women in
games and technology shines through
in her virtual life coach BOLDR, and
previous video game business Bossa
Studios. Roberta is now a non-
executive member of the team and
a member of the Bossa board, and
CEO at BOLDR. She also has multiple
honours and awards to her name.
Ma, Angie, ASI Data Science
Angie Ma
is a physicist
by training
and is now
founder and
COO of ASI
Data Science,
which
empowers
its clients
to use AI to
solve business problems. She also
started Data Science Lab, one of
the biggest communities of data
scientists in Europe, with over
2600 active members.
Marenghi, Alexa, Codess
Inspired by her role as global
diversity manager at Microsoft, Alexa
Marenghi's passion lies within gender
diversity in the engineering industry.
After experiencing the alienation of
being the only female student in her
Computer Science classes, Alexa
decided to start Codess in March
2013 a community for female coders,
sponsored by Microsoft.
Margolis, Alexandra, Carwow
After graduating Alexandra Margolis
co-founded impartial car review site
Carbuzz, before moving into the
car buying space and rebranding as
Carwow. The business has generated
over 2 billion of new car sales and 48
million total investment from VCs.
Morris, Melissa, Lantum
Melissa Morris is a healthcare expert
turned entrepreneur, having worked at
McKinsey in their healthcare practice
and also for NHS London. Lantum helps
healthcare organisations organise
their clinical staff and fi nd new ones to
cover shifts. Melissa is also a mentor on
NHS England's Clinical Entrepreneur
Programme.
Munro, Hannah, ITAS Solutions
30-year-old Hannah Munro founded
Welsh business management solutions
business ITAS in 2013 since then it has
grown to a team of 18. ITAS is also one
of the few tech fi rms to achieve over 50
per cent women in technical roles with no
positive discrimination involved.
Murarka, Neha, smoogs.io
Software developer Neha Murarka
is CEO and co-founder of smoggs.
io, which is creating a 'taximeter for
online streaming' letting people pay
in cryptocurrency to watch online
content. Neha won a Digital Catapult
pitch-off for smoogs.io and the
company was selected in the BBC
Worldwide Labs accelerator cohort
for 2016.
Murria, Vin, Advanced Computer
Software Group
One from BusinessCloud's Rich List,
Vin Murria's career has included
a combination of investment and
operational experience. As founder and
CEO of software and IT services company
ACS she grew the company from zero to
220m revenue in seven years, making
it the third largest UK-based software
company at the time.
Nicci, Melinda, Baby2Body
Baby2Body is the
go-to lifestyle
platform for all
things pregnancy,
with an algorithm
that personalises
information to
be sent to users.
Its founder and
CEO, ex-sports psychologist and
fi tness trainer Melinda Nicci, regularly
appears on TV, conference panels and
as a writer for top publications.
Noble, Suzanne, Frugl
Stretching from Warner Bros to Universal
via Sony, Suzanne Noble's PR career
includes a collaboration with the White
House for Michelle Obama's 'Let's Move'
campaign. She co-founded Frugl, an
aggregator of daily deals and low cost
events and co-founded online magazine
The Advantages of Age to challenge the
media narrative around getting older.
McVittie, Sarah & North,
Donna, Dressipi
Having both previously founded
other companies Sarah McVittie
and Donna North took on fashion
with their personalisation software
for fashion retailers, Dressipi a
company which has doubled its
revenue every year since it was
founded in 2010.
FEMALE FOUNDERS
BUSINESSCLOUD EDITION 8, Q4 2017
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@BCLOUDUK

Osman Britton, Anisah,
23 Code Street
Anisah Osman Britton started a company
at 19, learnt how to code and then became
operations director of a corporate
accelerator. Seeing the impact that
diverse teams had on tech she started
coding school for women 23 Code Street.
For every paying student in the UK the
company teaches digital skills to a woman
from the slums of Mumbai.
Paredes, Diana, Suade
Diana Paredes
is CEO and
co-founder
of Suade,
a software
platform that
lets fi nancial
institutions
understand and
deliver their regulatory requirements.
Before founding Suade, which became
profi table a year after launch, she
worked in investment banking and
believes that a data-driven approach
to regulation is the key to preventing
the next fi nancial crisis.
Parsons, Kathryn, Decoded
Kathryn Parsons is bringing coding to the
masses as co-founder and co-CEO of
Decoded, which teaches people to code in a
day. She's also co-founder and ex-co-CEO
of advertising agency the Scarlett Mark.
Payne, Samantha, Open Bionics
Open Bionics COO
Samantha Payne
co-founded her
company, which
creates bionic arms
for amputees, at
just 23. She is also
an entrepreneur, digital marketer and
journalist. She was recently named as
one of the top 25 women in robotics
you need to know about by Robohub.
Petgrave, Paris, We Love Work
Ex-headhunter Paris Petgrave is CEO
of We Love Work, an award-winning
people analytics platform that helps
companies grow faster by using data
to predict performance and fi t. She is
also the founder and investor in tech
investment fi rm Rare Seed Capital and
in 2013 launched start-up accelerator,
Kaleidoscope Enterprise.
Philbin, Maggie, TeenTech
Tech legend Maggie Philbin has received
multiple awards during her career,
including an OBE for her work to promote
careers in STEM and the Creative
Industries. She co-founded TeenTech,
which helps young people get the tech
skills they need, in 2008 and is president
of the Institute of Engineering Designers.
Older readers will remember her best as a
presenter on Tomorrow's World.
Ramachandran, Anjali,
Ada's List
Anjali
Ramachandran
is co-founder
of Ada's List, a
global network
for women in
technology
which boasts
over 4,000
members. She is also an editor at
content studio Storythings and a
member of the advisory board of
Angel Academe, a pro-women angel
investment group.
Russell, Heather, Biscuit Labs
Heather Russell started her fi rst
business at 19 selling Japanese
animation artwork. At 24 she moved to
Japan and built her second company
Rinkya.com - a global eCommerce and
logistics company. After fi ve years in
London as a start-up advisor and mentor
she co-founded Biscuit Labs, which
brings AI to energy management.
Sassow, Sandra, SEaB Energy
Making the world
a cleaner place,
Sandra Sassow
is CEO and co-
founder of SEaB
Energy, which
creates energy
from organic
waste. She also mentors and is
director of the Solent Local Enterprise
Partnership, as well as a member
of WeConnect and the Chartered
Institute of Waste Managers.
Savova, Romi, PensionBee
Following frustration trying to combine
her pension schemes, ex-Goldman
Sachs Romi Savova now wants her
start-up PensionBee to make pensions
cool. Having gained major press
coverage Romi's long-term ambition
is to help 300,000 Brits control their
retirement savings.
Shah, Sheeza, UpEff ect
Sheeza Shah is
founder and CEO
of UpEff ect, a
crowdfunding and
support platform
for companies
dedicated to
improving lives and the planet. Its
enterprise-solution approach and
campaign-consultant model has
driven the company's 100 per cent
success rate at securing funding for
their campaigns.
Sherry, Rosie, Ministry of Testing
Once a software tester who wasn't
satisfi ed with the available resources,
Rosie Sherry decided to do something
about it. The result is the bootstrapped,
self-funded Ministry of Testing, a global
community and online learning platform
with conferences across Europe and
the US.
Join the discussion on #FemaleFounders101
FEMALE FOUNDERS
BUSINESSCLOUD EDITION 8, Q4 2017
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Shirley, Dame Stephanie,
Freelance Programmers
At 83 Dame Stephanie Shirley has
been making waves in tech for
decades. Freelance Programmers,
founded in 1962, has over 8,500
employees and specialises in tailor-
made commercial software and
business management. She is no
longer involved in the company
but her work as an entrepreneur,
philanthropist and speaker is
extensive.
Sinel, Elena, Acorn Aspirations
Before building her businesses, Elena
Sinel worked as an international
development consultant and co-
founded Business Without Borders.
Teenator, which is at concept stage,
connects teens to tech mentors.
Acorn Aspirations inspires teens
through tech and is about to launch
a nationwide VR hackathon.
Slater, Chelsea,
Liverpool Girl
Geeks
Chelsea Slater's
experiences of
inequality in the tech
sector inspired her
to start Liverpool Girl Geeks, which
empowers women in tech through
events, workshops and courses.
About to launch her second business,
she plans to support teenage
girls through a nationwide tech
programme.
Smith-Nunes, Genevieve,
ReadySaltedCode
Having a spinal implant has been a
driver for Genevieve Smith-Nunes in
her work and has helped her engage and
educate people of all ages. In 2013 she
set up ReadySaltedCode CIC, a not-for-
profi t which provides STEAM-focused
education, plus workshops, training and
large-scale tech-enhanced classical
ballet performances.
Sohoni, Reshma, Seedcamp
Reshma Sohoni
is co-founder of
Seedcamp, which
invests early
in world-class
founders to enable change through
tech. It has invested in 250 start-ups
since launching a decade ago. Reshma is
also an adviser and public speaker.
Sollberger, Alessandra,
Evermore Health
Alessandra Sollberger set up her fi rst
business at 11 and has invested in start-ups
since then. She also set up a non-profi t
teaching IT and programming skills to
children in disadvantaged areas. Since
launching lifestyle brand Evermore, which
uses AI and personalisation tech, she also
mentors and speaks publicly on technology.
Stinton, Felicity, Dead Right
Felicity Stinton's Dead Right aims to disrupt
the funeral market. By making people better
informed they're less likely to pay over the
odds at a time when money considerations
are not a priority. Felicity had a successful
career in advertising and is on the board and
a shareholder at top ad agency BBH.
Sudbury, Hayley, WERKIN
WERKIN founder and
CEO Hayley Sudbury
is an LGBT+ leader,
on the steering
committee for
LB Women and a
Stemettes mentor.
She is a regular tech and diversity
speaker, and is a featured speaker
for TEDx Shoreditch later this year.
WERKIN is a mobile-fi rst technology
platform that supports mentoring and
sponsorship programmes.
Teles, Ines, dwyl
Ines Teles is co-founder and CEO of dwyl
short for 'do what you love' a digital agency
specialising in building tech for good apps.
She is also a director of Founders & Coders,
the UK's only free coding bootcamp, and
runs Ladies of Code London which has over
2,800 members.
Trachet, Claire, wOndary
Claire Trachet believes that the right mind-
set can make the world a better place, one
traveller at a time which is why after six years
at Deutsche Bank she started advising start-
ups and software fi rms. Claire then created
wOndary, which helps empower people to
travel through easy planning.
Uggla, Julie-Anne, Cities Talking
Former model turned serial entrepreneur
Julie-Anne Uggla launched Cities Talking in
2012, a mobile app which provides audio-
guided city walks. The tours combine
interesting content with engaging narration
and can be accessed offl ine so users don't
have to pay roaming charges while abroad.
Vallely, Vanessa, WeAreTheCity
At the height of her 25 year career in fi nancial
services tech, Vanessa Vallely launched the
award-winning WeAreTheCity.com to help
corporate women connect and grow. The site
has over 100,000 members and receives over
8 million hits a month. Vanessa is currently also
an advisor for Government Digital Services.
Walters, Julie, Raremark
Raremark, Julie Walters' third business, is an
online community for families aff ected by rare
disease something which aff ects 350 million
people globally. She launched the platform in
2016 and in the last year has built the world's
fi rst patient-led search engine in rare disease
with over 2,000 subscribers.
Wong, Colleen, Techsixtyfour
There's nothing quite like the feeling of
losing track of your child. Colleen Wong, an
investment banker turned entrepreneur,
founded Techsixtyfour in 2015 to help prevent
that feeling. The company provides wearable
mobile phones and trackers for kids, and
sales for its Gator watch have soared since its
launch at John Lewis in March 2017.
Yu, Angela, London App Brewery
Angela Yu is a self-taught programmer and
iOS/WatchOS developer. She worked as a
doctor for several years until she realised her
passion has always been with teaching and
coding, which led to starting the London App
Brewery an in-person programming and
design bootcamp.
BUSINESSCLOUD EDITION 8, Q4 2017
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@BCLOUDUK
DIVERSITY
Now she owns one of the few
independent agencies left in Manchester,
and is putting people fi rst in her company
too.
"We're people designing for people," she
says. "Tech is just a means to an end which
is why we talk about being a design-led
organisation. Great design understands
the problem or opportunity and creates
solutions for that. Technology might just
be the right way to get to that it could be
voice tech or an app or a screen you can
swipe but it's about understanding people
and sometimes people forget that.
"One of our core brand values is curiosity
and we tend to hire on that basis you have
to enjoy it. As soon as the Alexas arrived
here everyone jumped on them. It terrifi es
some companies but we love it, so you
need to be really clear on the space you
operate really well in. Those that are doing
well will be the very adaptable. It makes
non-functional skills really important like
the ability to work as a team, to collaborate,
to problem solve."
As a board member of Manchester
LEP and advisory board member of
Design Manchester Cordwell has become
instrumental in the city's digital scene,
but in her new role at AllBright she's also
creating change on a wider scale.
"There's a moral argument that as a
human being I want to see other humans
do well but there's a very straight economic
argument too," she says.
"Companies with greater diversity
perform better. As a city the economic
argument is that if we're going to create
opportunities we want to get the 30-40
per cent who are struggling and failed by
the education system and bring them up
with us.
"We're in the business of making
products and services and if we only have
one perspective we don't get the all-
rounded challenge to the design process
that we do when we bring diff erent people
to the table."
As part of her work with AllBright
Cordwell wants to shift the business
culture while off ering role models for
women, so it might come as surprise that
many of her favourite mentors have been
men.
"It doesn't have to be a woman
mentoring you because you're a woman,"
she says.
"Some of the strongest people who've
mentored me have been down-to-earth
very Northern men. I like the pragmatic,
honest view. Find someone you have a real
connection with and who has experience
relevant to you but when it doesn't work
for you say now I need someone with a
diff erent experience. Get one that works
for you rather than ticking a box and going
'I've got a mentor now, everything's going
to be fi ne'."
Designing
a brighter
future
Lou Cordwell is the new director of the
North at AllBright. She tells Katherine
Lofthouse why diversity is crucial to
business success.
As the founder and CEO
of magneticNorth for
more than 17 years,
Lou Cordwell has
been at the heart of
Manchester's digital
and tech community for a generation.
Well connected and well liked, Cordwell
is a passionate supporter of women in the
industry and she's just been appointed
director of the North for AllBright, a new
funding and support platform designed
with female entrepreneurs in mind.
Refl ecting on her new role and her career
she says there's room in business to be
nice and successful. "There's a real sense
of ambition in Manchester to grow with
humanity but that doesn't mean not being
successful economically," says Cordwell.
"That's more sustainable than the
explosion model you see in places like
Silicon Valley with extreme poverty at one
end and extraordinary wealth at the other.
Look under the bonnet of some of those
businesses and see the behaviours and
human cost of that billion dollar valuation.
"Young people are coming through and
saying 'actually I fi nd that unacceptable and
that's not a corporation I want to buy from'.
The only point of success is about creating
happiness. As a person I'm only happy if I
feel like I'm moving forward and if I feel a
sense of pride about what I'm delivering
along the way."
Cordwell left a successful career in
advertising in 2000 to start digital design
agency magneticNorth after noticing the
direction the industry was going.
BUSINESSCLOUD EDITION 7, Q3 2017
23
@BCLOUDUK
COLUMN: TECH DOCTOR
MANCHESTER IS LEADING
THE WAY IN TECHNOLOGY
Lawrence Jones
is the co-founder
and CEO of
managed hosting
and cloud firm
UKFast. In his
latest column
he looks at
Manchester's
history of
technological
innovation.
When you think about technology and
the front-runners leading the way, I
would bet that the majority of people
immediately think of Silicon Valley and the
big American, multi-national players. But,
actually, many of the tech advancements
in the modern world actually come from
our own shores here in the UK.
One of the reasons I am so proud to call
Manchester our home is its extraordinary history
of technological firsts. The Industrial Revolution
began here. John Kay's Fly Shuttle, all the way
back in 1733, transformed cotton weaving.
The world's first passenger and goods railway
was first introduced here in the 1800s; the first
military submarine was reportedly devised by a
Moss Side vicar. And of course back in the late
1940s Baby was born; the world's first computer.
Weighing more than a tonne and with less
compute power than one of today's calculators,
Baby set the foundations for the digital world we
now rely on so heavily.
Manchester is still leading the way, most
recently with the development of graphene, a
'miracle material' 200 times stronger than steel,
flexible, durable and semi-transparent. It is set
to revolutionise electronics and the way energy
is stored. Research into how to use it is ongoing
at a 61m National Graphene Institute at the
University of Manchester right on UKFast's
doorstep.
Each of these tech firsts has been carefully
nurtured. I believe that it is our responsibility as
entrepreneurs and business leaders to look after
the research, the startups and the innovators
that are often behind the real technological
advancements. That's why I am backing a new
initiative called Tech Manchester, providing
advice and support for startups across the city
and eventually the UK. Despite only being up
and running for a matter of months, the initiative
already has 60 mentors on its books, supplying
real-world support and advice for growing
businesses.
Through this we found a business called
Reconfigure.io. These guys are absolute
geniuses when it comes to the technology within
the chips that power our devices. Whilst, over
the years we've seen chips increase in speed,
we've added more cores and we've virtualised to
make the most of more compute power. These
guys are developing a new way to maximise
the power within these chips to harness the
opportunities of AI and machine learning.
Reconfigure.io work with FPGAs to make them
easily accessible to more people. They're an
incredible group and I recently invested in their
business, lending business support too.
Whilst these are all incredible examples of
technological firsts, it is also worth noting that
being first to market isn't always an advantage.
We talk often about 'first-mover advantage',
a phrase that is very regularly linked with
Apple, but the company isn't always the first
to market with a concept. When the iPod was
first launched, around 50 mp3 players were
already on the US market. When the first iPhone
was launched, there were already apps and
smartphones on the market.
What Apple did was to take an existing
concept and hone it, finesse the marketing and
UX, and bring the technology over to the mass
market. Now there is no denying Apple's impact
on the smartphone and personal computing
world.
I remember hearing a story about car rental
firm, Avis. Founder Warren Avis once said that
he was confident that his company would always
be great because whilst Hertz is the number
one car-rental firm, Avis is number two and will
always have someone to compete with, and
something to aim for. He said that they have to
work harder because they are number two.
Whilst being first to market is an incredible
achievement, it brings with it a target on your
back.
I am fascinated to read the feature in this issue
of BusinessCloud examining Tech 1sts. We are
in an age where some extraordinarily innovative
businesses are taking the stage you only need
to look at the likes of BooHoo, WeBuyAnyCar,
AutoTrader and AO.com to see how innovation
and left-field thinking is driving success.
www.lawrencejones.co.uk/
/LawrenceJonesCEOUKFast
LJUKFAST
lawrencejonesmbe
@lawrence_jones #FollowLJ
BUSINESSCLOUD EDITION 8, Q4 2017
24
BUSINESSCLOUD.CO.UK
GAMING
Leah Viathan is part of the new
generation of entrepreneurs
earning money from tech.
Jenny Brookfi eld talks to the
professional live streamer.
Most nights, hundreds
of people tune in to
watch Leah Viathan
destroy alien threats
or fi ght as a world
war soldier. As a
professional live streamer, the
24-year-old tackles some of the
most popular video games on the
market watched by an audience of
people she has never met.
She has built up such a loyal following that
within months of launching her stream, she
was able to give up her day job thanks to
the healthy income it was bringing in.
Meet the new generation of
entrepreneurs earning money from tech.
"It started as a hobby, and I didn't realise
you could monetise it until people started
asking me to put up a link for 'tips' about a
week after I started," says Leah, who put out
her fi rst live stream in March 2015. "It was in
the thousands in that fi rst month. I thought
there was no way people would keep giving
money like that, but it just kept happening."
Meet the queen of
stream
Two months in, she became 'partnered'
by streaming platform Twitch, a gaming
community that attracts 10 million daily
visitors. This is the pinnacle for streamers,
Leah says, and is unheard of so early on in
a user's Twitch 'career'. This means that,
in addition to the tips, she can earn money
through gaining a share of the revenue
generated by broadcasts and through
subscriptions to her channel.
RETRO GAMER
Leah currently has 1,000 subscribers who
pay monthly for ad-free viewing, access
to custom badges and subscriber-only
chat groups, and unrestricted access to
her broadcast archives. Tips, which are
separate to subscriptions, are set at a
minimum of 2, although viewers can
simply watch for free if they prefer.
It's a far cry from Hampshire-based
Leah's gaming upbringing, when she
honed her talents on her dad's retro
consoles and, when it came out, the
Nintendo 64. "We didn't have tons of
money and my mum was into retro, so she
would buy me old games like Sonic the
Hedgehog and Super Mario," Leah says.
At 16, she was bought an Xbox 360 and
started playing multi-player games like
Call of Duty and Halo. "Because I had old
consoles that didn't have any memory on
them, I never really got into story games,
like Legend of Zelda, because I never
fi nished them," Leah says. "I played multi-
player games because I could just play
them over and over again."
Always modest, she says she never
considered herself 'good' at gaming, and
even now only sees herself as "slightly
above average". "I found myself getting
into weird situations when I played and
talking to myself, so I thought why not let
everybody hear it?" she says.
At the time, she only had a MacBook Pro
and a poor internet connection, so she
saved up and convinced a few people around
her to help her out. A friend's dad allowed
her to use a desk at his offi ce, and she would
turn up after employees had gone home.
Although she has built up to hundreds
of followers, getting that fi rst one was
the most diffi cult, she says. "There are
hundreds of thousands of people streaming
on Twitch who have zero viewers, which
places them at the bottom of the directory
people use to fi nd a stream," Leah says.
"To have three viewers already pushes you
up past these people, so getting the fi rst
viewers can be make or break."
Her other hobby was cosplay, and she
BUSINESSCLOUD EDITION 8, Q4 2017
25
@BCLOUDUK
GAMING
decided to wear a new costume she had
made during her fi rst stream. A fellow
costume maker shared a picture of Leah's
outfi t on Twitter, driving more people to
her channel, and her fi rst night attracted
20 viewers. "Wearing the costume for a
stream wasn't something people did at
that time and that, with the attention I got
from social media, pushed me up in the
directory," she says.
For the fi rst year-and-a-half, Leah solely
played Destiny, an online-only fi rst-person
shooter game where players take on the
role of a guardian to protect Earth's last
safe city. She later began to play other
games to appeal to more users and
protect herself if the game lost popularity.
FORMING HABITS
Generally, she attracts 300-400 viewers
between 7pm-11pm, seven days a
week. Some stay for the duration and
others dip in and out. Consistency is
important for would-be streamers. "If
people know where and when to fi nd
you, they'll develop a habit of watching
your stream," she says. Collaboration
with another stream that's a similar
size to yours can also be useful, as
well as streaming in a variety of ways.
"Sometimes I stream as I'm making my
cosplay so people see me in a diff erent
directory, come to my stream and stick
around," she says.
For the entire four hours, Leah will
commentate on what she's doing in the
game as well as answering questions from
viewers who type them into a chat feed.
What has become apparent is the need to
keep a balance between games talk and
sharing elements of her personal life.
"The most important thing is to keep
people interested in you as a person as well
as the game because you have something
you can transport to other platforms," she
says. "One of the rules in my community is
that we're respectful and we do talk a lot
about mental health because that's a huge
part of people's lives on Twitch."
Leah herself has battled with depression
and anxiety and says playing games helped
her escape from her problems, as it does
for many of her viewers. "It's quite a serious
conversation and can be tricky to navigate
but I do enjoy the fact that I have a platform
to talk about these issues," she says. "My
subs (subscribers) aren't just customers:
they all have such distinct personalities that
adds fl avour to the stream. I spend a lot of
time talking to them because it's important
that they see the real me.
"I was going through an awful time with
my mental health when I started streaming
and I started watching a gaming video on
YouTube, which made me laugh every time.
It was important that I could put it on and it
would be comfortable and familiar. It was the
thread that kept me hanging and, for a lot
of people, that's what my stream does for
them it gives them a sense of calm."
While gaming can provide an escape from
mental health problems, Leah accepts that
the opposite can happen too. With lots of
factors aff ecting whether viewers tune in or
not, professional streamers can often work
12 hours-plus every day.
"It's a self-employed business so if
you take a day off you're losing income,"
she says. "If you take a week off people
might go to another stream then not
come back. There are people who feel like
they can't take a day off , which is really
unhealthy because then they risk mental
health problems. If you're playing the
same game over and over again for hours
a day you can start to feel burned out. I
try to combat that by taking a day off or
doing creative streams and other things."
For Leah, that means attending events
and networking, giving her a chance
to meet fellow streamers and those in
the gaming industry. In June, Xbox sent
her to check out its new games at E3 (the
Electronic Entertainment Expo) in LA and
she will attend TwitchCon in California in
Leah in action during a live stream of indie smash hit Cuphead.
" It was in the
thousands in that
fi rst month. I thought
there was no way
people would keep
giving money like
that, but it just kept
happening."
BUSINESSCLOUD EDITION 8, Q4 2017
26
BUSINESSCLOUD.CO.UK
GAMING
October. Though she is not paid for these
appearances, the games developers
cover her expenses. "Games companies
are coming around to the idea of subtle
rather than overt promotion, where you
give a streamer a game and allow them
to experience it then share that with their
community," Leah says.
CHARITY
Then there is the chance to give something
back by raising money for charity. She was
part of a week-long charity event where
streamers took a four-hour block each
and streamed to raise money for St Jude's
Children's Hospital in Tennessee. Leah
raised $13,000 in her block and a total of
$1.2m was raised during the week.
"I've done charity events for cancer
research, cancer hospitals, mental health
facilities, disability services and more in
the past and it's nice being able to use
the platform for good," she says. "The
community rallies around a cause and they
usually astound me with their generosity."
Perhaps surprisingly, when you consider
that she virtually invites hundreds of people
into her home on a nightly basis, Leah
reveals that she's more reserved than some
of her counterparts. "There is a disconnect,"
she agrees. "Sometimes I look around
while streaming and see my chat moving
fast while all these people are watching me
sitting in my room on my own, and I think
'this is so weird'. In real life, people listen to
you because they want to say something,
but on the stream people listen because
they want to know."
Those virtual interactions have turned
into real life ones, however. Leah says she
has made fi rm friends through Twitch and
even met her boyfriend through her stream.
"I did an advert for PlayStation on Twitch
and my boyfriend didn't have an ad blocker
so he kept seeing it," she says. "One day he
clicked on my stream and we got together."
While it's mostly positive, there is a dark
side to putting yourself out there: it leaves
you open to all sorts of abuse. Leah says
she has been called "every name under the
sun" and is hesitant to talk about it at fi rst
as she says this can often lead to another
surge of trolling. For this reason, she does
not reveal her surname, going only by her
username Leah Viathan a play on the word
leviathan, or sea monster, and a nod towards
her use of squids in her online persona. She
hopes talking about the trolling she has
endured will show other victims that they
are not alone. "It eventually washes over
you because you know that it's not true,"
she says. "You know yourself better than the
trolls know you and they're usually picking
the low-hanging fruit to hit you with. It's
important for people who fi nd themselves in
this position to know that they're not alone
and that everybody gets this kind of abuse."
Abuse aside, Leah is enjoying everything
else life throws at her as a live streamer,
although she accepts it probably won't
be a career with a long lifespan. Outside
of her streaming hours, she is developing
other skills, such as graphic design and
costume-making, and she has been off ered
opportunities in esports hosting and TV
work in the past. Prior to this, she was a
freelance videographer covering extreme
sports and fashion, including travelling
the world following the world motocross
championships.
"Streaming is still not something I like to
consider a career because it's so random
and weird," she says, adding that there are
often misconceptions that she doesn't pay
tax, for example. As there is no precedent
for this new industry, it can often be a case
of fi nding your own way. She is choosy
about the many products she is asked
to promote for fear of diluting her brand
and will only agree to those she would use
herself. Asus provides all her hardware
but she is happy to point people in their
direction because of the quality of the
product, she says.
"To play video games and make money is
very volatile," Leah says. "I could probably
eke it out for a few more years but there
will be a point when I have to grab what I've
got and move onto the next thing.
"In fi ve years' time I might be doing
something that doesn't exist yet, because
fi ve years ago I wouldn't have thought I'd
be doing this now."
" The most important
thing is to keep
people interested
in you as a person
as well as the game
because you have
something you can
transport to other
platforms."

LEAH VIATHAN
Read more stories in the digital edition of BusinessCloud magazine at businesscloud.co.uk
BUSINESSCLOUD EDITION 8, Q4 2017
28
BUSINESSCLOUD.CO.UK
TECH 1STS
From the fi rst
computer to the
fi rst smartphone,
tech has been
at the coalface
of innovation
for decades.
BusinessCloud joined forces
with Havas PR to fi nd the next
generation of those that dare
digitally the pioneers and
technological boundary pushers
from across the UK.
We were inundated with
nominations but in the end our
judges settled on our 51 Tech 1sts.
The products could be game-
changing or just a bit of fun but part
of it had to have had an element of
being fi rst. Several of the companies
that made the list are due to pitch
at a special BusinessCloud event on
November 28th, with the best one
winning a ticket, or cash equivalent,
to CES 2018 in Las Vegas.
Products had to be less than
fi ve years old and entrants had
to provide evidence of the entry
being a fi rst to market. Katherine
Lofthouse reports.
MDH Hologram, Middlesex
Deliver speeches and attend meetings
from the comfort of your living room.
MDH's Musion eyeliner holographic
technology turns you into a realistic
hologram that can appear onstage and
interact with audiences from anywhere. It
was famously used to bring the late rapper
Tupac to life again for Coachella festival.
inamo Restaurants, London
Have fun while you wait for your food at
inamo's London restaurants. Its patented
overhead projector systems lets users play
games, doodle and order on their table-
tops as they dine perfect for keeping the
kids busy or a fun date.
TECH 1STS
VST Enterprises, Manchester
Link, inform and secure anything with
VCode, a symbol similar to a QR code.
The tech is being used in an incredible
range of situations from bank notes
so shops can check for counterfeits,
to the corner of a pizza ad letting users
scan, order and pay in seconds.
VeriLet, Manchester
VeriLet is the 'property dating app'
revolutionising the lettings market
by helping people do their eligibility
checks for free. The world's fi rst
tenant eligibility market, it pairs
prospective tenants with the best
properties for them, saving them time
and money on failed checks.
Smarter, London
Never return home to fi nd
yourself without milk again.
The Smarter FridgeCam is the
fi rst wireless fridge camera to
let you see what's in your fridge
from wherever you are. It also
adds items to your shopping list
automatically, tracks expiry dates
and suggests recipes based on
what you have left.
SPONSORED BY
BUSINESSCLOUD EDITION 8, Q4 2017
29
@BCLOUDUK
TECH 1STS
RazorSecure, Basingstoke
RazorSecure uses machine learning to
keep us safe as we travel. It works out
'normal' behaviour for transport systems
and if anything unusual is detected begins
a defence mechanism to protect itself and
reports the breach even working when
there's no data connection.
Kisha Smart Umbrella, London
Never lose an umbrella again with Kisha's
fashionable smart umbrellas. A world-first
pairing your phone to your brolly via Bluetooth
technology, the app warns you of bad weather
and alerts you if you leave the umbrella in a
place you haven't marked as 'safe'.
HiyaCar, London
Billed as 'Airbnb for cars', HiyaCar's
QuickStart technology lets you access
your rental car without having to collect
keys from the owner. It lets car hirers open
the car with their phone as soon as their
booking starts and can revoke access at
any time, adding reassurance for owners.
Emma.ai, Guildford
Never rush for a meeting again with Emma.
ai as your personal travel assistant. She
connects to your calendar to provide
transport suggestions and scheduling
information. Funded by Innovate UK, Emma
also learns how you like to travel so you get
more tailored suggestions over time.
Nebula Labs, Newcastle
Parking in cities is always a nightmare.
Enter Nebula Labs' The Parking Fairy,
a free app that helps drivers fi nd the
nearest available parking space in city
centres using smart parking tech.
Beatstream Media, Manchester
Never miss a
gig again with
Beatstream,
no matter
where in the
world your
favourite band
is playing.
The start-up lets venues stream live
events to music lovers anywhere in
the world and is the only live music
platform that works with the artist
and the venue, proving that location
shouldn't determine ticket sales.
Paperplanes, London
The only post anyone receives nowadays
is bills which is why businesses using
Paperplanes' trademarked Programmatic
Direct Mail will get the attention of
potential customers. The tool triggers
personalised post that is delivered to
website visitors within 48 hours.
Join the discussion on #Tech1sts
BUSINESSCLOUD EDITION 8, Q4 2017
30
BUSINESSCLOUD.CO.UK
TECH 1STS
Scattr, Derry
Relive your youth and make ads fun with
Scattr's 'virtual Pass the Parcel'. It lets
businesses send out 'parcels' to users'
phones with the chance to win a prize if
users watch a 10 second ad. If you lose
you can still pass the 'parcel' onto friends.
Everledger, London
Diamonds are one of the biggest
purchases most people make but
certifi cates are often forged. Everledger
is putting paid to those fears as the fi rst
company to track diamonds throughout
the supply chain using blockchain
technology. By giving them a digital
thumbprint it ensures they are authentic
and ethically traded.
Hopper HQ, Birmingham
Never stay up until 2am to post to your
company's Instagram account again.
Hopper HQ is the fi rst fully automated
scheduling tool for Instagram that doesn't
break the platform's terms and conditions,
meaning brands can connect with their
global audience no matter what time it is.
Air, Birmingham
After a stint on BBC's The Apprentice,
Nick Holzherr set up Air, making HR
easy with its 'Hub & Spoke' model. Air's
platform lets companies start with basic
software functions and then opt into the
features they want, giving them advanced
features plus simplicity on the go.
ORCHA, Liverpool
They say there's an app for everything,
and when it comes to your health
there may actually be thousands but
how do you know which are safe and
eff ective? ORCHA's Health and Care
app store is the fi rst to let doctors
prescribe apps to patients.
JEETLY, London
Described as 'Tinder for fashion',
petite clothing brand JEETLY lets
customers vote items IN or OUT of
the next collection but what sets it
apart is that it also off ers them credit
for engaging.
JimJam, Gateshead
If you're fed up of waiting to get your
neck pain or back injury looked at JimJam
can help. The majority of physiotherapy
consultations are as eff ective online
as in person, so it connects users to
physiotherapists via video call, off ering
rehabilitation in a fast, simple and
aff ordable way.
SoulTek,
Edinburgh
Finding top tech talent
in a digital skills gap
is tough. SoulTek's
'little black box' of
talent matches
contractors and
clients better
than a human
recruiter. It
uses unique
algorithms
and machine
learning,
helping
companies
engage with
tech-focused
millennials.
Footy Addicts, London
Want a kickabout but don't know any
fellow footy fans? Starting life as a Meetup
group in 2009 and now with over 40,000
players, Footy Addicts is the fi rst open
social platform to connect football addicts
in the same city.
Premier Punt, Aberdeen
Until now, the millions of Fantasy
Football fans out there have struggled
to play for real cash. Premier Punt is
the fi rst platform to combine Daily
Fantasy Sports and betting, letting you
place bets on teams without having to
download any other apps.

brightLET, Birmingham
Moving house is hard enough, but
brightLET cuts out the middleman that
often complicates the lettings process. It
connects landlords with their
tenants and tradespeople
off ering a fully automated,
accessible and easy-to-
use service.
OLIO, London
The average
household throws
out about 60-worth
of food a month.
OLIO is the only
local community
food sharing app
that connects
neighbours with
each other, and
with local shops
and cafes, so that
surplus food can
be shared not
thrown away.
31
@BCLOUDUK
TECH 1STS
PensionBee, London
Pensions are both complicated and
usually off er a very delayed payoff .
PensionBee makes the whole process
simple as the only online pension
manager that brings old pensions into
one plan on any device. PensionBee
also wants to demystify pensions for a
younger audience, with 65 per cent of its
customers coming from Instagram and
Facebook.
Love the Sales, London
Most retail sites have thousands of
products on their site. Love the Sales has
millions. To make sure customers can
easily fi nd the products they need, the
site's AI Retail Merchandising tool learns
about the products then classifi es them to
99.9 per cent accuracy, doing work which
would take humans years.
Mimica, London
How often do you end up binning out
of date food? Planned to launch in early
2018, Mimica is developing Mimica
Touch, a food expiry label made out of
food by-products, to stop food waste.
When the label is smooth the food is
fresh, when it's bumpy it's not.
Playrcart, London
Watch a video and then buy the products
in it with Playrcart's embeddable video
player. For example, watch a fi lm trailer
and immediately buy the cinema tickets
directly within the trailer itself.
Tamoco, London
The Tamoco global proximity network
connects the offl ine and online worlds,
using the Internet of Things to off er
location-based targeting to brands and
advertisers. This means that brands can
connect with their audience even when
they're offl ine.
PowerMarket, Oxford
PowerMarket is on a mission to tackle
climate change by letting everyone
access sustainable energy. Its global
solar map uses artifi cial intelligence
and satellite data to let buyers assess
whether anything from their roof, car
park or farm is suitable for solar power
in a few clicks.
PubGuard, London
Cracking down on 'adfraud', PubGuard
identifi es advertising content which is either
inappropriate or ineff ective to improve both
the quality and impact of ads. It's the fi rst
mobile-specifi c solution of its kind.
Gnatta, Bury
Really get to know your customer
with Gnatta, the fi rst technology
dedicated to engaging customers at
the point of contact in an effi cient,
cost-eff ective way. By analysing
customer messages in
real-time, it can also
determine whether
queries should
be answered
by a human
operator, AI,
or its own
automated
workfl ow
system.
The Language Pod, Harrogate
Learn a language online without having
to download any software. The Language
Pod's live online language lessons let
clients register for free via the website,
choose a teacher, pay for and book a
lesson at a time to suit them.
Limitless Travel, Solihull
For anyone who has a disability, or travels
with someone who does, Limitless
Travel's world-fi rst disability-aware online
booking system opens up a whole world
of holidays. It uses a smart questionnaire
and machine learning to match people
with holiday destinations suitable for
their needs.
Opun, Gatwick
Opun is on a mission to untangle
the complicated world of home
improvements with the sector's
fi rst end-to-end platform. It helps
customers fi nd local contractors and
manages projects from start to fi nish
using its own certifi ed trade partners.
Omnate, Birmingham
Have several charities you
care about but don't know
which to choose? Non-profi t
Omnate helps you donate to
multiple causes at the
same time. Tick the
global causes
you care about
on the platform
and enter a
monthly budget
to split between
them it picks
the best charity in
the world for that
cause.
Join the discussion on #Tech1sts
BUSINESSCLOUD EDITION 8, Q4 2017
33
@BCLOUDUK
TECH 1STS
Movem, Brighton
The average time to reference a
prospective tenant in the UK is one to two
weeks Movem Passport is the world's
fi rst instant tenant reference platform
and costs 10, compared to the industry
standard of 30-100.
MYPINPAD, Cardiff
Never worry about putting your PIN
into an unknown device again with
MYPINPAD's Merchant Trust Solutions &
Consumer Trust Solutions. The tech is the
fi rst to off er multi-factor authentication
for unsecured devices. It cloaks your PIN
as you enter it so it's not saved on, or
seen by, the device as you shop on your
mobile.
The Debate App, Manchester
A place where you can debate Brexit
without the abuse or the pictures of
cats The Debate App off ers a place for
people to discuss the issues of the day.
Users can upload opinions via text or
video, and you can track the debate plus
break down vital stats on what particular
demographics think about key topics.
yourfeed, London
Dubbed
'LinkedIn for
millennials',
yourfeed
wants to
connect
two million
young
people to
job opportunities by 2020. With a full
launch in November 2017, it allows them
to showcase their skills and personality
better than a traditional CV.
DriverNet, St Helens
Deliveries often take longer than they
should thanks to things like incorrect
information, unreliable GPS and blocked
access. DriverNet brings logistics into the
21st century and reduces emissions by
fast-tracking deliveries through pinpoint
navigation and live customer alerts.
Hello Soda, Manchester
People get turned down for fi nancial
services all the time when relying on
information from traditional routes like
credit reference agencies. Hello Soda's
software thoroughly analyses all data to give
more accurate scores, allowing for informed
decisions in areas like credit risk.
Cyber Coach, Bolton
Learn two
subjects in
one with Emile
Education's
online games.
Aimed at children between six and nine
years old the games teach maths at the
same time as a language, meaning kids
learn the language in context.
IntroStream, Manchester
IntroStream's platform matches businesses
to innovative tech services. It also lets
companies post a 'challenge', asking
for ideas from the community on how
technology can help them.
PROWLER.io, Cambridge
Do you worry about putting your life
or fortune in the hands of artifi cial
intelligence? PROWLER is the fi rst principled
AI decision-making platform, using
mathematical principles to help companies'
AI systems make smarter choices. It has
recently received 10m investment.
SEaB Energy, Southampton
Make money from your waste products
with SEaB Energy, which helps sites
transform organic waste into electricity,
heat, water and fertiliser with its easy-to-
use, cost-eff ective FLEXIBUSTER.
Cognitiv+, London
With Brexit on the horizon many
businesses are wondering how
legislative changes will aff ect their
business. Cognitiv+, an artifi cial
intelligence platform that's
demystifying legal documents, can
help. It aims to allow businesses
and law fi rms to gain better insights
from their legal data minimising
risks of mistakes or confusion.
Now Healthcare Group,
Manchester With the NHS overstretched,
seeing a doctor can take weeks. Now
Healthcare Group's app is the fi rst to off er
video consultations with an NHS doctor and
then deliver medicines to patients' doors with
its integrated pharmacy solution.
from beyond life, Manchester
from beyond life gives you a chance to say
goodbye to the ones you love after you
die. Its platform lets users upload and store
pictures and videos that loved ones can log
in to watch after they pass away.
Wonderful, Manchester
Many people don't realise that when they
raise money for charity a cut goes to the
fundraising platform. Non-profi t Wonderful.
org is the fi rst event fundraising website to
ensure that charities receive 100 per cent of
donations, thanks to corporate sponsors.
GoInStore, London
GoInStore's live video streaming
app gives you the in-store shopping
experience from the comfort of your
home. It matches customers browsing
online to the best sales assistant on the
shop fl oor. The sales assistant can then
demonstrate a product and talk the
customer through their purchase.
Join the discussion on #Tech1sts
BUSINESSCLOUD EDITION 8, Q4 2017
34
BUSINESSCLOUD.CO.UK
REGIONS
The buzz about
BIRMINGHAM
Katherine Lofthouse spent a day in the Midlands metropolis
to fi nd out what the city's tech scene has to off er.
First up on the Birmingham tour
is the famous Custard Factory to
meet Melissa Snover (pictured),
a fast-talking American with
infectious enthusiasm.
Her innovative
3D-printing company
Magic Candy Factory
makes bespoke
sweets to order but
she's well known in
the North West after
selling her gelatine-
free sweets business
Goody Good Stuff to
Cloetta when she was
known as Melissa Burton.
"When I set up this business I did
loads of research about governmental
programmes and the support available
Nestled between London and the Northern Powerhouse,
Birmingham is a city with a tech scene that's quietly on the
rise. Shrugging off its reputation as the UK's automotive hub
to focus on emerging tech, the area has serious potential
with big banks to professional services firms and a whopping
18 universities calling the region home.
MELISSA SNOVER
Founder and head magician,
Katjes Magic Candy Factory
around the world to choose the best
place to set up because the company
involves so many important things like
patents, R&D and specialist 3D-printing
stuff ," says Snover.
"I chose Birmingham for those reasons.
The UK government has the best support
programmes for R&D-based
businesses in the world."
Snover loves
both the Custard
Factory and the
fact that the
city has three
universities
with 3D
printing degree
programmes.
This, she says, is a
rarity anywhere in the
world.
"The whole feeling,
ethos, energy of this area in particular is
awesome," she says.
"The cost of living is very low in
comparison to London, and even
Manchester, and the level of talent is
insane. Birmingham is the Silicon Valley of
the UK or at least it will be. All the start-
ups are here, there are meetups every few
days, there are cool networking events
downstairs. All the businesses work
together on projects I've never seen
anything like it anywhere else."
Snover believes the city is growing in
the right direction, saying it reminds her
of Brooklyn 'before it got expensive'.
"You want to be in Brooklyn fi rst.
London has Hoxton and Shoreditch but
now it's not hipster anymore and it's crazy
expensive," she says.
"The only thing the city could do with is
it doesn't have many co-working spaces.
Sometimes you meet people in them that
you end up working with so drop-in co-
working spaces with a great coff ee place
would be great. I think and hope Custard
Factory will do something similar."
BUSINESSCLOUD EDITION 8, Q4 2017
35
@BCLOUDUK
REGIONS
Round the corner from Custard
Factory and part of the Digbeth
family is Fazeley Studios,
home of Backface
Studios a 3D design
and scanning start-
up that holds the
Guinness World
Record for the largest
3D-printed human.
Founder Tim Milward
(pictured above) was also
TIM MILWARD
Founder and 3D designer,
Backface Studios
One person who has
grown up with
the Birmingham
tech scene is
23-year-old
Jordan Beer,
who started
his digital
marketing agency
in the city at age 18.
Basing his four-strong team in the
Jewellery Quarter on the other side
of town is a sign that this area is also
up-and-coming.
"A lot of people think of London as big
but quite a lot of headquarters and large
corporations are here and a load of small
to medium businesses," he says. "There's
loads of office space and the renovations
are coming in. Birmingham is up-and-
coming. There are lots of residential blocks
being built so we're expecting a boom in
population and because there are more
people here and more money going through
there's more to be had for
businesses too."
Innovation is at the heart of the
city's future, says Beer, as well
as the quality of life which could
draw investment away from
other cities. "Outside of London
we're probably an innovation hub
for tech," he says.
JORDAN BEER
Founder and managing
director, SEO Silly
"We've got cheaper costs, the same
sort of internet speed there isn't the
same backing as London but we've had
US businesses come here and say 'we'd
go to London but we want to come to
Birmingham because you get more bang
for your buck'. That's the big selling point
for the city. And we like to think we're at
least on par with London in terms of skills
compared to cost and delivery."
This allows the city to be the best of
both worlds, says Beer. "We don't have to
worry about being 'London fancy' or as
straight talking as the North we get to be
ourselves," he says.
What the city needs now is more
'screaming and shouting', believes Beer.
"We could do with big tech events
happening here," he says. "We've got
the NEC and a few bits and bobs here but
never a big conference. Google opened the
Digital Garage which is helping investment
but why can't we have big Birmingham
awards or a conference where tech
businesses can go? If the government can
make some money from a big exhibition
it would help. It's the only thing missing
because there are big players here."
DAVID HARDMAN MBE
CEO, Innovation Birmingham
If Jordan
Beer believes
innovation
is key to the
city's future,
David Hardman
and his team
at Innovation
Birmingham a
campus over the other side of the
city in Faraday Wharf could be the
answer he's waiting for. The hub is
full to the rafters and only accepts
innovative start-ups with digital at
their core.
"We've created a different community
from the Custard Factory, which has been
very successful but is for creatives and
those that want to be in a cool space,"
says Hardman. "Our community is
different and a city like Birmingham needs
both."
Next the city needs to pick a specialism
to carve out an identity separate from the
big cities that sandwich it from above and
below.
"Manchester has digital media, London's
FinTech but Birmingham's never really had
that ability to focus," says Hardman.
"People don't come together anywhere.
Over the next few years as digital starts to
impact everything the real opportunity for
Birmingham is that because it has a very
broad base, especially in the engineering
and manufacturing space, then digital
engineering can come from it. If we can
connect digital entrepreneurs with the
legacy disciplines of the region it could be
very exciting."
Part of this is joining up the established
businesses within the region to the start-
ups to create change. Another is getting
the combined authority area together.
"I want to start looking at the Coventry,
Birmingham and Wolverhampton public
sector structure and the opportunities
there," he says.
"There are five science parks within
the region so I want to create a web of
interaction between everything. The core
cities outside London need to stop looking
to London and look to each other for
collaboration opportunities."
drawn to the area and has found
the collaboration it offers to be key.
"Being in Fazeley Studios has been
great," says Milward.
"I was conscious when we started that I
wanted to be around here because there's
an abundance of start-ups and a
community of people in the
same boat doing different
things. You can pop to
reception and ask for a
logo and someone will
hook you up. There's a lot
of collaboration and a lot
of back scratching. It's a nice
part of the tech world."
BUSINESSCLOUD EDITION 8, Q4 2017
37
@BCLOUDUK
PITCH@PALACE
Meet
14-year-old
entrepreneurs
who wooed royals
Siena Jackson-Wolfe and India Garret-Cox's IoT fridge app,
a food waste solution, started life as a school project in Bristol.
A school tech project
has royal approval
after a pair of 14-year-
old girls won the Duke
of York's prestigious
Pitch@Palace 8.0
competition with their Internet of
Things fridge app.
Bristol schoolgirls Siena Jackson-Wolfe
and India Garret-Cox took top spot at
St James' Palace after 11 tech start-
ups pitched to a room full of influencers
including CEOs, investors and mentors.
Their Eat Me App connects a person's
phone to their fridge, sending an alert
when food goes off, and aims to tackle
food waste.
"Our app is an IOT solution to transform
the relationship between the consumer
and the amount of food they waste
in their homes," Jackson-Wolfe told
BusinessCloud before the successful
pitch.
Garret-Cox continued: "The app is
connected to a scanner, which is secured
inside your fridge. The scanner is portable
it can be moved to the bread bin or a
cupboard. You scan the product and the
data is sent to the app and will alert you
when it's about to go off.
"It can also suggest recipes by looking
at the contents of your fridge to make
sure the carrots at the back of your fridge
get used."
The Eat Me App journey began in 2015,
a year after the girls first met at Redland
Green School.
"We did it as part
of National Science
Week in school and
we had a project
at the beginning of
year 8 where we had
to design a solution
to an environmental
problem: we chose
food waste as it's a
problem affecting
everyone," said
Garret-Cox. "It's
something we're
really passionate about.
"We then went to the Big Bang
Fair, which is a competition where
schoolchildren from around the UK
pitch to judges. We won the UK junior
engineers of the year award there.
"To get to the competition in
Birmingham we'd had to get support
from local companies in Bristol WebStart,
Engine Shed and Watershed. Our school
didn't have the money to get us there."
The eighth Pitch@Palace competition
was themed 'the future of mobility and
materials' and featured businesses
exploring the impact that tech in the
mobility and connectivity sectors can
have on our everyday lives.
"It was kind of spur of the moment to
enter," said Jackson-Wolfe. "We weren't
sure up to the last minute if we should
enter or not: we didn't know whether our
ages would be a problem.
"We then arrived at the Pitch@Palace
Bootcamp in
T-shirts and jeans
and everyone else
was in suits. We
were terrified but
we had to try and
sell our idea and
show that our age
shouldn't affect
how they saw us."
Garret-Cox
added: "We arrived
here in a taxi and
got out at the
palace that's insane!
"But we're now looking to get food
industry partners and investment to help
make prototypes."
Second place in the competition went
to By Miles, a real-time pay-per-mile car
insurer. Zap and Go, which is looking to
improve charge time and battery life in the
electric vehicle market, was third.
The People's Choice Award, voted for
by the public from the 43 finalists that
took part in the Pitch@Palace bootcamp,
went to QuitGenius, an app which uses
cognitive behavioural therapy to help
smokers quit.
Entries for Pitch@Palace 9.0 themed
on 'data, intelligence, and the future of
security' are now open, with the pitching
competition set to take place in April 2018.
Boot Camp for entrepreneurs who get
through the regional finals in Pitch@Palace
9.0 will be held at Manchester University
on 13th March.
BUSINESSCLOUD EDITION 8, Q4 2017
42
BUSINESSCLOUD.CO.UK
GDPR
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) comes into effect on May 25, 2018
but recent statistics suggest that the majority of organisations are still not prepared.
Is it too late for your business? Mo Aldalou reports.
Could your business
cope with irreparable
reputational damage
and being fined 20m
or 4 per cent of its
worldwide annual
turnover?
If the answer is 'no' then you face a race
against time to get ready for GDPR. The
General Data Protection Regulation has
been described as the most significant
overhaul in data protection in a generation
and in six months' time it becomes law.
It is meant to hand control over personal
data squarely back to private users - but
the flip side is it places greater onus on
businesses to ensure data security.
Any company that holds or handles the
personal data of EU citizens will be required
to seek consent to store information and
offer users additional rights, including
Are you
ready
for
GDPR?
access and the 'right to be forgotten'. They
will also be required to have a clear plan for
managing data breaches and may even
have to report the breach within 72 hours of
discovering it.
Some experts say it takes 18 months to
become GDPR compliant so, with May 25 on
the horizon, is it too late to get ready?
KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON
Nicola Frost, head of legal and company
secretary at Manchester-based cloud
hosting firm UKFast, believes most firms
won't be compliant in time.
"Yes, ideally you could have started six
months ago but GDPR is more about a
culture shift within your business when it
comes to data protection," she says. "I'd
guess that only 25 per cent of businesses
will be truly compliant by May.
"At the end of the day, the Information
Commissioner's Office (ICO) is going to look
much more favourably on a business that's
tried to put safeguards in place than ones
that have done absolutely nothing."
Kim Smouter-Umans, head of public
affairs and professional standards at
ESOMAR, the global association for insights
and data, echoes that sentiment.
"Not panicking is a really important first
step," he says. "Data protection authorities
have repeatedly said they don't intend
to begin with enforcement action from
May 25 and that they're planning to give
some leeway as long as businesses can
demonstrate that they're working towards
a compliance programme which is effective
and which meets all the requirements.
"It's also important to understand that
there's no expectation for an SME to
have in place the same data protection
measures as Microsoft or Apple would
Breakfast event, Tuesday 12th December
GDPR - are you ready?
BUSINESSCLOUD EDITION 8, Q4 2017
43
@BCLOUDUK
GDPR
have. It's not a one
size fi ts all and
there's going to be
a bit of judgement
that needs to be
made by each
organisation to see
what works and what
doesn't work."
Edward Whittingham
(pictured top), managing
director of the Business Fraud
Prevention Partnership (BFPP), says
companies shouldn't be panicked by
"scaremongering" tactics.
"GDPR shouldn't be feared, but
embraced yes, it does need our
immediate attention and no, it isn't going
to be plain sailing but it is important and
needn't be overly complicated."
KNOW YOUR DATA
A crucial step in preparing your business
for GDPR is conducting a data audit
i.e. understanding what information is
coming into your organisation, what's
leaving, who has access to it and for what
purpose.
Kate Lewis (pictured middle), head of
privacy and data compliance at Chester-
based identity data intelligence fi rm GBG,
says it boils down to knowing your data.
"All businesses need to be aware of the
data they're collecting, where it comes
from, what it's being used for, when it was
last updated, where, how and why it's
being stored and for how long, who has
access to it and whether or not it's being
passed on to any third parties," she says.
Rob Sheldon, partner at law fi rm
Fieldfi sher, says personal data isn't limited
to names, addresses and marketing
databases, but also covers cookies, IP
addresses or IMEI numbers on devices.
"Start to map your data: what do you
collect, what do you use it for, who do you
share it with and where does it go in the
world? Once you've done that you can
start to form a gap analysis. Then, get a
project team up and running. This is not
just a legal or compliance issue, or a case
of giving it to in-house legal or external
legal advisors."
Emma Ball, senior
associate at law fi rm
Squire Patton Boggs,
says data mapping'
is a critical step for
compliance.
"Only when you
understand what data you
hold and what you do with it
can you even begin to assess where
you sit in terms of GDPR compliance and
where you need to focus your eff orts
between now and next May," she says.
Whittingham says data can include
everything from a CRM system, HR,
fi nances, third-party SaaS platforms,
emails, CCTV and marketing.
ASSEMBLE A TEAM
Building a multi-disciplinary team to be
ready for GDPR isn't just the job of
data scientists, according to
Smouter-Umans.
"It's also an issue for the
HR department, the front
desk, customer services
it impacts diff erent roles
within a company and
accordingly the team that you
build needs to refl ect that," he
says.
Chris Hunter, director at systems
integrator and telecommunications
specialist HM Network, agrees.
"GDPR is not owned by one
department like IT, HR or
marketing - it is everyone's
responsibility; one person
dropping the ball could
have consequences for
the entire organisation," he
explains.
TRAIN YOUR TROOPS
Christian Mancier is a corporate and
commercial partner, as well as the data
protection offi cer (DPO), at Stockport-
based Gorvins Solicitors. He says the key for
any organisation is staff training.
By training employees and "hammering
home the basics" from locking computer
screens when away from your desk,
encrypting data when taking it out of the
offi ce on a portable storage device or
creating unique passwords to log onto
systems Mancier says a business can
signifi cantly reduce the risk of those human
error breaches.
"Employees are often an organisation's
most valuable asset; however, they also
constitute one of its biggest risks as a
signifi cant proportion of all data breaches
are caused by simple human error, whether
intentional or innocent," he says.
"Any organisation can have the best
written policies in the world; however,
unless staff understand the implications of
GDPR on the business (both fi nancial and
reputational) and how that impacts on them
in their day-to-day roles, organisations will
always run the risk of falling foul of GDPR by
simple human error."
Kathy Fleming (pictured
bottom), compliance
manager at The Lead
Agency, in Liverpool,
says: "If an organisation
is unlucky enough to
have a data breach, one
of the fi rst things that the
regulator will want to know
is if staff are trained."
SPEAK TO YOUR CUSTOMERS
Vibe Tickets, which is an open ticket
marketplace where fans can
buy and sell tickets, has
worked hard to stay
ahead of the curve
when it comes to data
protection.
Founder and
managing director
Luke Massie tells
BusinessCloud: "We are not
in the business of ticketing; we
are in the business of data."
Lancashire-headquartered Vibe
Tickets has just opened an offi ce in
London and is currently reviewing every
aspect of its business to ensure that it is
in line with new legislations. According
to CRM manager Doug Taylor, Vibe is
UKFast Campus, Manchester M15 5QJ
BUSINESSCLOUD EDITION 8, Q4 2017
44
GDPR
BUSINESSCLOUD.CO.UK
concentrating on three key areas: how
historic data is handled, how it can help
new users understand what data it asks
for and why, and how it maintains that
relationship with customers over time.
"For any data that Vibe currently
holds, we'll be reaching out to our users
to clarify what we have and why/how
it is used, and asking for permission to
continue doing so," he says.
"We believe our users will understand
why we process the data that we do, but
any user who doesn't want their data held
and processed by Vibe should be able to
easily request its removal.
"For guiding new users through
understanding what they're sharing with
us, we're looking to develop our sign-up
process to make it as clear as possible
exactly what it means when a user
presses the 'I agree' button. We're also
planning on regularly reminding our users
about what they're sharing with us."
GET THE PROFESSIONALS IN
Hunter (pictured) of HM Networksays
nothing beats bringing in professional help.
"We didn't think that GDPR would aff ect
us that much as we're primarily a B2B
business that doesn't deal directly with the
public. How wrong we were," he says.
"After spending a couple of months
trawling the information available on the
ICO site, we did what we could in-house but
bit the bullet and sought professional help
in a number of areas. Having a professional
asking you questions helps you get a clearer
picture of your own organisation."
Following a visit by a data protection
practitioner who interviewed key staff at the
business, a 45-page risk assessment was
produced.
"It's really helped us prepare for our own
readiness journey and prioritise what needs
doing fi rst," Hunter says.
COLLABORATE WITH
CLIENTS AND
PARTNERS
James Sinclair is
co-founder of
EnterpriseJungle, which
works with some of the
biggest companies in
the world including SAP,
Lufthansa and HSBC. The
company's HR solution helps
large businesses manage alumni and
retirees to increase talent pools and reduce
internal costs.
Sinclair says the fi rm was able to rely on
the vast expertise of its customers and use
their guidelines to build its own policies.
"Given that GDPR leaves much to
interpretation, and says that companies
must provide 'reasonable' levels of
protection for personal data, we were able
to work with the in-house team of some
of our large customers to defi ne what we
collectively believed to be 'reasonable' when
building our policies," he says.
Hunter adds: "We've actually ended
up terminating some agreements with
businesses we work with who can't
demonstrate that they're at least on the
right road to compliance or that they've got
any regard for it."
Lewis of GBG says that true compliance
can only be achieved through a collaborative
and transparent approach with suppliers
and customers. "The key to achieving
GDPR is accountability, which
requires training, awareness,
clear processes and then
ongoing monitoring to
ensure we are doing
the right thing.
"In my view, it's
only when the last
third party you engage
with achieves GDPR
compliance that you
can legitimately claim your
business is GDPR compliant."
REMEMBER, IT'S A JOURNEY
Whittingham of the BFPP is urging
businesses to look at GDPR as a journey
and encourages them to adopt a step-by-
step programme to help them achieve and
maintain compliance.
"There is no one piece of software,
nor a one-off consultancy piece, that
can assure compliance; instead GDPR
requires work in all areas of a business
whether that be reviewing current privacy
policies and standards, identifying the
diff erent types of data held and processed
within the business, or even within your
own marketing initiatives or supplier
contracts," he says. "It is really important
that businesses recognise there is no
silver bullet for GDPR compliance,
rather it requires ongoing attention and
engagement to ensure you are meeting
your requirements."
Emma Ball of Squire Patton Boggs
agrees. "It will require a reasonable
amount of resource to identify
the gaps in compliance and fi nd a
solution in time for next May," she
says.
"Many of our clients have set
up an internal working group to
collate current procedures and
practices and sign-off on any
required changes to systems, procedures
and processes."
FACTFILE
On December 12, 2017, BusinessCloud
is holding a free event in Manchester
entitled: "GDPR are you ready?"
A panel of experts will be off ering
advice on how you can become GDPR
compliant. Details of how to register
can be found on Eventbrite
or the BusinessCloud website.
UKFast has produced a free pocket
guide to GDPR. The exclusive toolkit
contains valuable resources and guides
from industry experts to help support
business in preparing for the GDPR.
Details of how to order one can be
found on UKFast's website and page 39.
BUSINESSCLOUD EDITION 8, Q4 2017
46
BUSINESSCLOUD.CO.UK
BIOHACKING
Although most of
us are more than
comfortable with
microchipping our
pets, we're a bit more
squeamish about
inserting chips into our own bodies.
Yet with a reported 10,000 Brits
having been 'biohacked' to date,
it is a trend to take note of.
Steven Northam (pictured right) is
founder of BioTeq, which carries out
human tech implants. He has also been
microchipped himself. The 33-year-old's
background is in start-up investment, but
he got the idea for BioTeq after hearing
about the procedure in the press and
realising there was a gap in the market.
"I thought it was quirky and that there
were interesting things you could do
with the tech," he says. "Then I found a
large market for assistive technology for
disabled people and medical uses things
we're keen to develop."
Northam had his chip which is about
the size of a grain of rice and fi ts between
the thumb and forefi nger injected
around a year ago and uses it to get into
his house and start his car. He has no
Would you get
microchipped?
With human microchip implants on the rise Steven
Northam, founder of microchipping company
BioTeq, put his money where his mouth is and got
chipped himself. Katherine Lofthouse reports.
regrets, saying the painless procedure
took about 30 seconds.
"I wouldn't say it's massively improved
my life. I'm able-bodied so it's not a
massive issue to carry a key but it's easier
to get into the offi ce and house now,"
he says. "[But] imagine a person without
hands or arms and the massive impact it
has on their life."
Northam's wife apparently
thinks he's "barking mad" and
instead carries the chip on a
fob on her keyring.
To date the company
has implanted 34 clients.
"Early next year the BBC's
One Show is going to fi lm
Alex Lewis, who lost both
legs and arms, as we fi t a chip in
his shoulder. This means things like
his front door will open as he approaches.
That's the real use of the tech."
The company will also be looking at
dementia so the elderly can carry all their
information around with them without
fear of losing it although Northam
admits this does open up some ethical
debates around consent.
"We're looking at dementia care homes
but the main market will be people getting
to an age where they think losing their
memory could be an issue," he says. "If
they go wandering, we can work out who
they are." As for other potential markets:
"Imagine turning up to A&E unconscious
and they scan your hand to get your
medical record. Contactless payments are
also getting a lot of interest."
For anyone reading this and freaking
out, Northam says that the chip is passive
it doesn't transmit data and can be
password protected and encrypted so
only authorised people can access it.
Another common fear is would-be
burglars chopping off users' hands to get
to their accounts. "To remove
someone's hand is quite
a task and if someone
wants to break into
my house or steal my
car it's probably less
eff ort to go through the
window," says Northam.
"Some of our market is
high-net-worth individuals
who want ultimate security:
they don't want to carry keys that can be
stolen. People don't know you've got the
implant there's no way to tell."
The company recently attempted a
crowdfunding round which didn't hit its
target. Part of the reason for missing
the mark could be down to the older
generation thinking it's too risky, says
Northam.
"It mostly comes down to
demographics," he says. "Youngsters
think it's awesome and would happily have
it and older people think it's Big Brother
watching you.
"Give it 10-15 years and no one will blink
an eyelid."
BUSINESSCLOUD EDITION 8, Q4 2017
47
@BCLOUDUK
XXXXXX
XXXX
Christmas naturally has quite a
climactic feel to it. If, like me, you've
got young children, you'll know
that the bubbling excitement of the
impending arrival of you-know-who
is infectious.
But it's not just the kids who should get
to enjoy it. I see this time of the year as the
crescendo of all the exciting gadgets that
have been released into the market.
So, for all the big kids among us, here are
my top picks for the gadget lover in your
house.
Amazon Key: eCommerce has changed
the Christmas shopping experience for
the better, but the one remaining flaw in
the plan is when the package arrives and
you're not home (and neither are
your neighbours). So you have
to go out and get it anyway.
Step forward Amazon
Key. Utilizing their Cloud
Cam along with a new
app, Amazon Key allows
a courier to get into
your house and leave
your delivery nice and safe,
while notifying you that it has
happened and recording the whole
thing for your security. Maybe in the future
Father Christmas will retire the chimney
routine for this new way.
Sphero: These small robotic spheres look
like a lot of fun and will no doubt attract
a lot of attention, especially with their
resemblance to (and upcoming range of
merchandise of) Star Wars' BB8.
Sphero can be controlled with your
phone, tablet and even the movement of
your face. But what excites me the most
is that you can programme your Sphero
with javascript. No doubt the developers
at Purple will have an army of them running
COLUMN: GADGET GAVIN
PUTTING THE GADGET
INTO CHRISTMAS
riot in the office before long.
Magni-viewer: I'm constantly on the
lookout for tech that lightens the load
when I'm travelling. And as my kids grow
up and need more entertaining, I think this
one is going to come in very handy.
The Magni-viewer is designed to
magnify the screen on your smartphone
to make it twice the size, perfect for
watching films or TV on the move.
Beeline Smart Bike Compass: Sat Nav
and Google Maps have worked wonders in
helping out the habitually lost and getting
them to the right place. But what do you
do if you haven't got a window to stick it to
or a hand to hold it in?
Working with your smartphone,
where you can enter your
destination, this gadget
gives you everything you'd
expect from a sat nav,
while sitting on your
handlebars and using
a simply styled arrow
to point you in the right
direction.
VR headsets: Virtual
reality has come a long way
since the Lawnmower Man gave
us a glimpse into the future (or at least we
thought it did at the time), and along with
another personal favourite, augmented
reality, looks set to continue to grow in
popularity.
Whether it's in
conjunction with
your game
console, your
phone or even
one of the lower
spec children's
games, the
headsets are
becoming increasingly pervasive.
Smartphone Projector 2.0: We've
already looked at something that
doubles the size of your smartphone
screen, but what do you do if you want
to go that little bit bigger?
It has retro stylings and is made out
of cardboard, but it can project your
smartphone and magnify to eight
times the size to give you a cinematic
experience at a fraction of the price of
high end projectors.
SNES Classic Mini: This might
not represent the bleeding edge of
technological advancement these days,
but having sold over two million in the
first month, Nintendo seem to have
timed the release perfectly (having done
something similar with the NES Classic
Mini last year).
It's smaller than it used to be (and not
just because we've all grown a fair bit
since we last had one), and you don't
need to use cartridges as the games (20
in all) are built into the system, including
Zelda, Super Mario World and Final
Fantasy. All of which will sweep you back
to the early 90s when the original Super
Nintendo was released.
With Christmas shopping in full swing, self-confessed geek
Gavin Wheeldon looks at what's hot in the world of gadgets.
BUSINESSCLOUD EDITION 8, Q4 2017
48
BUSINESSCLOUD.CO.UK
SOCIAL MEDIA
What can we
believe on
social media?
Social media influencers can
have millions of followers,
making them a ripe market for
advertisers but recent
headlines have shown it can
be hard for fans to know when
they are being sold to.
Katherine Lofthouse reports.
With TV it's obvious
when you're getting the
hard sell on a brand of
washing up liquid, but
it's not always as clear
on social media.
Social media influencers users with
authority in an area who often have large
followings are becoming a vital part of
brands' advertising strategies as they
look to hit a younger, engaged audience.
However, this can make it hard to know
when something's an ad and when it's
genuine opinion. Shabnum Mustapha
(pictured top) is media and public affairs
manager at the Advertising Standards
Authority (ASA). She says that there are
already clear rules in place for advertisers,
which also translate onto social media. "If
you've gone into a commercial relationship
with a brand and they're controlling what
you say, that's an ad," she says. "If they're
not controlling what you're saying it's not
an ad. Even if they've sent you a freebie or
paid you it's editorial opinion and you've
nothing to worry about."
Ads need to be easily
identifiable to avoid followers
having to 'play detective',
says Mustapha. It's also
in the best interest of the
influencers who've worked
hard to create a connection
with followers. However the ASA
doesn't get a significant number of
complaints about influencers,
says Mustapha. When they do
get flagged the responsibility
falls with the advertiser,
although influencers need
to be aware. "The brand or
talent and PR agencies are the
ones that should know better,"
she says. "But there is also a responsibility
for the influencer, especially if they've been
around a while."
However Andrea Cheong (pictured
bottom), a luxury lifestyle blogger called The
Haute Heel with nearly 23,000 followers
on her @fleurandrea Instagram account,
believes this is genuinely the reason some
influencers get caught out. "Young
girls start taking selfies on
Instagram then get followers
and realise they can make
money," she says. "They
don't go into it from a
business mindset. Even
for those doing it more
professionally the guidelines
can be quite blurry, whereas in
the US the approach is always 'just
put #ad on it'."
Cheong says what the
product is and how the
brand interacts with her
are factors in choosing
who she works with. "If
someone sends something
and I post it it's because I
genuinely want to," she says. "I've made it
extremely clear as soon as you tell me how
to photograph something or what to say
that's an ad and you have to pay, but 80 per
cent of brands are happy to let me do my
thing."
The fact that many influencers will only
endorse brands they already like may be
one reason followers don't mind influencers
doing paid-for content. "There's data
showing millennials and Gen Z don't care
if something's an ad because they already
expect it," Cheong adds.
Rohan Midha is MD of digital influencer
marketing agency PMYB. He says there are
tools coming from tech platforms that will
identify when something is an ad, much like
Instagram's 'paid partnership' button. He
also believes being sparing with paid-for
content is a benefit to influencers.
"We've identified a new type of super-
influencer called a 'chromo-influencer',"
he says. "They're in the top three per cent
because they rate highly against 46 different
factors, including whether they endorse
brands all the time. We're after real influence
it's not just about reach."
BUSINESSCLOUD EDITION 8, Q4 2017
49
@BCLOUDUK
Is presenting your
Former BBC presenter and host of The Krypton Factor
Gordon Burns shares his top tips for presenting to an audience.
As the former presenter of North
West Tonight and cult gameshow
The Krypton Factor Gordon Burns
spent 40 years in front of a camera.
At BusinessCloud's recent 'Learn
to present in one morning' event
he shared his top tips with the
audience.
The first and most important point is
preparation says Burns.
"If I had to make a speech I'd stand
in the shower and didn't get out
until I'd delivered it to the shower
wall perfectly," he said. "There's
no substitute for speaking the
presentation out loud. You can read it to
yourself but never get same feel for it or
even get it to the right length."
When researching a presentation
it's important not to rely too much on
specific websites especially if they're
not as fool-proof as many might think.
"I'd never take anything on Wikipedia
as fact," he said. "I was constantly
telling reporters on North West
Tonight to stop relying on it. Anyone
can put anything on there and it's not
necessarily true. It had me down as
dead a few years ago. They said I'd died
in an ambulance on the way to hospital
and I'd just gone to Cornwall for a week.
Double check anything on there."
When it comes to designing a perfect
opening line Burns gives a lesson from
his school years.
"When I was at school we had a
history teacher whose motto was
'don't be dull be different'," he said.
"He said to imagine we were a history
examiner who had to read hundreds of
essays that all start the same way 'the
French Revolution began in 1789 and
ran for 10 years'. Then you get one that
says 'the boulevards of Paris echoed
with the sound of the guillotine and the
gutters ran with blood'. That first line
makes you sit up.
"It's the same in journalism and
presentation. If you get them in the
first paragraph hopefully they will stay
with you. If you've lost them it's hard
to get them back. Start with a joke,
a mind-blowing statistic, or some
other quotation that will make people
sit up. The first paragraph is key and
the last is important. Statistics show
people remember more from the last
paragraph than any other."
Kryptonite?
Is
PowerPoint
dead?
Buffalo 7 CEO Lyndon Nicholson
tells us how to give PowerPoint
a new lease of life
We've all sat through mind-numbing
speeches where presenters read
straight off the slides. But for specialist
UK PowerPoint agency Buffalo 7 who
works with the likes of Honda, Boots
and M&S it's not too late to save the
Microsoft Office staple from dying a
very dull death.
At BusinessCloud's recent 'Learn
to present in one morning' event, the
company's CEO Lyndon Nicholson told
us why PowerPoint is very much alive and
kicking it's just up to users to make sure
they're making the most of it.
"The average office worker spends
more time-face-to-face with Microsoft
Office every week than they do with their
significant other," said Nicholson.
"There are 30 million PowerPoints
given every day and it's a fantastic
storytelling tool. The days of linear
presenting are numbered people don't
want to sit there and go through a deck
of 50 slides. What we want to see people
do is present in a way that works well for
their audience. Make your presentation
far more interactive, which can also help
cross selling and upselling."
Old features like video and new
features like morph transition changing
one thing into another to show how
something looks on different devices
and 3D modelling massively improve a
presentation when used in the right way.
"Giving the audience the impression
you've created a video just for them
makes them feel really special," said
Nicholson.
Learn to present
in 10 top tips
Does getting up in front of people strike fear into your heart?
BusinessCloud's recent 'Learn to present in one
morning'event asked experts from a range of
fields for their hard-won advice.
BUSINESSCLOUD EDITION 8, Q4 2017
50
TELL A STORY
To keep the audience gripped it's
vital to turn your presentation into
a story. One person who knows the
value of this medium is Buffalo 7's
head of storytelling Chris Tomlin (pictured above, right).
"Any content or data needs to be structured in a way that's
engaging for the audience and storytelling works extremely
well," he said.
"People want to feel emotions and ideally have a happy
ending. There's a way of crafting literally any information into
a story. Any good story has heroes and villains and needs to
flow in a clear logical manner. If halfway through your story
there's a three minute video it can jar the audience. It's
better to inject small parts of video that are very relevant."
KNOW WHY YOUR
AUDIENCE IS THERE
Knowing what your audience wants
to get out of the day is important says
serial entrepreneur, investor and ex-Dragons' Den contestant
Steve Purdham.
"When you do any presentation ask why are you doing it and
what are you trying to do," he said. "You have to position that 'why
and what' not just for yourself but for the audience. Learn about
them why are they there? What are they trying to do? They want
somebody to believe in.
"It's also important that you ask the question. A lot of people go
'here's the business plan' and then leave. Martin Luther King didn't
have a plan, he had a dream. That's more powerful than any plan
and that's the difference between telling someone something and
telling a story. But you have to ask the question at the end 'are
you going to invest? Are you going to buy?'. A lot of people miss
that out."
PRESENTATION
BUSINESSCLOUD.CO.UK
Learn to present in
10 easy steps
PREPARATION IS KEY
This point was raised by almost all
of the speakers at the event. Ex-
Dragons' Den contestant Gavin
Wheeldon (pictured above, left) of
Purple summed it up.
"Preparation, preparation, preparation," he said. "You're up
there for 90 minutes and they're looking for 8-10 minutes to
edit. They're looking to trip you up but I knew everything they
asked. I knew the numbers better than an accountant, I knew
the market inside out. No matter what they threw at me I knew
the answer and I believed in what I was doing so I talked with
feeling, depth and belief."
INJECT YOUR
PERSONALITY
There is no such thing as the perfect
presenter says Wayne Silver of
marketing agency One-so make it your own.
"Everyone's presentation style is different," he said. "That's
what the audience or prospect want to see they don't want to
see a robot in front of them, they want to enjoy the experience.
Try to make sure you inject your personality."
BUSINESSCLOUD EDITION 8, Q4 2017
51
@BCLOUDUK
BELIEVE IN YOURSELF
It's easy to feel like everyone's
waiting for you to mess up and that
you're totally alone onstage but that
isn't the case says the public face of
easyJet Ali Gayward.
"Believe in yourself, that's really important," she said.
"Also you're a human being, no one in the audience is
setting you up to fail. They really want you to be successful
and the reason you're there is because you've got something
interesting to say and they are there to listen to that. It
doesn't matter if you make a mistake."
GIVE AN 'AHA'
MOMENT
In many presenting scenarios
especially when pitching for investment
it's important to show where you can add value says Purple
founder and Secret Millionaire contestant Wheeldon.
"Everyone's coming in with the same story the features and
benefits of their business and why they're different," he said.
"They need an 'aha' moment. You need to teach them
something they don't already know. They need to know you're
going to bring more than just the service and that you'll take them
on a journey. If you can come in with more knowledge than they've
got and teach them something so everyone sits back and goes 'I
never thought of that' then they see a partner not a supplier."
BE SELF-AWARE
Once you're aware of your personal
brand it's important to know how you
come across and take steps to address
that if necessary says Hiring Hub
founder Simon Swan.
"I'm not naturally an energetic speaker so I've had to be a bit
more self-aware, but I also want to be authentic," he said.
"If people are going to trust you they have to know that it is you.
I sometimes address that in meetings and say 'I'm very passionate
but I'm not going to be running around the room'. It manifests in
very different ways."
KEEP SOME
PERSPECTIVE
Along similar lines is advice from ex-
Apprentice contestant and The Link
App founder Lauren Riley.
"I'd worked really hard to build a career for myself so when I
was on the show I was always focused on that," she said.
"Even though they make it feel like life and death and it would
be fabulous to win actually I have a life, I have a career, I have
something to be proud of outside of this scenario. Nothing that
happens in the boardroom can compromise that. Be true to
yourself."
THINK ABOUT YOUR
PERSONAL BRAND
Most people don't realise they're
presenting their own brand all day
every day, especially with the rise of social media, says UKFast
marketing director Kristina McGuirk.
"Personal branding is really important for any business to
understand," she said. "Every person has a personal brand it's
the perception you put out there. People judge a business
based on the leader's brand."
NUDGE PEOPLE IN A
CONSTRUCTIVE WAY
It's important to remember that
even something like sending a press
release is a way of presenting your
business, and that it's important to build good relationships
with the media says former newspaper editor David Helliwell of
Helliwell Media.
"A lot of firms don't get what catches the media's eye,"
he said. "You need something different and unusual and to
get good stories out to the media in different ways. Most
newsrooms get 300-400 press releases a day so have literally
seconds to decide if something will appeal to their audience.
If you're following up a press release be subtle. Ask 'is there
something else I can help you with, or a way to make it more
appealing?'"
PRESENTATION
SPONSORED BY Buffalo 7
BUSINESSCLOUD EDITION 8, Q4 2017
52
BUSINESSCLOUD.CO.UK
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Utter the words
'artifi cial intelligence'
these days and the
conversation will
quickly turn towards
whether machines will
replace human-held jobs.
Automation is transforming the
manufacturing sector while chatbots
are being increasingly used to deliver
customer service, prompting Bank of
England governor Mark Carney to warn
that 15 million UK jobs are under threat
from AI and robotics.
American retailer Wal-Mart even rolled
out shelf-scanning robots to more than
50 of its stores recently. However it was
at pains to explain that the two-foot-tall
Dalek-like machines would not replace
human employees, who are able to use
the data to stock shelves and fi x errors
Will machines
put you
out of a job?
As artifi cial intelligence advances at a rapid rate there are fears that millions of us
could be literally made redundant. But as Jonathan Symcox reports, AI is far from a black
and white issue and has great potential for business and society at large.
more rapidly than they would otherwise
be able to.
AI evangelists argue that softer skills will
come to the fore as more tedious duties
are taken over transforming the
employment landscape.
Adam Hosker, head of
commercial (North) at
managed IT services fi rm
Littlefi sh and a former
contestant on The Apprentice,
told our breakfast event on AI
held at Manchester's Entrepreneurial
Spark Powered by NatWest
and in conjunction with Pro-
Manchester that the bulk
of jobs today are "mind-
numbingly boring".
"They're making us into
machines," he said. "If you work in a
call centre then you've got a script to
follow there's no real creative thought
happening.
"Look at what happened
when cash machines came
in: there was a big concern
that all the bank branches
would close down, but
the jobs simply changed
and became a bit more
interesting. The people who
were dishing out cash before
began selling mortgages and
advising customers."
The change will not
happen by itself, according
to Richard Potter, CEO of
Manchester-based data
analytics fi rm Peak, which
is placing a greater focus on
Glyn Powditch top, and Andrea Perizzato.
How will AI
impact jobs?
BUSINESSCLOUD EDITION 8, Q4 2017
53
@BCLOUDUK
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
" I firmly believe that
most jobs will be
replaced by tech
and we need to
really encourage
young people into
a tech career path,
especially girls."


SAM COLEY
(l-r) Angie Ma, Luke Grimes and Sam Coley.
AI and machine learning after securing
2.5m in Series A funding in September.
"I think we're a long way from a general
AI capability, if ever. We shouldn't be
worried about adopting it," he said.
"But we need it to be coupled with a
wider economic and industrial strategy
which develops skills in young people
and retrains workers so that people can
concentrate on the creative jobs, the
jobs that you can't automate."
Rob McCargow is the AI programme
leader for professional services giant
PwC's UK operation. He was ranked as
the 38th most influential person in AI
in the world by Onalytica in a list which
placed a focus on Twitter engagement.
That puts him one place above Garry
Kasparov, chairman of the Human Rights
Foundation, who famously played IBM
supercomputer Deep Blue in two chess
matches in 1996 and 1997. The second
of those matches marked the first time
an AI had defeated a reigning world
champion at chess.
McCargow said that AI needs a human
touch if it is to change our lives for
the better. "We have to embrace this
technology because of the benefits it
offers in terms of economic growth, the
ability to drive diagnostics in healthcare
and to liberate and simplify our lives.
"However we have to do this on our
own terms there is a need for a human
purpose to be at the heart of this. My
concern, from a dignity point of view, is
the language we use talking about jobs.
There is a lot of benefit there in terms of
replacing risky jobs such as climbing up
electricity pylons or mining but jobs do
provide a purpose in people's lives.
"We have to be very sensitive about
that and ensure the benefits of the tech
are spread equitably across all parts of
society."
CHATBOTS
Events comparison site TickX launched
a search engine chatbot this summer.
The AI answers questions instantly about
more than 125,000 events in the UK,
Ireland and Spain, providing users with
intelligent recommendations.
Sam Coley is co-founder of the start-
up and turned down offers of investment
on BBC Dragons' Den before raising
925k from Ministry of Sound & 24
Haymarket. He believes advances in AI-
driven technologies could soon put a lot
of lawyers and doctors out of a job.
"Parents and society as a whole are
still pushing the brightest students to be
doctors and lawyers. AI is going to destroy
a good chunk of lawyers soon enough,
and maybe doctors a little bit further
down the line," he said.
"I firmly believe that
most jobs will be replaced
by tech and we need to
really encourage young
people into a tech career
path, especially girls. The
more 'hardcore' areas
AI, machine learning
and programming are
massively male-dominated
and that's not good for the
industry as a whole."
App developer Dreamr
has built a chatbot which
could have obvious benefits for society
at large. CTO Andrea Perizzato said the
bot, which it integrated into intelligent
assistant platforms like Amazon's Alexa,
was a "test bed to gain knowledge".
"We collected a bunch of public data on
crime rates in San Francisco and trained
the network on it," he explains. "We could
then predict the likelihood of a crime
happening in a specific place and time in
the future."
'Alexa, is it safe to go to Shoreditch
right now?' might seem like an application
of the future, but London-based ASI Data
Science is already using AI to improve life
in the capital.
COO and founding partner Angie Ma
said: "We've done a project with the
London fire brigade where we optimise
the staffing of fire engines. Unless you
have firemen with all the right skills, you
can't actually go out [when an emergency
call comes in].
"Looking to the future, what about the
80-year-old lady crossing the road? The
Host Chris Maguire interviews Richard Potter.
BUSINESSCLOUD EDITION 8, Q4 2017
54
BUSINESSCLOUD.CO.UK
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
traffic light could identify her age and give
her longer to cross. Our mission is to help
everyone to benefit from AI it shouldn't
be the privilege of a few large companies
on the West Coast of the US."
BIG DATA
People, businesses and devices have
become data factories pumping
incredible amounts of information on to
the internet each day. According to an
IBM Marketing Cloud study, we create 2.5
quintillion bytes of data every day 90
per cent of the data currently in the world
has been created in the last two years
alone.
The potential for business is obvious
and firms should begin collecting
data now even if they don't currently
have a use for it, according to
Luke Grimes, co-founder of
software development
studio Webantic.
"Businesses should
harness it for future use.
You don't need a massive
data set to leverage
artificial intelligence, but the
more data you have, the better
the insight,"
he said.
"There are so many
applications in business
today which can
transform processes,
such as cashflow
forecasting, stock control
and customer service
chatbots."
Such is the potential for data-driven
gains that Potter claims Peak, which
operates a subscription-based service and
has a base in Jaipur, India, could become a
$1bn business.
"A customer of ours has 2.7m registered
users and make their money selling
services to those customers," he explained.
"They have a big database of those
customers and their behaviours.
"Our AI streams all that data into Peak.
We lead-score those customers, give
them a ranking from one to four, then
push that score back to their CRM system.
Their marketing and sales teams then
concentrate on those with the highest
propensity to buy. Their revenues went up
27 per cent in the first week.
"The efficiency of the workforce also
went up by 35 per cent because the AI
was able to tell when people were
likely to answer the phone and
also to buy, so they were able
to staff the call centre around
that. They won twice."
Dream Agility, based
in the Lancashire town of
Ramsbottom, is a machine
learning adtech platform which
is one of the fastest-growing Google
Premier partners and has opened
offices around the world.
"We have a client in
Australia called Princess Polly,
which is like Missguided,"
CTO and co-founder Glyn
Powditch told the audience.
"Their product churn is so fast that a lot of
the time it isn't able to learn anything from
the data it gathers.
"We're able to tell them which clothing
sizes are selling best and which are
costing them money on Google Shopping
without generating much in sales. We
then use machine learning to optimise,
optimise and optimise."
He added: "In Australia and South
Korea the decision-making process
seems to be so much faster than the UK.
In Europe the economic growth rates are
not particularly great compared with Asia,
which is flying."
GLOBAL RACE
PwC research has predicted that AI could
be worth an extra $15.7bn to the global
economy by 2030, with the UK in line to
generate an extra 232bn 10 per cent of
GDP if it competes with leading markets
such as China and North America.
McCargow says start-ups could be key
to unlocking its true potential. "The UK is
talking about bolstering Masters courses
and getting 200 more PhDs. If we can
significantly develop our talent, provide
access to data and create the right
environment, it gives us a fighting chance
to retain and grow our global prestige.
"But China, for example, has twice as
many people online as the US that gives
them a significant amount of data to train
AI on.
"We have a competitive global picture
on AI emerging and we have to move
apace to grab this opportunity to drive
significant growth."
Audience at Manchester's Entrepreneurial Spark Powered by NatWest.
Rob McCargow, top, and Adam Hosker.
The
$100 billion
question
The global market for video games is
bigger than movies. Jonathan Symcox
reports on an industry transformed
by mobile and VR and the resurgent
development scene in the North West.
BUSINESSCLOUD EDITION 8, Q4 2017
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BUSINESSCLOUD.CO.UK
GAMING
Technology has
transformed the
video games industry
beyond recognition
because of the
infl uence of mobile,
virtual reality and brand names.
The UK has been at the forefront
of the games scene since the Sinclair
Spectrum's 1980s heyday, when adults
and schoolchildren alike made cash and
headlines from their bedroom coding.
Fast-forward to the present day and
console games using 3D graphics are now
capable of movie-like visuals but the size
of the teams and budgets needed to make
them has grown exponentially.
London is home to 673 studios and
publishers, the largest number operating
in the UK today, with the North West
hosting 198. There are 2,182 active
games companies in the UK in all.
"The North West is the biggest area of
games development outside of London,"
Simon Smith, a veteran developer now
leading development at Manchester
start-up Desk Dragons Interactive, told
our event focused on the area's
games scene at the Foundry
Film Studio in Salford.
"Just like other places
known for making games
like Dundee it comes
down to one thing: rain!
It keeps us indoors
and messing about
on computers, making
games, 3D models and
coding."
Young developers looking
to crack the industry have increasingly
turned to mobile as smartphone games
off er a throwback to the days of simple
games made by small teams. Greg
Robinson, now an advisor at Boomdash
Digital based in Manchester's Sharp
Project has been involved in publishing
hit mobile games from the pre-
smartphone era to the present day.
"There's been a general
laziness with the
North West games
industry," he said.
"The community
is now driven by
the people who
fell out with the
large studios
such as Psygnosis,
Activision, Acclaim
and Bizarre Creations.
"Rage, Warthog and
Activision have all gone, while EA
left Warrington and Sony downsized at
Liverpool. The number of talented people
is just enormous, but over time those
Is gaming sector North West's best-kept secret?
BUSINESSCLOUD EDITION 8, Q4 2017
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@BCLOUDUK
GAMING
studios have been lost without people
paying too much care and attention to it.
"We started Boomdash out of a desire
to have a publisher in the North West
which could help the development
community: they shouldn't need to go
to London or San Francisco to get their
game published. The fact that it's getting
attention now and coming back is a good
thing."
The mobile market is now saturated
with releases but that has not stopped
Playdemic, a studio in Wilmslow, Cheshire,
from releasing a string of hit games. After
attracting millions of players to games
such as Village Life, it developed Golf
Clash before being bought by TT Games
part of Warner Bros. earlier this year.
The game, which generated $1 million
in in-app purchases in a single day on
July 4th, is advertised on the sleeves of
Premier League club Burnley this season
and scooped Best Game of 2017 at the
prestigious TIGA Awards. Its CEO Paul
Gouge said: "We're all trying to find that
alchemy that single moment which
captures people's attention and continues
to deliver. The games industry is a $100
billion global business, second only to TV
in terms of entertainment. It's growing
more quickly than almost any other
entertainment form. It's not a curiosity
it's massively significant.
"It's encouraging to see the indie scene
really bubbling up and starting to get
some critical mass again. The emergence
of publishers like Fabrik Games and
Boomdash Digital is what we need.
"We're starting to see the middle ground
reappear between the top
publishers and the smaller
projects. The industry needs
all levels of investment and
product to thrive."
Arthur Parsons is head
of design at TT, which now
works exclusively upon LEGO
games. He said: "We don't
take ourselves too seriously;
we just concentrate on
trying to make the most
fun experience. LEGO gives
you that chance across the
various franchises."
Fabrik, based in the Sharp
Project, was started by industry stalwarts
Si Donbavand and Graeme Ankers three
years ago. Donbavand was previously
a development director for Sony
PlayStation, looking after several studio
teams, and also ran 'games and playful' for
the BBC for almost two years.
Fabrik developed and published its first
title, Filthy Lucre, for PlayStation 4 and
PC platform Steam in 2016. "It's basically
if Guy Ritchie did a video game get in,
do a heist, get out, don't get killed!" is
how development director Donbavand
describes it.
"Success is relative in this industry,"
he said. "The games industry model of
sales is a bit broken: games developers
tend to need to sell X number of units to
break even, which means you can cover
your investment; you then need to make
X number of sales more to eat and make
another game; and then we'd like to make
some profits so we can buy a yacht and a
private island!"
Painting a roulette
analogy, he added:
"Generally speaking, you
never really get to break
even because you spend
a ton of money up front,
you put it all on 'black 12'
and hope that enough
people are going to buy
your game.
"For us, success is I'm
still making games this
year and that's the way
I've looked at it since
1996."
Fabrik has taken indie studio Odd Bug
under its wing. Formed by three graduates
from Norwich University of the Arts,
Fabrik released its first game 'The Lost
Bear' on PlayStation VR recently. CEO
Jack Bennett (pictured on opposite
page) said Manchester's "booming indie
dev scene" was a big pull and helped with
the development of its dark cinematic
platformer. The main thing was getting
funding. You can have the best idea in the
world, but if you can't sell that idea and
get the money to make it, you can't make
it," he continued. "Having someone that
believes in your idea, like Si and Graeme
have with us, is key."
Smith, who is also chair of games
industry network Gameopolis, agrees:
"The video games industry traditionally
has difficulty connecting with potential
investors even though we are one of
the largest and most profitable creative
sectors in the UK."
Filthy Lucre.
The Lost Bear.
Golf Clash.
Sponsored by
creators of Golf Clash
BUSINESSCLOUD EDITION 8, Q4 2017
60
BUSINESSCLOUD.CO.UK
GAMING
PlayStation released its VR system, which
works with the PlayStation 4, in October
2016 and rapidly took the lion's share of the
virtual reality entertainment market. By
June it had sold a million headsets while it
has now sold more than ten million games
for the device.
Paul Rustchynsky, who is leading
development of a new racing franchise
Onrush for legendary games studio
Codemasters, developed a PSVR version of
his previous game DRIVECLUB. "I'm a big
fan of VR, but it's a very diff erent platform.
All the rules and lessons you've learned in
making games over the years you throw
out the window. It's a whole new way to
make games," he said.
"It's still very much in its infancy and
year-on-year, as the technology improves
and designers get better at working with the
hardware, we'll see more and more amazing
experiences. In the long-term, it's going to
be one of the major ways to play games."
PlaygroundSquad is a Swedish game
development school which trains up
students and apprentices, using cutting
edge technology such as VR, with a view
to them entering the industry. It opened
its fi rst UK base in the Sharp Project
in 2013 after becoming impressed by
the Manchester games scene. Clayton
Carpenter, programming supervisor of
the UK operation, is a former student of
PlaygroundSquad himself.
"The way we work is project-based rather
than theory: we learn what we need to know
to make games," he said. "If you put the
time in to learn, it's very easy to go out there
and get a job. The industry is more or less
scraping for competent people right now."
However the skills learned in making
games are increasingly being transferred
across industries, according to Mike
Hayes, digital lead for investment group
Mercia Technologies, who says there
are thousands of talented and frustrated
developers around the country looking to
broaden their horizons.
In a separate interview, he said:
"Forecasts for 2025 show that the VR
market will be worth something like $35
billion but probably only a third of that will
be around games. I believe the other two-
thirds will be driven by the skills of these
games engineers, who are very good at
engaging people.
"To look around a World War One
trench in VR is motivating, but not wholly
educational you've got to draw people
in, take them on an interactive journey
then surprise them so they go back again.
We're seeing a terrifi c amount of this at the
moment in training, education, health and
the military."
There is also a real opportunity for brands
to use games to engage with customers,
says Cari Kirby, marketing manager for
Sheffi eld-based Team Cooper. The studio
develops HTML5 games which people
can play online. Its latest off ering, Capital
Conga, sees a ferry captain collecting
passengers from the streets of Dutch
capital Amsterdam into a conga line before
the ferry leaves.
Enticing players back with the prospect
of winning an Apple Watch, it was played
a massive 225,000 times by more than
14,000 people in the two weeks after
launch. "We've been working with DFDS
Seaways for about seven years," she said.
"One of the things we have to consider
is that these games have a purpose,
they're not there just to have a bit
of fun with they need to either
drive people to the website or
capture data and get people
to sign
up to special off ers."
(l-r) Simon Smith, Paul Rustchynsky, Si Donbavand and Arthur Parsons watch trailer for LEGO Ninjago Movie video game.
(l-r) Cari Kirby, Paul Gouge and Greg Robinson.
" The way we work is
project-based rather
than theory: we learn
what we need to
know to make
games."
CLAYTON CARPENTER
BUSINESSCLOUD EDITION 8, Q4 2017
61
@BCLOUDUK
REGIONS
How to save a life in
280 characters or less
Social media might seem like the last bastion of selfi es and celebrities
but Echosec UK is quietly using it to save lives.
Where do you go when there's a big
breaking news story?
When the awful news of the
Manchester Arena bombing broke in May,
there's a good chance that Twitter was
your fi rst port of call for information.
The platform may have been hijacked
by politicians, C-list celebrities and
companies trying to sell you things but
one Cardiff -based company is using its
software to put social media to good use.
27-year-old Ben Milsom is MD of
Echosec UK. He believes that social
media plays a bigger role in a crisis than
most people realise.
"People go to social media before going
to the police," he says.
"In October 2014 there was an attack
on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Canada.
We were asked to deploy our system to
identify the movements of the gunman.
We had a good idea of what the person
looked like and the weapon used, so
the police could use that to inform their
tactics."
The attack proved Echosec's salt, and
three years later the business has grown
to several hundred clients in more than 70
countries, with 15 employees to its name.
" We currently pull
information from 10
diff erent social media
sources so we have to
constantly manage
API access to all the
diff erent platforms."
Echosec zones in
on social activity in
particular areas
to fi nd out what's
happening from
the people in the
heart of the action.
By focusing on
what's being posted
in a specifi c location, it's
able to fi lter out all of the
noise from other areas.
For example, if you were searching for
the phrase 'Manchester Arena' on 22nd
May, the biggest percentage of posts
would have been from people around the
world commenting on the attack, not
from those actually at the Arena.
Other successes include identifying
the missile used to shoot down Malaysian
airlines fl ight MH17, winning an award for
saving the life of a school pupil in Canada
and identifying bomb threats at high-
profi le celebrity events.
Proving its diversity, the tech was also
used to monitor the Champions League
fi nal in Cardiff earlier this year and is now
moving into the retail space, allowing
advertisers to locate clients near them.
"There's an obsession for people to get
the fi rst photo," says Milsom.
"We saw it with the attacks on
Westminster we were fi nding
information and pulling up posts which
were then turning up on the BBC feed."
While it might have multiple benefi ts,
the fast-paced world of social media also
brings many challenges to the young
business.
"We currently pull information from 10
diff erent social media sources so we have
to constantly manage API
access to all the diff erent
platforms," says Milsom.
Add to that the
rapid rise and fall from
favour of the diff erent
platforms themselves
and it means the team has
to be constantly monitoring
both their systems and the
wider social media environment.
Of course, social media users don't
see the hefty work going on behind the
scenes of Echosec's heroics but, as the
company continues to prove its worth, they
could ironically become its biggest problem.
The more coverage Echosec has, the
higher the likelihood of social media users
realising they are the company's oblivious
'reporters' on the ground.
"We're drawing a box over, say, Cardiff
to see people posting in the area," says
Milsom.
"Even though people are sharing these
things openly they don't necessarily know
who's looking at it. At the moment we're still
good to go but that may become trickier
and we'll have to adapt.
"What's that saying if there's a free
service you're probably the product?"
For those that aren't keen on this idea,
the solution is simple but unlikely to be
popular.
"If you don't want to be part of it then
realistically you probably shouldn't be on the
internet," says Milsom.
"That's just the way it works at the
moment but there are big changes
happening and the GDPR [General Data
Protection Regulation coming in May 2018]
will have a big impact too."
BUSINESSCLOUD EDITION 8, Q4 2017
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BUSINESSCLOUD.CO.UK
REGIONS
Boosting employee
morale with tech
Meet DevOpsGuys the company that will revolutionise your employees'
happiness while they revolutionise your tech. Katherine Lofthouse reports.
Cardiff-based IT
development and
operations expert
DevOpsGuys are on a
mission to be a 100m
turnover business
within the next five years.
While this might sound like pie in the
sky for a company that's only been around
for four years, CEO James Smith says
their approach of going into companies
and helping them get up to speed with
technology is proving hugely popular.
DevOpsGuys counts government
departments and blue chip businesses
among its main clients including
household names like Admiral, BAE
Systems, Waitrose and Travelodge.
However Smith says the benefit of
what they do goes far beyond any tech.
"Employees say 'I enjoy coming to
work again'," he explains. "It's probably
the most fulfilling element of my job. In
one company they did a big employee
satisfaction survey across several
hundred staff who were involved in
these new working practices and their
satisfaction rates went from about 33
per cent to well over 70 per cent in 18
months."
The DevOpsGuys' mindset is to bring
technology to businesses so it acts as a
catalyst to do things they haven't been
able to do before.
"You're giving the smart people inside
the business a lot more autonomy to
make decisions and get them empowered
with their work," says Smith.
"It's moving away from
'command and control, you
shall do this' to 'how are
we going to solve this
problem?' It's about
simplifying processes in
a lot of instances."
Having gone from a
team of two to over 85 in
just four years themselves,
Smith is keen to make sure
that DevOpsGuys are creating
an environment as positive for their own
employees as the ones they create in other
businesses.
"I have three kids under seven so it's
important to get a balance," he says.
"My learning journey there has helped
me distil that into the business. Our team
start between eight and nine each day and
by 5.30pm everyone's gone we really
coach hard on the importance of a work-
life balance, taking regular holidays and not
burning out. It's so important and such an
issue in IT, it's something we all really need
to bring to the forefront of discussion."
Smith, who describes himself as
a 'technologist by trade', started his
journey with Dell in 1998 before moving
into the start-up world then co-founding
DevOpsGuys in 2013 after seeing a gap in
the market.
"They say in magic timing is everything. I
think it's the same in business," he says.
"It's been a growth trajectory from the
moment we kicked off. Steve [Thair] and I
put 500 capital into the business to kick it
off and this year we're on target for 10m
so it's quite exciting. It's
been a lot of fun in
between."
This might
already sound like a
big win for a young
company but the
team's plans don't
end there.
"We have plans to be
a 100m business in the
next five years," says Smith.
"That's the forecast but I'd love to
exceed that I don't like to talk about it
because it potentially sets a cap on what
we do, but we'll just keep working hard.
"The most important thing for me is
demonstrating that this can be done in
Wales and get the lessons we're learning
into the community. We want to give
people confidence in incubators like
Entrepreneurial Spark and show them the
next steps in growing their business."
However this won't always be an easy
burden to shoulder and Smith admits
that shaking things up can create friction
with new clients. With this in mind,
DevOpsGuys works hard to make this new
approach to tech an easy pill for businesses
to swallow.
"We put in the foundation of education
and learning so people can understand why
the changes are coming and where they fit
into the process," he says.
"It's about engaging everyone from
senior leadership to team level and
quickly demonstrating that we will make a
difference."
BUSINESSCLOUD EDITION 8, Q4 2017
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@BCLOUDUK
REGIONS
24 HOURS
in South Wales
BusinessCloud visited
a region forging its
identity through tech and
innovation following the
demise of the coal and
steel industries.
CAERPHILLY
The birthplace of comedian Tommy
Cooper is dominated by its imposing
castle. It is also home to the Welsh
Innovation Centre for Enterprise.
Jamie McGowan, Welsh ICE: "We
are home to 170 micro SME businesses,
from virtual PAs to freelance graphic
designers and video game companies.
When they need specialist services, we
connect these up together."
Richard Hillsdon, Tekeez: "When we
decided to move from Oxford, we knew
they have good infrastructure here such
as superfast broadband and 4G and
lower rents and rates. We're just 18
minutes' train ride away from Cardiff and
can enjoy Caerphilly Castle as well as the
nearby rivers, lakes and mountains."
PENARTH
'The garden by the sea' was once a
popular holiday destination but is now
regarded as a Cardiff commuter town.
Many tech firms have based themselves
in OpenGenius' Tec Marina shared
working space.
Natalie Rowley, OpenGenius: "We
wanted to take on a space that had
previously been used rather than build
something new. Our CEO Chris bought
a 1930s speedboat to display as an
example of good technology which lasts
through the ages."
Gareth Manger, BLAM!: "We sell
websites and apps to small businesses.
We were based in Barry before and wanted
to mix up with more tech businesses. This
is a great location close to Cardiff."
NEWPORT
The third largest city in Wales and
historic port is home to Celtic Manor,
which hosted the 2010 Ryder Cup. It is
also home to Platfform, a shared working
space for digital businesses, and part of
the Cardiff City Region.
Simon Renault, Innovation Point: "Our
software academy at Platfform is changing
how Cardiff Uni students are taught. All
their learning is through performing real
services for clients e.g. building websites."
Richard Sheppard, Interceptor
Solutions: "Entrepreneurship in general
is essential to the Welsh economy.
It's always been that way and digital
technology is the new coal mining or steel
and as essential to Wales as any of those
traditional businesses have been."
The capital city is gaining a reputation for
FinTech and start-ups thanks to bodies such as
Innovation Point and Cardiff Start. NatWest's
Entrepreneurial Spark accelerator in the
shadow of the imposing Principality Stadium
played host to a BusinessCloud roundtable.

Caroline Thompson, NatWest: "Entrepreneurial Spark has the expertise to
work on the mindset of our entrepreneurs to help them grow and scale. Tech in
South Wales is growing pretty quickly. We're on the cusp of something special."
Liam Giles, SpinDogs: "In the last four or five years people are waking up to the
fact that there's a lot going on here. The reaction now is completely different
people tell us that they've heard Cardiff is an amazing place to be."
CARDIFF
The home of Dylan Thomas
and Catherine Zeta-Jones
recently announced 500m
plans to transform the
Swansea Bay City Region
into a digital super-hub
linked to its university.
Adam Curtis, Hoowla: "The Welsh
Government runs Big Ideas Wales which sends
innovation entrepreneurs into schools I talk
about IT-focused areas. It's good for the kids to
see people who have been there and done it.
And it's good to give back to Swansea."
SWANSEA
Tech Tour: Time to shout about South Wales
BUSINESSCLOUD EDITION 8, Q4 2017
64
BUSINESSCLOUD.CO.UK
FUTURE-PROOFING
Embrace
technology or die
Back in 2000 Block-
buster passed up
the opportunity to
buy Netfl ix for $50m
because the video
rental giant couldn't
see the opportuni-
ty created by online streaming.
Today the value of Netfl ix is $80bn
while Blockbuster is no more.
The business graveyard is full of
examples of companies that failed
to see disruptive technologies that
were coming their way. However
by embracing technology, estab-
lished brands can not only survive
in the new age - they can thrive.
Shop Direct has gone from being
a catalogue business to a pure in-
ternet retailer while Auto Trader is
now the UK's largest digital auto-
motive marketplace after ditching
its print edition in 2013.
BusinessCloud teamed up with
CascadeGO HR Software to look
at how modern businesses can
future-proof themselves through
technology. Mo Aldalou reports.
A leading real estate
consultancy business
in Manchester is using
virtual reality technology
to bring multimillion-pound
property
projects to life.
OBI Property co-founder and
director Will Lewis (pictured) said the
company has made a signifi cant fi ve-
fi gure investment in VR tech company
Revere 3D in a move to bring new and
innovative tech to property marketing.
He explained: "The guys from
Revere 3D gave me a call and said:
'we think we can help, we think that
virtual reality is going to be a big part
of property in the next three to fi ve
years'.
"They moved over to Manchester
from Harrogate, we've invested in the
business and we're now working with
lots of our existing clients."
He added: "We
saw it as a
natural
investment
in helping
us extend
our off er.
Some
of the
projects
we work on
cost millions
of pounds and
take years to come to
completion and VR can really help
bring them life. By putting on a
headset the VR technology brings the
plans to life.
"The technology is available and if
you want to improve the service you
off er to your clients then you need to
invest in what's out there. VR isn't the
future, it's the here and now."
When it comes to planning, Lewis
said he doesn't look too far ahead.
"I get really frustrated when you
come up with a plan which is too long
and don't implement the strategy,"
he explained.
Property fi rm
invests in VR
CASE STUDY 1
7 ways you can
future-proof
your business
BUSINESSCLOUD EDITION 8, Q4 2017
65
@BCLOUDUK
FUTURE-PROOFING
Companies which pay lip service to
emerging social media platforms like
Snapchat could be missing out on a
future generation of customers.
That's according to social media expert
Becky Boyd (pictured below), who says
that businesses are losing out by not
paying enough attention to digital skills
training. Founder of The Social
Media Geek, Boyd was
chosen to be the fi rst
trainer for Google's
Digital Garage project,
which was set up to
bring 200,000 SMEs
across the UK up to
speed on digital.
She specialises in social
media but also advises
businesses about their wider
digital marketing strategy, including how
to manage their social media accounts
more eff ectively and how they should be
presenting themselves online.
Boyd said: "A new graduate isn't
necessarily going to know everything
about tech because of their age; you
need to nurture and train them."
Boyd added that while it's time-
consuming to have a presence
on every social media
platform, it's important to
look at how to engage with
customers in the future.
"A question I often ask
when I'm doing a training
session is: how many of you
are on Snapchat? The next
question is: how many of you
want to see your business
grow in fi ve years? Many
of your customers in
fi ve years' time will
be using Snapchat
exclusively.
"I'm not saying you
must be on every social
media platform that's ever
existed because that's just not
practical for many businesses but it's very
much worth playing around to see what
you can from it."
Business software developer Godel
would not have grown as it has if it
hadn't established a base in Belarus.
That is according to chief commercial
offi cer Paul Green (pictured right), who
said that a skills shortage in the UK was the
main driver behind the company looking for
software development talent overseas. "I
think it's no secret that we've got some very
talented people in the UK but there isn't
always enough to go around," he said.
Godel Technologies was established
in 2003 and now employs more than 400
staff , with only 20 based at its headquarters
in Manchester and the remainder spread
across its Belarus operations.
The company has recently opened a new
offi ce in Grodno, its third nearshore software
development centre of excellence in Belarus,
located 175 miles west of Minsk where its
primary centre of software
developers is located.
Godel, which
counts the likes of
Virgin Holidays,
Jet2, Rentalcars,
Tesco Mobile
and Transport for
London among its
clients, grew turnover
to more than 9m last
year and is on track to generate revenues
of 13.5m in 2017. The fi rm has invested in
providing all its clients with free HD video
conferencing equipment and technology to
enable them to speak with developers face to
face.
"Our guys in Belarus are thousands of
miles away but actually they're all working on
the same systems and essentially working
in the same offi ce through the use of cloud
technologies and other technologies that are
available," Green said.
Belarus base crucial
to growth of Godel
CASE STUDY 2
Snapchat users could
be future customers
CASE STUDY 3
App takes stress out
of travelling
CASE STUDY 4
Technology has enabled every
traveller to have an on-call
adviser available at the touch
of a button.
Rob Snelson (pictured left)
is the chief technology offi cer
at 550m turnover company
Travel Counsellors, which acts
as a 'personal travel concierge' for all
their customers.
Described as "the world's most loved
travel company", the business has more
than 1,700 self-employed travel counsellors
in seven countries.
Every customer also has access to an
app, which acts as a personal extension of
their travel counsellor and provides them
with personalised information about their
holiday and all their bookings.
Snelson said the company places
great importance on using the customer
satisfaction metric Net Promoter Score
(NPS) in its booking process.
BUSINESSCLOUD EDITION 8, Q4 2017
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FUTURE-PROOFING
The boss of a fast-
growing HR software
company has said
companies need to
embrace technology
if they want to
remain relevant in
modern business.
Cascade HR's
integrated payroll and
HR system is used by
the likes of Everton FC and Sheffield's
Meadowhall Shopping Centre.
Cascade's CEO Oliver Shaw said:
"The pace of innovation within
the cloud space means that SMEs
and start-up businesses can now
benefit from access to tech, data and
automation that was previously only
attainable by larger organisations with
big budgets. Now, a company's size,
infrastructure and financial resource
are no longer barriers to change.
"Firms need to work out how the
tech works for them and where their
habits may need to evolve, if the
investment is to fully add value."
He cited video conferencing as
one example of how companies can
seamlessly adopt tech.
"This is a tool that is readily
available, affordable and presents the
opportunity to have almost the same
quality communication experience, as
if being in the room with someone. But
so many people stick to a telephone
conference because it is perceived as
easier, safer or 'the norm'.
"It's therefore important to make
the tech work for the organisation
concerned by establishing processes
that make it the norm. Colleagues
don't have to be sat at the far end of
a room using only single camera for
instance instead they can use the
integrated camera within their laptop.
"Make this the practice as standard
for new business meetings, and time,
fuel and environmental savings will
rocket."
Technology is key
to staying relevant
CASE STUDY 5
Accountants ditch
'boring' tag in favour
of tech
CASE STUDY 6
A Manchester accountancy firm claims
its investment in technology has
allowed it to work 30 per
cent quicker.
Daniel Moon and
Damien Loughran say
when they launched
Williamson & Croft
18 months ago they
went tech-first,
going completely
paperless and using
the cloud. Loughran
said: "The general consensus
was that accountancy firms are boring
and people don't like dealing with them
because they're unresponsive.
"We wanted to set up a firm that broke
the mould, was responsive and utilised
technology to differentiate our offer."
Williamson & Croft say that by being
completely paperless they've created
a better work environment for staff
and clients. Loughran said: "When we
set up the business we knew about the
efficiencies and benefits we could get by
investing heavily in tech. We'd worked in
bigger firms before with paperless offices
so it was a natural thing for us to do.
"We wanted to be a firm that can work
from anywhere."
Loughran says investing in
tech and the right software
means that the firm can
work 30 per cent quicker.
"Providers try and
combine everything
tax, accounting, practice
management into one
package for accountacy
firms. They tend to do a few
things really well but other things
are more like an afterthought.
"We've invested in having different
specialist software providers so we have
the best of each.
"We spend a lot more on technology
than other firms our size but we reap the
rewards of it."
Investing a six figure sum into a new tech
dashboard for clients has seen an energy
procurement firm win a raft of new
customers.
Lancashire-based Businesswise
Solutions has grown turnover to 2.5m
and seen its workforce expand to 32 on the
back of its investment in an online portal
called UTILITYi.
Businesswise Solutions is an energy
procurement and management specialist
which was established to allow big energy
users to forward-buy their energy and
save money in the process.
Managing director and co-founder
Frazer Durris said UTILITYi enables
customers to see their energy
consumption in real-time on an easy-to-
Tech investment
energises Businesswise
Solutions
CASE STUDY 7
read dashboard.
As the energy procurement market was
evolving and becoming more competitive,
Durris says investing in the dashboard was
fundamental to the business remaining at
the forefront of the industry.
"We're really well known for our energy
management services and expertise, which
we couldn't provide without the UTILITYi
dashboard. It's now become a fundamental
part of our offering."
The other speakers were Mark Rowe, technical
director, Secarma; Jonathan Bowers, managing
director, UKFast Enterprise; and Mylo Kaye,
CEO, app development agency Dreamr.
Mylo Kaye (left) and
Frazer Durris (right).
BUSINESSCLOUD EDITION 8, Q4 2017
69
@BCLOUDUK
REGIONS
intelligence, development and technical
talent. However he adds: "We should
be talking more about why
businesses should set up
their base here: the work-life
balance and quality of life.
Ultimately businesses want
to recruit talented people
quickly and they can do that
in Leeds. I don't see that being
promoted anywhere."
Alex Epstein, former star of The
Apprentice and chief marketing offi cer at
BigChange Apps, says the BBC's move to
Manchester has had a "very powerful
multiplier eff ect" on that city.
"I think if a similar thing
happened in Leeds it could
have a ripple eff ect on the
economy here," he says.
BigChange Apps enables
businesses to manage their
time smartly through an all-in-
one mobile workforce management
platform.
"Tens of thousands of SMEs still run their
businesses on paper, particularly in the
service sector," Epstein says. "Our
app takes the business entirely
paperless and replaces lots of
separate pieces of archaic kit
so, compared to running a
legacy system, there's huge
savings to be had."
Natasha Babar-Evans is an
enabler at Entrepreneurial Spark Leeds and
is buoyant about the city's prospects.
"We have got some great
businesses which are
determined to scale and
grow and they want to stay
here," she says. "We have
enough room in the city but
we're focused on creating
an ecosystem that is wide and
supportive enough to make sure
businesses can survive and thrive."
Tina Kalantaridi, founder and director
at The Language Pod, thinks more people
need to get behind initiatives like the
Northern Powerhouse. "I think
Leeds is a fantastic city, but
it needs to grab whatever it
can and run with it!"
Sanjay Parekh, CEO of
home security start-up
Cocoon, says more support
networks and accelerators
would make a "big diff erence".
Graham Pearce, who leads KPMG's
technology, media and telecommunications
business across the North, said what
he'd really like to see is a major
international carrier at the
airport. "I'd also love to see a
proper VC open an offi ce in
the city."
A tech hub worth
shouting about
Leeds is on the rise with
a thriving digital scene
and a fertile breeding
ground for start-ups,
but more needs to be
done to promote it.
That was among several key messages
BusinessCloud heard from local tech
businesses and entrepreneurs at a recent
roundtable held at KPMG's offi ces in Leeds.
According to the 2017 Tech Nation
report, Leeds has an average digital salary
of more than 50,000, a bigger fi gure than
Manchester, Oxford and Cambridge.
The biggest employers run academies
for graduates while early-stage businesses
have access to fl exible offi ce space and
networking opportunities thanks to
Futurelabs and Duke Studios. Meanwhile, a
3.7m grant from Leeds City Council will be
divided between innovative tech projects.
Simon Brereton, acting head of economic
policy and sector development at Leeds
City Council, is confi dent that the city will
be a diff erent place in a year's time thanks
to new offi ce developments, improved
support networks and a better working
relationship between tech businesses and
the local authority. However, he stressed
that more people and businesses need to
get behind 'brand Leeds'.
Adam Hildreth, CEO of social media
risk specialist Crisp Thinking, says
being headquartered in Leeds provides
the company with access to artifi cial
Leeds is home to tech unicorn Sky Betting and Gaming and boasts the fastest-growing average digital
salary, but is the West Yorkshire city doing enough to shout about its tech sector? Mo Aldalou reports.
Top to bottom: Tina Kalantaridi ,
Adam Hildreth, and Natasha Babar-Evans.
Inside the Leeds tech scene
BUSINESSCLOUD.CO.UK
REGIONS
Synap
From medicine to taxis
Synap was created by two frustrated medical students looking for a better way to study,
but the education tech platform is now expanding to other verticals. Mo Aldalou reports.
When James Gupta and Omair Vaiyani
created the first version of award-winning
revision platform and app Synap, they
had no idea that it would attract 15,000
downloads in 24 hours.
The then second-year medical students
were faced with the daunting task of
learning a huge amount of information in a
short period of time.
Frustrated and dissatisfied with outdated
methods of revision, they wanted to create
something that could help them and
other students in their year study in more
engaging and effective ways with the help of
technology.
The pair began mixing things by writing
questions and challenging each other to
take them. Over time this evolved into a
blog, and later a crude (but functional) app
called Synap.
"As time went on, Synap became more
popular to the point where we received
15,000 downloads in 24 hours," Gupta
recalls.
"At that point we realised we'd
tapped into something pretty big, and
started to address the problem more
systematically, asking how we could
develop a study tool that helped students
learn more in less time."
Synap claims to be the world's most
powerful and intuitive platform for creating,
practising and sharing educational quizzes.
It lets students connect with each other and
study in short, regular bursts designed to
help them learn more in less time.
The format lends itself perfectly to a
mobile-first generation, as the questions
can be practised on the go, Gupta says.
The platform has a range of user-
generated quizzes (over 200,000 questions)
as well as a growing range of professional
content from leading publishers such as
Oxford University Press.
It also incorporates a cutting-edge
'Spaced Learning' algorithm that develops
a personalised learning plan for each user,
sending them the questions they need
to study most each day based on their
strengths and weaknesses.
"Overall, the people who engaged
with the Spaced Learning last year saw
their scores increase by 100 per cent
compared to those who primarily studied
without it," Gupta says.
After proving to be a hit among
UK medical students, Synap
began expanding to other
educational fields
including business and
engineering and now
has a total of 50,000
active monthly
users.
It was one of
the Northern
Stars winners
in November
and is now also
running trials with businesses that could use
the platform to improve the training of their
employees.
"For the last year or so we've been getting
quite a lot of interest from companies who
want to use the platform for internal staff
training or to manage remote teams,"
Gupta says.
"Until recently we've both been in
full-time education and so we didn't
necessarily have the resources to commit
to it but now we've got a team and all the
stuff we need so we're running a few trials
with companies."
Among those companies is mytaxi, the
black cab app formerly known as Hailo,
which has been offering new drivers
financial incentives in a bid to significantly
boost its taxi fleet in Ireland over the next
few years.
The company also developed a set
of questions to help train prospective
new drivers for the Small Public Service
Vehicles (SPSV) entry test in Dublin, and
was looking for a learning management
system to house them.
"We gave them a completely
customised environment where drivers
can register, login and start practising for
the exam," Gupta says.
Synap will continue to explore working
with other companies and start offering
customised solutions for staff training,
but growing rapidly in the medical space is
still a major focus.
"It will always be a key market for us
because of our background and also
the sheer 'information intensity' of the
healthcare space," Gupta says.
"We want to triple our medical user
base in the next 12 months, and also start
expanding into other high intensity fields
such as law and finance."
BUSINESSCLOUD EDITION 8, Q4 2017
71
@BCLOUDUK
REGIONS
All round
protection
with
Cocoon
Cocoon's home security technology is so
advanced it picks up sounds too low to be
heard by the human ear. Mo Aldalou reports.
When Dan Conlon's annoying house
alarm wouldn't turn off he had no idea it
would be the trigger for him to launch a
business.
In desperation the entrepreneur and
former engineering director at security
software giant Trend Micro climbed a
ladder and pulled the device off the wall to
get some peace and quiet.
The experience led him to think that
there must be a better way to monitor
home security and together with his
fellow co-founders Sanjay Parekh, Colin
Richardson, Nick Gregory and
John Berthels, he launched
Leeds-based tech start-up
Cocoon.
Cocoon is an all-in-one
smart home security system
which can monitor an entire
home through a single device
despite being not much bigger than
a cricket ball.
Fitted with an HD video
camera, a motion detector
and temperature sensor,
Cocoon is capable of picking
up infrasonic sound waves
which are too low to be heard by
the human hear.
The system also uses machine
learning software to analyse
and learn the sounds of
a particular household
to distinguish between
expected movements, like a
pet walking across the living
room, and unexpected ones.
When an alert is triggered by
the device, users are notified
through a smartphone app and
can access a live video feed
to see if there's an intruder.
If deemed necessary, they
are also given the option to
contact police.
Chief executive Parekh said:
"When we did our customer
research, what people didn't
want is an automatic alarm
system that went off like
everybody else's. They just
get ignored.
"Our device detects
something that isn't quite right
in your home, it'll send you a video
alert and you can see what's
going on."
Cocoon was launched after
a successful crowdfunding
campaign on Indiegogo in
2014. It has since attracted
more than 5m of investment
from Aviva Ventures and Breed Reply
Investments and through an equity
crowdfunding campaign on
Crowdcube.
The business has enjoyed
rapid growth, with its smart
home security devices now
sold through Amazon in more
than 50 countries around the
world. According to Parekh, Cocoon
is on track to generate turnover
of between 750,000 and 1m
this year.
"Our growth strategy is to
primarily expand our channels
to market, starting with the
UK retail channel, which is a
well-developed market in terms
of consumer electronics and the interest
in smart homes is growing at quite a rapid
rate," he said.
"We're also expanding overseas. The
need is universal and people all over the
world are concerned about security, so
we're launching in Dubai and Australia.
"That's one strand of our expansion
strategy, and the other is to develop
partnerships with large corporates."
Parekh says it's easy to overtrade
and over expand but that it's crucial for
Cocoon to open up the right channels to
market at the right pace and manage the
growth in a sustainable way.
"We certainly see that over the next two
years we could get to the 10m to 15m
turnover mark quite happily," he added.
Top to bottom: Dan Conlon, Colin Richardson,
John Berthels, Nick Gregory and Sanjay Parekh.
BUSINESSCLOUD EDITION 8, Q4 2017
72
BUSINESSCLOUD.CO.UK
ECOMMERCE
Where does
retail go next?
Daniel Bobroff pioneered advertising in video
games before founding ASOS's venture capital
division. He now runs Coded Futures - disruptive
tech for the fashion and retail world. He spoke
to Mo Aldalou on where retail goes next.
As career decisions
go, spending
10 years living in a
forest in the south
of France was
probably one of the
more unusual Daniel
Bobroff has taken - but he's making
up for lost time now.
The entrepreneur made his name
for launching in-game advertising and
developing bestselling video games before
he opted for a career break. On his return
he joined forces with Nick Robertson, co-
founder of the online fashion retailer ASOS,
to set up ASOS Ventures with a brief to look
for ideas to disrupt the retail sector.
To bridge the gap even further between
the worlds of retail and technology he
launched his own business Coded Futures
- in January 2016 with a mission to identify
new digital products and solutions within the
retail technology ecosystem.
Now in demand as a global retail
speaker the 53-year-old predicts that the
most successful retailers will be the ones
who personalise their offer to customers
the best.
Reinventing himself is something
Bobroff knows all about. Back in 2012,
after his decade-long career break came
to an end, Bobroff was disheartened to
hear a good friend tell him that "tech is for
young people".
"I found it insulting but I also thought that
it simply wasn't true," he recalls.
It was in the same year that Bobroff met
up with ASOS CEO Robertson.
"He and I had this chat and he was
very interested to see how ASOS could
capitalise on its mould-breaking, disruptive,
entrepreneurial spirit that had made it this
huge success," Bobroff says.
"Nick increasingly felt that he couldn't
do the things he used to do or be the
entrepreneur he had been in the early days
because ASOS was such a big business by
this point. He asked me to come up with a
way by which ASOS could be aware of and
become involved with the next wave of
disruption. Who was the next ASOS? Where
was the technology going to come from
that was going to be able to help ASOS get
to that next level and do some of the things
it imagined it might be able to do? What's
the next monster coming over the hill?"
Bobroff helped establish and became
investment director of ASOS Ventures,
which was all about scouting exciting new
technologies and disruptive companies
and entrepreneurs.
"I was quite good at it," recalls Bobroff,
who decided to venture out on his own and
establish his own advisory business Coded
Futures, which is focused on the future of
retail. He believes that using a powerful
combination of augmented reality and
artificial intelligence to create an immersive
user experience for online shoppers could
be the next big thing in the eCommerce
industry but online retailers first need to
get personalisation right.
"I think personalisation is very high on
the wish list of most online retailers and
efforts are being undertaken to get that
right, but as a whole it's still poorly done,"
he says.
"The good news is that there is
evidence out there for its success.
Amazon enjoys an uplift in sales of
anywhere between 10 and 30 per cent
thanks to personalised offers, which is
a substantial figure and proves that the
effort to get it right is worth it.
"There are quite a large number
of statistics that not only show that
customers like personalised offers, but
that they're willing to hand over their data
to receive something personal. They
expect value in return for their data."
Bobroff believes that creating an
immersive user experience for online
shoppers using a combination of
augmented reality and artificial intelligence
could be as critical as personalisation.
"AR and AI have the potential to change
the game in terms of how we think of and
experience eCommerce.
"Most eCommerce experiences today
are basically just browsing through a
catalogue of products, accompanied with
some content and a little bit of attention
paid to how frictionless your journey is.
"That's very different to an experience
that's immersive or augmented, and it's
also different from the tremendously
strong social element that these particular
technologies can offer."
BUSINESSCLOUD EDITION 8, Q4 2017
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@BCLOUDUK
XXXXXX
Andr Hordagoda was
visiting his sister at
her luxury bag store
in Westfield, Stratford
City when he had the
lightbulb moment
for GoInStore. After
45 minutes there hadn't been a
single visitor yet three well-trained
salespeople were there ready to help.
He and co-founder Aman Khurana
decided to bolster a waning generation
of bricks and mortar retailers by helping
them take their best sales assets their
staff and branded stores and give them to
their online customers in an easy-to-use,
seamlessly integrated package.
"If you look at the experience you have
online versus instore they're completely
different," says the company's business
development lead Jeremy Dodd.
"Even with the best tech and photos,
shopping online is still a static experience
and much less personal. The metrics reflect
that and typically conversion rates for the
same retailer are ten times higher instore
than online. It's crazy, and something that's
not shouted about much. So we thought
'why not put that instore human being into
the online channel using video?'"
Customers who want to shop online from
the comfort of their living room can visit a
store's website and then choose to speak
to an available staff member from the shop
floor. The technology filters out the shop
assistant best equipped to deal with the
inquiry. It can also gather intelligence on the
shoppers so the business will know what
searches they've made.
They have a two-way audio feed, so they
can speak to each other, and a one-way
video feed via wearable glasses so
customers can see product
demonstrations without
having to get out of their
pyjamas.
On average the
company's clients have
seen online sales rise to
match those they would
see instore, and include big
names like Dyson and Marriott,
which uses the technology to sell
event space.
"We work with a pretty well-known brand
called Porsche and at first its staff said 'I
want people to come into the showroom
and not just visit online', says Dodd.
"I said every customer in your showroom
will have gone online first. We're allowing
you to build rapport with the customer from
the first time they hit your website."
Dodd admits that as yet the technology
is mainly aimed at considered purchases
like cars, jewellery and technology where
customers want to see the product in
action or be assured of quality, but that in
time the company hopes it will bleed down
to a wider range of products.
"We've been called the antidote to bots,"
Dodd explains. "A number of retailers
suffered store closures, here and in the
US, and it's terrible press, terrible for jobs,
terrible for staff and bad for morale. We're
saying 'stop, these people are
valuable'. We're championing
people."
It's a win-win for
the staff that Dodd
and the team want
to champion, as the
technology which
Dodd says is second
nature for a generation
brought up on Snapchat and
FaceTime allows them to make
more sales.
"The really good, key thing for us is now
selling to the online channel and making
sure the staff are attributed," he says.
"Once a customer engages through
live video they can have a more valuable
interaction. When they're done they can
give feedback on their experience and
if they go on to convert because of that
integration they can attribute the sale
to the instore member for things like
commission, bonuses and employee of the
month."
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BUSINESSCLOUD EDITION 8, Q4 2017
75
@BCLOUDUK
DISABILITY
Will technology cure
this man's paralysis?
Rower, adventure athlete, motivational speaker and all-round good guy.
Mark Pollock has done most things in his life but faces his biggest challenge yet
as he looks to tech to fi nd a solution to his paralysis. He spoke to Mo Aldalou.
my choice but I've come to make
sense of it by understanding
it and acknowledging that
sometimes we have the luxury
of choosing our challenges
and sometimes challenges
just choose us. What we
decide to do about it is what
counts, it's what we can control."
Through the Mark Pollock Trust he
is trying to raise 5m with an annual walk
called 'Run in the Dark' to fast-track a cure
for paralysis.
Pollock is confi dent that technology
and robotics will play a crucial role in this
mission, but ultimately that it will come from
multiple sources including exercise, drugs
and electrical stimulation.
"Technology will be part of a cocktail
of interventions that will ultimately cure
the range of problems associated with
paralysis," he says.
When Mark Pollock was left paralysed
in July 2010 after falling out of a two-
storey window he could have been
forgiven for feeling sorry for himself.
After all the accident happened a month
before he was due to get married and was
the latest in a series of mishaps to hit the
likeable Irishman.
Pollock was fi ve when he lost the sight of
his right eye and became completely blind
in April 1998 at the age of 22 after his left
retina became detached.
The bad luck seemed to have sunk his
ambitions to become a professional rower
but Pollock is made of stronger stuff ,
evidenced by him winning two medals
at the 2002 Commonwealth Rowing
Championships.
In 2008, in a move to mark the 10th
anniversary of losing his sight, he became
the fi rst blind man to race to the South Pole
but his world was turned upside down two
years later when he was left paralysed from
the waist down.
Now an accomplished speaker he
shared his amazing story with a room full
of business leaders at Deloitte's offi ces in
Manchester.
"If I'm an expert in anything, it's in
acquiring and collecting disabilities," he
joked by way of breaking the ice.
Recalling the fall which left him paralysed,
he said: "It turned me from my upright,
walking, running and jumping form into a
seated compromise of what I once was.
"The friends who found me thought I
was already dead, the doctors in intensive
care suspected that I was going to die.
And when I realised what had happened,
I wondered whether dying might have
been a better outcome.
"I didn't choose any of it, the accident,
the injury, the consequences, none of it was
"From a
technological
perspective, the
combination
of robotic legs
and electrical
stimulation is
particularly exciting
- not as an alternative
to wheelchairs but rather
for rehabilitation as a way of
trying to move closer to a cure.
"We have been combining an Ekso
Bionics exoskeleton with a NeuroRecovery
Technologies trans-cutaneous electrical
stimulation device. These two interventions
have allowed me to voluntarily move my
legs during assisted walking.
"We are starting to look at further
technologies to add into the package. For
example, with performance data such
an important part of training for athletes
we have been working with industry
and academic partners to make that
performance data accessible for rehab.
"We have developed an accessible app
to speak heart rate, speed, power etc on
demand. Furthermore, we have started
to investigate VR and AR applications in
conjunction with wearable sensors to
enhance the rehab process."
But while robotic legs and electrical
devices are being developed, the costs can
be staggering.
Pollock said he is excited by the prospect
of robotic legs becoming more accessible
and aff ordable thanks to 3D printing and
other alternative manufacturing methods.
"You can imagine that 3D printing or
other alternative manufacturing methods
will start to reduce the costs and make them
more accessible and aff ordable, and that
really excites me."
BUSINESSCLOUD EDITION 8, Q4 2017
76
BUSINESSCLOUD.CO.UK
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COLUMN: PEARCE'S POINT OF VIEW
Getting investment into start-ups
Graham Pearce is a mergers and acquisitions professional and
leads KPMG's TMT business across the North of the UK.
The UK's start-up community is
growing at a healthy pace with
hundreds of thousands of new
businesses opening every year.
In 2016 there were an estimated
650,000 start-ups established
across the country and more than
100,000 of those were in the North
(source: Start-Up Britain).
This continued growth is underpinned
nationally by generous tax breaks as
well as grant and government funding,
providing entrepreneurs with ready
access to the seed funding needed for
initial set up and 'proof of concept'.
In the North, entrepreneurs have the
added benefi t of dozens of universities,
local access to key industrial hubs and
transport points, and operating costs well
below that of the London region.
Seed funding and lower costs are not
enough, Substantive access to funds
bridging the gap between start-up and
self-sustaining business remains an
obstacle.
This is especially true across the
North, where young businesses struggle
to connect with ideal funders capable
of providing scale-up capital, relevant
experience and contacts, frequently
having to look to London and abroad.
NorthInvest exists to fi ll that gap and
provide local level support.
NorthInvest is a not-for-profi t
company wholly dedicated to building a
diverse and robust support community
for Northern-based start-ups. It fi lls
the gap in the Northern Powerhouse
investment scene by making it easier for
the region's start-ups to access crucial
early funding as well as providing free
business advice and support. Meanwhile,
our angel investors have access to
qualifi ed deal fl ow from across the region.
NorthInvest connects not just people,
but ecosystems to create inclusivity and
build the Northern business economy.
Central to that ecosystem mission is
connecting and supporting the region's
organic growth in technology across:
FinTech
Health tech
Tech-for-good
Media
Cyber
These fi ve sectors are already
underpinning the region's growth
which hosts the headquarters for NHS
Digital, BBC and Atom Bank among
other industry leaders. NorthInvest will
be a catalyst for expanding the region's
capability across these areas and
establishing robust cross-sector out-
reach.
We are supported by an experienced
board of professionals and regional
infl uencers, who have all previously or
currently owned / operated leading
businesses and partnerships in these
sectors. Our board includes:
Dr. Adam Beaumont - founder of
NorthInvest; founder and CEO of aql
Dr. Richard Arning - vice president
business development at SES
Satellites
Prof. John Fisher - Professor of
mechanical engineering, University
of Leeds
Graham Pearce - head of KPMG
corporate fi nance technology,
media and telecoms
Helen Oldham ex-chief publishing
offi cer, Johnston Press
Tom Bridges - chief offi cer for
economy and regeneration at Leeds
City Council
After a soft launch, NorthInvest is
now fully operational, having facilitated
three investments to-date and
attracting 3-5 deal fl ow applications per
week with an average funding request
of 350k. Our deal fl ow will typically
span 50k- 10M.
Once an investment is registered
with the NorthInvest platform, the
investment history can be tracked from
fi rst round upwards, making follow-on
investment simpler and more agile.
Unlike many others NorthInvest does
not seek to take an equity stake in any
business, a small fee is levied on the
investor side to cover our very basic
running costs. As the organisation
builds momentum any surplus profi t will
be used to create a fund specifi cally for
Tech for Good projects.
Our partners and supporter
organisation are key to our strategy of
advancing the Northern ecosystem.
These currently include:
aql
KPMG
Leeds City Council
Leeds City Region Enterprise
Partnership
Tech Link
UK Business Angels Association
Over the next 12 to 24 months,
NorthInvest will be working closely
with public and private sector partners
to drive the Tech sector profi le and
investment across the North.
We are hosting a rolling programme
of events to bring partners and
entrepreneurs together to accelerate
progress in our fi ve areas of focus,
including the creation of panel
pitching opportunities, and a package
of support services to successfully
incubate start -ups and accelerate
tech SME growth. A Northern Angel
conference is also being scoped for
2018 in partnership with UKBAA.
Adam Beaumont.
Striking a BLOW
for looking great
A few weeks ago, my
colleagues decided to
have an impromptu
Friday night out. Whilst
they all live in the city
and are within reach
of their bathrooms,
wardrobes and make-
up, I was at a loss as to how I would get
myself ready, even if I had the time to
call out and get a new outfi t in time.
A friend suggested an app called Blow
LTD. Founder of Blow LTD Fiona McIntosh
(former editor-in-chief of ELLE Magazine)
noticed a gap in the market that would
off er fast beauty for time-poor people.
I downloaded the free app and saw a
list of options available for both men and
women. You select your service, such as
Kerastase blow dry or OPI nail services
such as manicures and pedicures - or even
some specialist treatments for the gents.
We opted for a group booking as
there were three of us and we booked
before noon for a 6pm appointment. The
two consultants came to our offi ce in
Manchester's Spinningfi elds and had all
three of us ready to go before 7.30pm.
The cost for both hair and make-up for
the three of us was 155 and we got 25
off for our fi rst booking. It brought the
total to a little over 43 each.
The quality, friendliness and ease of
this service meant we went out feeling
special and like we hadn't rushed around
Manchester to two diff erent salons trying
to get ourselves ready.
Since then, I have used Blow LTD for all
of my beauty requirements, even getting
them to come to my home in Bolton to get
me ready on the morning of my friend's
wedding, rather than having to rush
around to three separate salons.
I was relaxed at home with a G&T whilst
Blow LTD took care of everything; they
even waited around till I got dressed to
make sure I went
out 'party perfect'.
If you're a busy
professional that
needs a service
that takes the
stress out of
looking perfect,
download the app.
I can't believe it's
taken this long
to make beauty
simple.
Rachael Fish works for Bruin Financial
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