4 VCs Representing over $2 billion in Manchester


Posted by superuser on Monday 3rd of October 2011 | 0 Comment(s)

Investors

Techcelerate Dragons Lair was held on 28th September 2011 at Tech Centre Manchester, having held a similar event 9 months before. This time, we had 4 Venture Capitalists representing well over $2 billion in funds, notably:

HarryBriggs's picture RichardExley's picture AlexVanSomeran's picture DavidSmithAXM's picture

1. Harry Briggs from Balderton Capital with $1.9 billion under management. Previously, Andrew Nutter from Balderton took part in a Techcelerate event, before the firm invested in local tech company, The Hut Group (Techcelerate had no role in this deal).

2. Richard Exley from North Star Ventures with £80 million under management - Tim Langley of Canddi pitched at our Investment Event in Dec 2009. He secured £20,000 seed funding from Difference Engine, which was funded by North East Finance. After graduating from the Accelerator Programme run by Jon Bradford, Tim secured further seed funding from North Star Ventures, which is similar to the fund run by David Smith in the North West.

3. Alex Van Someren from Amadeus Capital with £470 million under management - This was Alex's first visit to Techcelerate. Alex is looking to raise another fund after completing 2 more investments over the near future.

4. David Smith of AXM Ventures with £15 million under management - The fund has already invested in to 3 companies and looking to close 40 deals over its 5 year investment period. AXM is a Techcelerate Member working closely with us to ensure better investor/investee fit and understanding.

Companies

After some volatility in who will pitch or not (one stage, I was going to pitch CRMthis.com and edocr.com), 4 North West Tech Companies and 1 London Tech Company presented their propositions to the Investor Panel made up of Harry, Alex and Richard.

logo3.png Wadaro.jpg Nuji.png WebEnableIT.gif mpmsim.png

1. Konkura by Philip Worthington - Just like edocr.com, Konkura continues to evolve overcoming product development challenges. This time, Philip has extended the management team with well known sport personalities, and believe he found some kindred spirit among the investors. The £300k capital requirement is mainly for marketing spend and product improvement.

2. Wadaro by Robert Wakeling - Robert continues to push forward with monitoring quality of service of mobile communications through embedded software on SIM cards. Since we last heard from Robert, the company has started to win major contracts and generate revenues. Capital requirement is for sales and marketing effort, especially for client visits to Africa and Asia. Robert has secured capital of over £800k from various North West based venture capitalists, but need further capital to win and service new customers.

3. Nuji by Dean Fankhauser - We were very privileged to host a Seedcamp company from London, which showed the rest of us how to pitch effectively. Nuji's proposition was centred around rewarding shoppers of popular apparel brands. Dean was looking for capital to strengthen his team and position the company for Series A round.

4. Web Enable IT by Charles and Robert Goodwin - A family run tech company, was looking for ideas on how to take their revenue generating tech startup forward.

5. MPM SIM by Jayveer Thakoor - MPM SIM is a stress analysis tool with key differentiators on price and performance. Jayveer was looking for a capital injection of £750k for team hire, product refinement and marketing.

Improvements

The second half of the event focused on venture capital and pitching. Investment panel suggested many ways to improve the presentations, notably:

1. Follow Guy Kawasaki's 10/20/30 rule for presentations optimised for 5 minute pitching at Techcelerate Investment Events

2. Do not follow BBC's Dragons Den style by notifying the percentage of equity on offer.

3. Use images and do not read the text on the slides. Talk about what's not covered on the slides.

4. Make sure the panel and audience gets your product quickly.

We now plans to hold the next Investment Event on 8th December. If you like to take part, do get in touch immediately.