We are hosting an event run by IBM to engage with technology start-up businesses where there is synergistic technology with IBM’s smarter planet initiative. In particular the event will be focusing on

Learning how IBM are sparking innovation through collaboration to help make our planet smarter and looking to engage with companies in the programme
IBM wants to team with entrepreneurs to build a smarter planet. Are you an early stage startup? Does your solution address issues enterprise customers are facing in the areas of banking, buildings, cities, cloud computing, education, energy, food, government, healthcare, infrastructure, intelligence, oil, products, public safety, rail, retail, stimulus, telecommunications, traffic, water, and work?
Discovering how to build your business with cloud computing and business analytics
How can I keep my IT costs under control?
How can I ensure that my solution is robust, scalable and secure?
How can I integrate my application with Business Partner solutions and my clients' systems?
How can I make sense of all this data that my business is starting to generate?
Learning how to engage more closely with IBM through their global entrepreneur programme
Since launching its Global Entrepreneur initiative last year, IBM has helped more than 500 new businesses in key areas such as green energy, health care and transportation.

To register companies need to go to http://ibm.co/daresburyevent.

Cutting-edge online recruitment portal Hiring-Hub.com is one of only three groundbreaking new digital businesses to be shortlisted for the prestigious 2011 DediPower UK Digital Innovation Award.

The award, which is in association with The Sunday Telegraph and Lloyds TSB, aims to promote standout young British entrepreneurs and digital excellence, while championing businesses with the Internet at their core.

Built to make recruitment more efficient, Hiring-Hub.com is an intermediary platform that gives employers access to a free web-based Applicant Tracking System and Vendor Management Tool, in addition to its core services: an online recruitment marketplace, and low cost multi-post job board advertising bundles.

Along with the other two finalists, Hiring-Hub.com’s founders Simon Swan and Sara Jones will present their business to a judging panel at the Telegraph Media Group’s offices in London on Tuesday, 22 March 2011 before the winner – who will receive business support and up to £12,500 in investment – is announced.

“Naturally we are delighted to be named a finalist in DediPower’s Digital Innovation Award,” said Hiring-Hub.com’s co-founder and Managing Partner, Simon Swan. “It is recognition of our technical team’s hard work and achievements in recent months, and the ability of Hiring-Hub.com to alter the UK’s recruitment landscape.”

For more information on Hiring-Hub.com please visit: www.hiring-hub.com

Launched from Manchester Metropolitan University’s incubator office, Innospace, which is home to over 120 entrepreneurs and their businesses, Hiring-Hub.com provides companies with a one-stop online shop for all their permanent recruitment needs.

It offers employers a free web-based Vendor Management Tool and Applicant Tracking System, in addition to its core services: 1) an online recruitment marketplace, which connects employers to a large network of specialist recruitment consultants that will fill roles for a fixed placement fee that the employer sets; and 2) flat fee multi-post job board advertising.

“Hiring-Hub.com’s founders pitched their idea to us Innospace and we were delighted to welcome them into the community,” explained Richard Deighton, Innospace Manager. “The business model is exciting and the company’s energy and vision is inspiring. These days, if you want to book a flight you go to expedia.co.uk, if you’re looking for a hotel you try laterooms.com and if you want car insurance you might visit moneysupermarket.com. Hiring-Hub.com aims to be the place employers go to first when they want to source new talent.”

The website is aimed at all employers seeking permanent staff, whether through third-party recruitment consultancies for skilled roles, or direct job board advertising for non-skilled roles. Employers simply register to gain access to their free web-based recruitment hub, from which they can upload their specialist roles onto the marketplace, or, for commercial roles, purchase flat fee multi-post job board advertising bundles from as little as £199.

Hiring-Hub.com’s online recruitment marketplace gives employers the opportunity to engage specialist recruiters quickly. Employers upload their jobs to the marketplace anonymously and engage the recruiters of their choice. These approved recruiters agree to fill the employer’s roles for a fixed fee that the employer sets. Uploading vacancies is completely risk free, as employers only pay – the fee they set – if their campaign is successful. The marketplace gives employers access to a much larger candidate pool, protects them from unsolicited agency approaches, streamlines their recruitment process and does away with the need to negotiate terms with multiple suppliers.

While the marketplace has been designed to act as a gateway between employers and recruitment consultancies, Hiring-Hub.com’s low cost job board advertising bundles are aimed at those seeking to fill unspecialised roles with salaries below £25k. Employers submit their job advert once via the hub, and it is posted on all the UK’s leading job boards. Employers using this service can purchase one advert bundle for £199 yet hire multiple candidates, making it an ideal solution for admin, retail and sales roles.

“The team at Innospace has been really supportive,” said Simon Swan, co-founder of Hiring-Hub.com. “It is an excellent project and it has given us a unique opportunity to connect with Manchester’s business community while keeping our overheads low during, which is great for a startup. Our vision is to build a one-stop online shop for recruitment across all sectors and all industries, which tailors for all budgets, and Innospace has given us a great launch-pad to do just that.”

For more information on Hiring-Hub.com please visit: www.hiring-hub.com; call: 0845 265 8330; or email: info@hiring-hub.com. Innospace: www.innospace.co.uk

Inspired by StartUpDigest Reading List, Techcelerate Digest Reading List will endeavour to share best content from the tech startup world weekly. If you find content of interest, please email or tweet us so that we can share them with our growing community.

How To Get Your First 1,000 Users by Vinicius Vacanti, co-founder, Yipit.

Vinicius shares how you could get 1,000 people to try your web application so that you can find out what isn’t working, iterate and keep trying to build a web application that people, other than your mom, actually come back to.

How to Keep Your First 1,000 Users by Vinicius Vacanti, co-founder, Yipit.

You need a first 1,000 users plan. This isn’t just about getting 1,000 users to try out your service. This is a plan about keeping those users.

Idea to paying customers in 7 weeks: how we did it by Joel Gascoigne, Founder, Buffer.

Joel shares the story of how he build a simple web application in 7 weeks. Even more amazing is that his early users love his product so much that they have started to pay for his service.

With less than a week to go, Springboard Cambridge is making its final call for applications to its Spring 2011 intake.

Springboard, the only TechStars Network partner in the UK, have assembled over 100 awesome mentors including serial entrepreneurs, Venture Capitals, Y Combinator alumni and all of the major tech corporates to help your startup achieve their real potential. Springboard ends with the opportunity to pitch to venture capitalists and angel investors. The full-time intensive bootcamp is based in Cambridge University and combines pre-seed investment capital, intensive mentorship, free office accommodation with many other free resources provided by our partners.

The investment capital is nice, but the real value of Springboard is the massive concentration of advice, guidance and contacts from our fantastic mentors, whilst working alongside like-minded entrepreneurs with the sole objective of building their own businesses across the 13 week programme.

More details can be found at www.springboard.com or you can contact Jon Bradford, MD of Difference Engine and Springboard, at jon@springboard.com.

Our first event of 2011, Funding Options for North West Companies, which sold out twice (at 50, then 80 after moving to a larger venue) featured all of the fund managers of £185 million North West Funds including biomedical and environmental and energy funds.

Visit event page to see who attended (you need to log in to see the attendance list)

Here is a summary of the events, in terms of videos, slides and pictures.

The event was sponsored by:

Introduction by Manoj

Andy Leach - CEO, The North West Fund - £185 million funds

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Andy has 24 years experience in Venture and Development Capital and Private Equity investing. A chartered accountant by profession, Andy switched careers whilst in Australia, spending 6 years with a domestic Australian fund, Byvest. On returning to his North West roots in 1992, Andy joined the Manchester Office of 3i, covering a broad range of investment opportunities. From 2002 to 2004 he was with Montagu Private Equity, where he headed up Montagu Capital, a business targeting investments of a size below those focused on by the core MPE business and, in 2004, he joined the Manchester office of LDC. Whilst at LDC, Andy's had responsibility for the management of LDC's investment portfolio across the North and, in some instances, further afield

Paul Gower - YFM Private Equity - £45 million Development Capital

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After graduating with a Masters Degree in Economics, Paul spent eight years at Burmah Castrol plc in a range of analytial, marketing and business development roles. Gaining a MBA after full time study at Manchester Business School, he worked within Pricewaterhouse Cooper's Business Regeneration Department prior to undertaking an interim General Manager position within the Halo Group. Paul joined YFM Venture Finance in November 2003 as an Investment Manager with the South Yorkshire Investment Fund. He has since moved to the Manchester office and works for YFM Private Equity.

Richard Young - EV Group - £30 million Venture Capital Fund

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Prior to joining EV Group in 2010, Richard was Executive Director at Manchester Technology Fund (MTF). Previously, Richard was an Investment Director at 3i plc, a leading international venture capital business. In his 19 years as a venture capitalist he has invested in over 40 companies, which together have created shareholder value in excess of £600 million. Some of the well known startups include Telecity and Transitive.

Andrew Carruthers - Managing Director, Spark Ventures - £25 million Biomedical Fund

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In addition to managing the stakeholder relations of Spark Group, Andrew sits on the Board of a number of portfolio companies, including DEM, Antenova, Uniservity and Sift, leading SPARK’s active participation in the development of these companies. Over recent years he has led the sale of Footfall to Experian for £36m and the sale of Pricerunner to Valueclick for $36m. He was previously a Director of NewMedia Investors responsible for capital raising and corporate finance for a range of technology businesses including Lastminute.com. Prior to that he was involved in the operational management of technology and finance as a Director or Founder of online information, TV and digital distribution companies in the US and UK. Andrew qualified as a chartered accountant with KPMG. He was appointed to the Board of SPARK Ventures in 1999.

Adam Workman - Partner, CTI Partners - £20 million Energy & Environmental Fund

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Adam joined the Carbon Trust from 3i in 2002 and was a founding Partner of CTIP in 2006. He has over ten years experience in the energy and venture capital sector. His investments include CamSemi, Whitfield Solar, Marine Current Turbines and Intamac. Recently he co-authored the Carbon Trust’s report into investment trends the European Clean Energy Sector with New Energy Finance. Adam also sits on the European advisory panel for the Cleantech Group. He formerly worked with 3i and Shell Exploration. He has an MA in Natural Sciences and a Postgraduate diploma in Computer Science from Cambridge University.

David Smith - AXM Venture Capital - £15 million Digital & Creative Fund

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David joined AXM Venture Capital in 2011, with 25 years experience in advising and investing in growth companies, and has specialised over that time in the TMT sector. He has worked in venture capital, stockbroking and corporate finance with companies including 3i and KPMG. He has supported many software, IT services, creative and media companies from early stage funding through to IPO or sale.

1 hour Discussion

Pictures

According to TechCrunch Europe:

"ScreenReach, maker of the Screach app and accompanying platform for creating interactive experiences on smartphones, has raised a second round of funding: £500,000 from Hotspur Capital Partners. This follows earlier investment from Tom Maxfield, a founder of Sage, shortly after ScreenReach graduated from the Difference Engine accelerator program. The new funds announced today will be used to “spearhead global growth”, says the Newcastle, UK-based company."

Read the full article here

Getupdated, parent company of Just Search, has signed an agreement to acquire Wooshii, a video content company based in the UK with a global user base of 3,500 registered providers of video content. The agreement marks the completion of a letter of intent signed in October.

”Online video content will add significant benefits to our customers and Wooshii provides a perfect accompaniment to our existing core range of services,” comments Paul Yates, CEO of Getupdated and Just Search.

The parent company Getupdated Internet Marketing AB has acquired an initial equity share of 25 per cent of the shares in Wooshii. In exchange, Getupdated and Just Search will market an integrated, new service offering based on the video know-how of Wooshii.

An agreement has been signed, whereby Getupdated/Just Search has acquired an equity share of 25 per cent in Wooshii, and has an option to acquire up to 51 per cent and subsequently the total and remaining shareholding of the company. Sellers are the founders of Wooshii who retain their current positions in the company’s management.

The acquisition of Wooshii is an important strategic step into video search for the Getupdated Group. A new service offering has been developed and integrated in the service offering on all of current customers and existing markets. The ability to be at the forefront of online video content technology will also be of benefit to Getupdated and Just Search when pitching for new potential customers.

”As part of the Getupdated group, Wooshii will get the marketing leverage needed for a broad commercialization of a unique set of video expertise and services,” comments Fergus Dyer-Smith of Wooshii.

The long term plan is for a total acquisition by Getupdated, and a subsequent integration of Wooshii in the Getupdated Group. The initial acquisition involves the provision of marketing services provided by Getupdated and Just Search. The next stage of acquisition is based upon Wooshii hitting certain financial targets and at a pre-agreed valuation as at today.

For further information please contact:
Paul Yates, CEO of Getupdated Internet Marketing AB and Just Search
Phone: +44 7966 077 583
paul.yates@getupdated.com

This is Getupdated Internet Marketing
Getupdated is an international vendor of innovative Internet marketing services. Getupdated has a complete portfolio of services covering Search Engine Optimization, Paid Search, Social Media, Web Development, Media Planing and Web Analysis. The Getupdated Group has some 160 employees in Sweden, the UK, France, Ireland and Italy. The Group is trading under the Just Search brand in the UK, France, Ireland and Italy. The parent company Getupdated Internet Marketing AB is listed on NASDAQ OMX First North and its Certified Adviser is Erik Penser Bankaktiebolag.

This is a guest post by Alan Gleeson , the General Manager of Palo Alto Software, Ltd, creators of Business Plan Pro. He holds an MBA from Oxford University and an MSc from University College, Cork, Ireland.

Introduction

While the phrase ‘traction’ has typically been associated with tyres, friction and slippery driving conditions, its use is increasingly common in entrepreneurship and Venture Capital circles. This article explores what it means and why it is an important concept for entrepreneurs to be familiar with.

The Entrepreneurship Journey

The typical entrepreneurship journey moves through various stages i.e. from idea conception to business plan to execution and then to growth (or failure). For most entrepreneurs the journey is challenging not least because they need to perform many activities simultaneously while always being conscious that they may run out of money in the very near future. While sound planning can help with the former, early stage investment is often used to fund the latter i.e. the investment gap and it is at this point that the concept of traction often comes up.

Defining Traction

Investors need to carefully balance risk and return and will be very familiar with the harsh realities of early stage investment i.e. that most start-ups fail. As a result they will be trawling through the evidence you provide (often in the form of a business plan) to assess whether or not they perceive a commercially viable business opportunity exists, in which they should invest.

For the most part they will need to take a leap of faith with early stage investments, relying on the assumptions contained within your business plan to help them decide whether or not to invest (and if yes, on what terms). Traction is essentially momentum and progress as best exemplified by customer adaption and sales. And if you, the entrepreneur, can demonstrate that you have gained some traction you are reducing the risk for them, as factual evidence will always trump assumptions, projections and wild conjecture.

Evidence of Demand

The most persuasive evidence you can provide that your business is worth investing in is ‘evidence of demand’. Clearly if this demand is translated into sales you have irrefutable evidence that the start-up has traction. The greater the sales the greater the proof.

In terms of the ‘traction hierarchy’, active users and letters of intent probably fall into the next tier below real sales, finally followed by viewer numbers (on your website). While growing visitor numbers to a website was once a good barometer of the potential of a business, it is no longer considered a valuable proxy. These visitors have to convert to sales and hence once again the focus returns to the one piece of evidence that trumps all others – real sales.

Why is all of this important?

One of the problems entrepreneurs face is that they can often focus on the wrong things. There is so much to do and so little time. For example, entrepreneurs often have an excessive product orientation, focusing predominantly on product design without really addressing wider concepts such as addressable market size, routes to market, customer acquisition costs and sales forecasts etc. Business plans can really help ensure entrepreneurs retain focus on the right activities as they force entrepreneurs to take a holistic view of the opportunity. However, not all entrepreneurs embrace the principles of business planning and even those that do may not have a strong focus on ensuring all activities are strongly correlated with the core aim of gaining traction.

So what should they focus on?

As mentioned, entrepreneurs need to conclusively demonstrate that there is strong evidence of demand. They need to concentrate efforts on the area of product /market fit, a concept Steve Blank has explored in detail in his book The Four Stages of the Epiphany. Blank states that the primary role of an entrepreneur is to iterate and test assumptions and hypotheses they have made with regard to customer behaviour and demand until they find a commercially viable business model.

‘Your startup is essentially an organization built to search for a repeatable and scalable business model’

In other words Blank is arguing that your primary role as an entrepreneur is to ensure that there is a good fit between the product and the market and if there is, you can evidence traction from which you can then confidently scale your business.

Struggling to gain traction?

There are numerous reasons you may not be gaining traction with lack of product/brand awareness being one of the most common problems entrepreneurs face. Nowadays, competition is increasingly intense and it has shifted to what is essentially pan-industry competition for people’s attention (rather than merely competition within a market). This issue is particularly of relevance to Internet based start-up’s who incorrectly assume the old adage ‘if I build it they will come’ will apply. One reason you may be struggling to gain traction is simply because people may not be aware of your product, and if this is the case you need to intensify your marketing efforts to gain more attention.

Similarly you may simply find that your product or service offering does not meet your customer’s needs, or there may be switching costs preventing them from trialling it. The easiest way to identify potential reasons for a lack of traction is by talking to prospects and customers.

How do you get traction?

The easiest way to gain traction is to produce something fantastic that solves a problem for a target group, and to back it up with effective marketing to that audience. If your solution to their problem is compelling you are likely to gain traction. Gabriel Weinberg has written a nice post covering various ways a group of entrepreneurs he interviews gained traction. Essentially he is describing a range of marketing activities his interviewees have used to ‘get the word out’ about their product or service. Of course underpinning all of this is the fact that the message relates to a core product or service that clearly addresses a market need. One strategy is to initially focus on generating awareness amongst key influencers (often media) who are often good conduits to your target market. Similarly you can focus on creating awareness amongst a group known as ‘early adopters’ who are individuals willing to test new products and are not averse to risk. A good marketing strategy will ensure that all bases are covered when seeking to generate brand awareness.

What is enough traction?

The amount of traction required depends on the risk appetite of the investor. The more you have though the greater your ability to attract diverse investors and dictate terms when seeking external investment. Choosing between competing term sheets is a problem most entrepreneurs would love to have. Venture capitalist Mark Peter Davis indicates what most investors want in his blog post;

“..investors want to know that a company can repeatedly acquire customers for $X and generate more than $X in gross profit from each customer.”

However, in relation to his view on what enough traction is, he goes on to say;

“In sum, there are no hard-and-fast rules, but when an investor suggests that you obtain more traction it’s because they still need to be convinced that your customers are going to adopt en masse.”

While there is no definitive answer, sales that are growing monthly without a commensurate increase in expenses while you are essentially in stealth mode is a pretty strong signal.

What to do when you do not have enough traction?

For me, modest user adaption cannot be excused because you are still in beta. As stated previously, customer acquisition is the clearest signal that you are gaining traction. If you are not seeing growth it may be that you need to revisit the product/market fit, invest more in marketing, and undertake some additional market research or some competitive analysis. The last thing you should to is continue along the same path without understanding why adaption rates are not at the level they need to

Perhaps you need to pivot what you are doing or consider a Plan B? PayPal is a great example of one such company that went through numerous iterations before settling on an email payment system. As founder Reid Hoffman described recently;

‘Over the years PayPal has made multiple significant pivots. The company started as a mobile encryption platform. Then it was a mobile payments company. Next PayPal was a combination mobile and Web site payments company. Finally PayPal became an email payments company. Each pivot over the life of the company was the result of rethinking the business but maintaining the vision. The focus was always to become a payments operating system; but the nature of the operating system changed multiple times.’

Conclusion

If after pivoting you are still struggling to gain traction you need to put some solid milestones in place, which need to be met if you are to proceed with your venture.

The lessons are clear, gaining traction is the strongest indicator as to whether you have a commercially viable business opportunity to explore. If you do not have significant traction you need to redouble your marketing efforts, consider a Plan B or set some tangible milestones which you need to achieve to justify continuation of your business.

This article first appeared in Techcrunch in Jan 2011.

Alan Gleeson is the General Manager of Palo Alto Software, Ltd, creators of Business Plan Pro®. He holds an MBA from Oxford University and an MSc from University College, Cork, Ireland. For further information on writing a business plan , visit Bplans .

Fast growth language services provider, Applied Language Solutions (ALS), has added significantly more weight to its machine translation offer with the acquisition of Dublin-based Traslan Teoranta Ltd.

ALS identified the opportunity to strengthen its machine translation knowledge and capabilities through the acquisition of Traslan, which has a deep-rooted reputation for machine translation expertise. The acquisition also gives the ALS team access to an established customer base in Ireland, which it can target with additional language services, not previously provided by Traslan.

Machine translation has gained significant momentum in the language services industry in recent years, particularly since the introduction of statistical machine translation technology in 2003. Traslan was established in response to this advancement in machine-assisted translation and designed and built its own MT engine, with has proven to be very successful with particular language pairs.

Commenting on the company's second recent acquisition, Gavin Wheeldon, CEO at Applied Language Solutions, said: "Traslan gives our team of IT developers access to a proprietary engine, which is extremely valuable in terms of our MT intellectual property. The company has a reputation for being actively involved with cutting-edge EU research and this is something that we are keen to continue with as we integrate Traslan into ALS. This move further cements our commitment to MT within our language services provision."

ALS has offered custom-built machine translation engines to customers for two years, having focused its in-house developers on building and tuning custom engines, which can halve translation budgets and more than double translation turnaround speed. This service, which has historically been based upon MOSES open source technology, has attracted projects from a number of high-profile customers including Dell, Caterpillar and Credit Suisse. Demand for MT solutions is expected to increase considerably as the quality of machine translation output and the volumes able to be processed increases due to advancements in technology. The Traslan MT engine will accelerate this development and MT strategy implementation within ALS considerably.

Professor Andy Way, one of the owners of Traslan, became a consultant to ALS in November 2010 and continues to provide knowledge and support for funding bids around further research and development in the area of machine translation. No members of staff will transfer to ALS as a result of the acquisition.

ENDS

Press contact: Anna Simpkins, anna.simpkins@appliedlanguage.com, +44 (0)844 888 7203

About Applied Language Solutions

Applied Language Solutions was founded in 2003 by CEO, Gavin Wheeldon to provide translation and interpreting solutions to global public and private sector organisations. The business employs 135 people across 11 international offices and achieved £7.2million turnover in 2010.