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A Special 2-Day MiniBarCamp in August

‘Perfect Your Pitch: Fundraise & Accelerate Your Business’

MiniBarCamp
Ravensbourne College, Greenwich Peninsula, London
21 & 22 August 2013
Full programme & RSVP

MiniBarLabs invite you to a special two-day conference that is free to attend for London-based businesses in the creative/tech sectors, held in partnership with Ravensbourne’s Digital Media Innovation Consultancy (DMIC) incubator programme.

The event is open to all those seeking ways to accelerate company growth and you have to be a London based small business to qualify. Over the course of two days you will attend a mixture of talks, workshops and pitching sessions held with some of the UK’s top investors, entrepreneurs and large-scale tech and media company managers.

Speakers include Matthew Stafford from Collider12, Jon Bradford from Techstars UK and Reshma Sohoni from SeedCamp

See here for the full programme and confirmed list of speakers.

In addition to workshops and talks you will have an opportunity to gain exposure to a range of successful industry figures, venture capitalists and investors. On the second day we are offering participants the chance to pitch to a panel of experts and get valuable feedback on their ideas. Two winners of the pitching session will gain a place on a Mini-Seedcamp, one of the best accelerator programmes in Europe, which might lead to investment.

With over 100 different companies from the creative and tech sectors in attendance, the conference will also be a place to share experience and knowledge with peers through group evaluations and breakout sessions.

Finally, to round-off the event and celebrate some of the talent participating in the conference, MiniBar will move from its usual watering-hole in Shoreditch down to Ravensbourne in Greenwich for a special meetup supported by our friends at Pinsent Masons. (note: RSVP’s for this part of the event are separate)

It promises to be a jam-packed event. Sign up today and secure your place!

Hope to see you there….

Your MiniBar Team

 

Video: MiniBar x Queen Mary

At the end of May we teamed up with Queen Mary, University of London to hear from the creators of the magnetic resonator piano, London Eye Mood Conductor and founders of social analytics spinout Chatterbox.  We also heard about how collaboration can be funded by Creativeworks London.

Interviewees

CreativeWorks London – Pat Healey

TouchKeys – Andrew McPherson

London Eye Mood Conductor – Evan Morgan

Chatterbox – Matt Purver

Queen Mary’s Legal Incubator – Amanda Brock

MiniBar x Qualcomm x Nokia

On the 13th of June we will have a very special MiniBar with Qualcomm and Nokia.  If you are developer, agency or run a start up this one is for you. Both Qualcomm and Nokia have lots of ways to promote your app, help with building it and to use their channels to assist with growth. As per usual we will be downstairs at Mother, have some free drinks, mingle and network.
Please RSVP here.

We will hear about the Qualcomm Developer Network which povides tools and resources to create exceptional mobile experiences and bring them to market. QDevNet provides the software and hardware tools to help you create differentiated user experiences, channels to global markets and business connections to major mobile operators and device makers.

Likewise Nokia Developer offers a range of tools, resources and technologies to help developers build cutting-edge apps. Developers from around the world are increasingly publishing apps for hundreds of millions of Nokia Lumia Windows Phones and Nokia Asha phones. There are now more than 145,000 apps in the Windows Phone Store and over 17 million downloads take place from the Nokia app store.

Program:

– QDEVnet Developer Program
Julian Harris, Senior Business Development Manager, Qualcomm

-Differentiating your Apps with API’s
Special Guest; David Whitby, UK & Ireland Country Manager, Gameloft

– Empowering your mobile development
Speaker: TBC
– A look at the popular IOS, Android, WP8 Didlr app
Rich Holdsworth, CEO, Wapple @richholdsworth

– AppCampus (Nokia & Microsoft mobile accelerator program)
Riaz Ahmed, Developer Evangelist, Nokia, @TheRealRiaz

Apps for the next billion: Developer opportunity
Riaz Ahmed, Developer Evangelist, Nokia, @TheRealRiaz

Term Sheet Negotiation Skills with Jonathan Snade

Term Sheet Negotiation Skills with Jonathan Snade
Partner, Manches LLP
@JonathanSnade, @ManchesLaw

On Thursday we gathered at the Manches LLP offices in Holborn to flex our muscles in horse trading – getting our heads around negotiating the nature of business with new investors through the term sheet. It is a delicate art of hard bargaining and shrewd exchange that enables the best deal for your business when going out for rounds of fundraising and it’s one that shouldn’t be done without the advice of an experienced lawyer or two.

We began the session by exploring the structure and vocabulary of the term sheet, an important piece of paper that defines the spirit of the deal, covering clauses such as; investor stakes, anti-diloution provisions, liquidation preference, construction of the board, vesting, etc. It’s not a legally binding document but as you move into the formal stages it is difficult to deviate away.

From there the group was given a case study and divided into two parties and then into teams of two; investors and founders. Each team had 30 mins to privately devise a strategy for negotiation and were then let loose at the table with their potential business partners. With the whiff of competition in the air things began to heat up. After many an enthusiastic debate, handshake and satisfied smile, deals were struck and the workshop drew to a close as the group compared results and decided on a winner.

Many thanks to Jonathan and Manches LLP for a great evening, as one person mailed afterwards – ‘really useful intro and it covers all the stuff you don’t get in an MBA’. You heard it here, the MiniMBA, from the street only!

The Tech Business MiniMBA is delivered by MiniBarLabs in partnership with the ICT KTN

The TechBusiness MiniMBA series addresses common business issues in web and tech companies. Our presenters are successful entrepreneurs, CTOs, investors, accountants and lawyers, who are amongst the best in the UK’s web sector. To find out more about the series and RSVP to upcoming events please see here.

CodeMaker Review in Huffington Post

We just saw that Huffington Post has published a review of our CodeMaker course. Jamie Tolentino, who went on the course a few weeks ago, writes:

“The day started off with a condensed history of computing and the web. Unless you’ve taken up computer science 101 or something similar, you will still probably pick up something new. The session covered topics like the abacus, the early days of a computer through to the early days of what a program is, and how patterns, AI, binary and the Internet came about to be. It’s probably one of the best intro to computing and web sessions that I’ve ever been to.”

While she (the reviewer) has clearly been to similar courses, she still found the course challenging and learnt new things, but we should probably take from the feedback that all learning is individual and that it can be a quite fast paced learning experience for some.

She points out that:

“(…)this course is tailored for beginners as it assumes no prior coding knowledge. However, it is definitely a bit fast-paced and geared for those who are more curious and are open to tinkering with things as they learn about them.”

 

And she ends the article with:

“CodeMaker does what it says on the tin (…), you will definitely come away with a better understanding of how digital products are made by knowing the bare basics of code.”

Thanks Jamie for the well written review.

 

 

MiniBar x Northern Ireland video

If you could not make it to the last MiniBar check out the video featuring five interesting new tech start ups from Northern Ireland. Our friends from the NISPO fund invested in them and were so kind to bring them over. There seems be lots of opportunities to open a business in Northern Ireland. The developers are cheaper, it is easier to raise investment and grants and last but not least rents are cheaper as well (even if you can’t understand a bloody word of what they are talking about after a couple of pints).

The video features the following companies:

Aaron Taylor – Goprezzo
Breda Doherty – Hubb it
Vincent Breslin – Sians Plan

Chris Johnston – Adoreboard
Patrick Cutliffe  – Choorp

Fundraising for Startups with Tom Allason of Shutl

This Wednesday we had the pleasure of listening to the sage (don’t let that youthful exterior fool you) advice of one of London’s most successful fundraisers and logisticians, Tom Allason. Tom is founder and CEO of Shutl, a web service that connects retailers with local same-day courier companies, enabling the rapid delivery of online purchases in as little as 90 minutes. Before Shutl, Tom was also founder and CEO of eCourier, the online courier company whose purple vans are instantly recognisable around London.

It seems to be that an entrepreneur will dedicate her/his life to continuously improving upon the previous model, never resting on their laurels for long enough to get cold feet. From his own progression through the rocky heights of several successful start-ups Tom states that there are many ways and means to ensure that each new venture need not be exposed to the same potential pitfalls time and again. Here is a brief, but hopefully not too reductive, pieces of advice:

  • – Go as far as you can on your own buck to keep larger control and therefore, percentage share. Many start-ups loose their sheen to the founder when they begin to loose a sense of ownership.

– Who you connect to and surround yourself with is as important as how good your product/service is. Consider who within the investment landscape would be in line with your ideas and target them from the beginning. Ask people you admire to be part of your advisory board. There are many experienced people out there who are very willing to act in an advisory capacity to younger counterparts. Not only can they provide an excellent source of critique for ideas but they will be able to connect you to others within their network that can help.

Get your product/service out there as much as possible in the early stages to help attract further investment.

– Invest time and effort in the details of the termsheet when going for venture capital funds. If you’d like to learn more about this very important bit of paper we run a workshop as part of this series – because we’re good like that!

Many thanks to Tom who was, as always, a constant source of inspiration.

 

The Tech Business MiniMBA is delivered by MiniBarLabs in partnership with the ICT KTN

The TechBusiness MiniMBA series addresses common business issues in web and tech companies. Our presenters are successful entrepreneurs, CTOs, investors, accountants and lawyers, who are amongst the best in the UK’s web sector. To find out more about the series and RSVP to upcoming events please see here.

IP Basics for Tech Businesses with Wiggin LLP

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On a gloriously sunny evening we kick started our new Tech Business MiniMBA series with a bang at the Wiggin LLP offices up above the throng in central London.

 

Wiggin LLP is a boutique firm of solicitors specialising in the media and technology sectors and we were lucky enough to have three experts in their field from the firm on hand; Ciaran Hickey (Senior Associate, Corporate), David Deakin (Consultant, Digital Media Group) and Gurminder Panesar (Solicitor, Technology). Together, over the course of 90 minutes, they provided a solid overview of the key Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) involved when starting a technology company.

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By all accounts there are lots of legal snags that can come back to haunt you if you are not conscientious from the outset. This especially true for start-ups as they are, in large part, inventors, and so it’s the expression of the idea that creates worth, in not owning this in full you are risking the valuation of the company.

The team were keen to emphasise how important it is to have all your legal ducks in a row when it comes to trademarks, copyright and patents, etc. This could appear to be a large task and therefore can often be an ignored part of the process when starting a business however, if you approach it in a thoughtful manner from the outset and seek some level of advice (whether that be through personal research or by asking a professional), it can be assessed and dealt with swiftly, leaving you with a piece of mind to continue.

Many thanks to Wiggin LLP for their time, hospitality and knowledge

 

The Tech Business MiniMBA is delivered by MiniBarLabs in partnership with the ICT KTN

The TechBusiness MiniMBA series addresses common business issues in web and tech companies. Our presenters are successful entrepreneurs, CTOs, investors, accountants and lawyers, who are amongst the best in the UK’s web sector. To find out more about the series and RSVP to upcoming events please see here.