Brighton email and SMS marketing company Pure360 has attracted £10.6 million in investment with Scottish Equity Partners putting in £6.5 million with the balance from Investec and management.
The news follows recent investor and angel interest in Brighton as VCs look outside London for investment opportunities as well as highlighting how important SMS and email marketing is to the digital ecosystem. Continue reading
There is a long history in Shoreditch and Hackney of empty buildings being occupied by squatters and this tradition appears to be alive and well in digital 2013.
Squatter, rather like the word blogger, sounds like a pernicious term. But over the past 30 years in this part of London vacant buildings have been transformed by these enlightened, rather than benighted, people. Continue reading
* Guest writer Dan Crow is CTO of UK startup Songkick
In Saturday’s Telegraph, blogger Damian Thompson tried to make a case that Silicon Roundabout is home to spoilt luvvies who churn out inconsequential iPhone apps, all the while whining about a lack of government handouts.
Is Thompson right, or is there something more substantial going on in London’s tech scene?
Stripped of the hyperbole, Thompson’s criticisms boil down to: the entrepreneurs of Silicon Roundabout are enthusiastic; they haven’t delivered anything of worth (but other parts of the UK have); UK tech entrepreneurs aren’t as aggressive as their Silicon Valley counterparts and spend all their time asking for government handouts instead of building businesses. Continue reading
* This is the first post by James Devonport Wood, MD of accredited Facebook developer PageHub
There is a significant gap in Europe for early stage funding for startups seeking less than £500,000. While new funds and incubators are starting to emerge, the lack of finance available is leaving European tech businesses at a disadvantage to their North American counterparts.
For many startups, bootstrapping a business is the only method of starting a company although this does have its advantages. Bootstrapped startups are more likely to have a more realistic business model and to be profitable early on. Continue reading
How many of you are following venture capitalist companies on Twitter? Not many I would suggest and I doubt you would be surprised if I told you most VC companies on Twitter are utter rubbish.
VCs, I know, I know, are the devil but it is beyond belief that they treat social media with disdain at the same time as investing in social media. It’s almost as if they’re asking people to hate them.
Startups can’t live without VCs and in a proper, perfect world following VCs on Twitter would be imperative for any young company. Tweets about the companies they’re interested in, sectors they want to be involved in, engagement with the startup community, interesting tips, the whole works. Startups would LOVE to be led by VCs. Continue reading