Our inaugural Greater Manchester campaign came to a close on Tuesday 17th October as we announced the businesses that made our Tech Climbers list. As well as celebrating and networking with the region as we built up to the reveal, we also invited founders and industry stakeholders to the stage to talk about their growth journeys and the opportunities in the region.
Hosted by Chris Maguire, editor at BusinessCloud, a main theme from the evening was ‘the best is yet to come’. With so many amazing founders and businesses in attendance, we can’t wait to see what Manchester’s ecosystem will have delivered by the time we return in 2024.
Let’s break down what our speakers had to say…
Keeping the momentum as you scale
First to take to the floor was Peak founder, Richard Potter. Although he’s scaled his businesses to a global level, he spoke about how the team have to continue adapting to the market and look ahead to the next future goal. He said:
“You think the bigger you get, the easier it gets but that’s not the case. That doesn’t stop us from enjoying it. Founders don’t look back very often, we’re always looking towards our next goal. Having said that, it’s good to practice on reflection and looking at where you’re at, what you’re doing and what you’ve pulled off.”
Greater Manchester has the potential to be a global player in tech
Reflecting on his recent trip to Silicon Valley, Richard spoke about how Manchester needs to scale its thinking if it wants to compete with the global players, which he believes the region is more than capable of. He explained:
“California’s economy is the same size as the UK, and then on top of that, the scale and ambition of the companies over there is massive.
“There’s so much going on in Manchester, but there are certain parts of the ecosystem that aren’t fully established. We need to be honest with ourselves about what we’ve got and what we can take advantage of to build a global business.”
Liz Scott, programme director of Turing Innovation Catalyst also spoke about Manchester’s ambitions, saying,
“We’re really good at assessing where we are and talking about all the things that are missing and that are ‘wrong’, but what we forget is we’re the most important UK tech ecosystem outside of London. That is incredible for a city that isn’t necessarily the natural successor to that ‘UK crown’ in terms of a great ecosystem.”
Using TikTok to remain competitive in your space
Holly Holland, co-founder of Finacielle spoke about how they’ve taken advantage of TikTok’s search functionality to compete against some of the bigger players in their space. Financielle is a global budgeting app with a female focus. With users in 188 countries, the company made our Ones to Watch list in Greater Manchester.
Speaking about using the platform for fast-paced experimentation and speaking directly to their audience, Holly noted that it’s so expensive to compete in their space, so they’re using the platform as a means to think outside the box. She said:
“We are obsessed with our customers. We do customer reviews twice a week, minimum. We use quotes, not notes and that is what informs the content that we put out on TikTok.
“TikTok is becoming a search engine. So, you need to know the customer's problem to put out a video that can solve their problem”
A founder isn’t always a great CEO
VYPR is a product-intelligence platform that allows businesses to gather feedback from 250 consumers in about 90 minutes. Speaking about his recent decision to appoint his CFO to CEO, he explained,
“I’m very good at doing the 0-5 hustle. I think it’s a very different skill set when it comes to taking a business from 60 people to 200 people. I’ve tried my best to be humble and get the right people in the right seat at the right time. The leadership team has changed several times during different phases of growth.”
A new AI accelerator programme is launching in the region
As we’ve already mentioned, Liz Scott, programme director at TIC spoke on our first panel of the evening. She announced the recent launch of the Turning Innovation Catalyst in the region, explaining that the project would include a programme of exciting activities, including an AI accelerator, a venture builder, talent and skills programmes, plus collaborative R&D. She continued,
“Underpinning all of the activity, TIC will be taking custody of the AI ecosystem, figuring out what we’ve got, figuring out what’s missing and trying to plug those gaps. As a city, we’ve had such fantastic success stories, like Peak and Atelier, that have organically scaled into the city, but we’d like to ensure we’ve created an infrastructure to support the next wave of AI scaleups.”
We’re excited to see how it will shape the ecosystem. Find out more about the Turning Innovation Catalyst by heading to their website.
Manchester needs more business exposure
Speaking about her experience of moving her business to Manchester, Ayaan Mohamed Ali, founder of Digitech Oasis spoke about the collaborative environment in the region. Having lived and worked in Kenya, Leeds and London, she praised Manchester, saying,
“Manchester holds a special place in my heart. Regardless of where you go, there’s a supportive network but Manchester has an unparalleled level of collaboration.”
Although in agreement with Ayaan, Charles Veys, founder of FOTENIX, spoke about how he’d like to see more exposure and transparency in Manchester. He said,
“I’ve been working in the industry for 15 years and I’m still tripping over businesses that have been here for ages, doing interesting things that I didn’t know about.”
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Be as lean as possible before raising investment
Our last speaker of the evening was Richard West, managing director of Red Flag Alert. Speaking on the business's recent experience of raising capital, he explained that they went into the process with little experience, which paired with the climate and their decision to only target UK investment firms, didn’t help the lengthy process.
When asked about a piece of advice he’d give to others looking to raise funds, he spoke about Red Flag Alert’s decision to reach £2.5M in turnover before raising funds, explaining,
“A lot of people get seduced into wanting to announce that they’ve received Seed or Series A funding. My advice would be to build a sales machine that works and is stable and try and be as lean as possible until you reach the point where you need to go out and raise funding.”
Download the list
To make Tech Climbers happen, we need support and entrants and Manchester showed up on both fronts. As you will see from our list of businesses, some amazing stories are coming out of the region at the moment.
If you haven’t already, download a copy of the list and data report to unlock the growth story behind Greater Manchester!
