An overview presentation by Ben Ravilious of the aims and acheivements for Leicester's tech startup community with ideas for future activity.

1. Leicester Tech Startups
2013 Retrospective
Plans & Ideas for 2014
Ben Ravilious
ben@ultimateweb.co.uk

2. Backstory
• Wanted my company to become more
entrepreneurial
• Decided to create an entrepreneur-led
community of startups following Brad Feld’s
‘Boulder Thesis’ model
• Aimed at engaging with the whole ecosystem
not just the startups themselves
• Rejecting top-down public sector leadership
and zero sum game mentality

3. What is a ‘Startup’?
• “An organization designed to search for a
repeatable and scalable business model”
(Wikipedia)
• “A human institution designed to deliver a
new product or service under conditions of
extreme uncertainty” (Eric Reis)
• A startup is not a smaller version of a large
company

4. What happened in 2013?
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26 Open Coffee meetups
Regular Lean Startups events
First Startup Café at University of Leicester
NASA Space Apps Challenge Hackathon
Launch48 Startup Weekend
A few socials
Website: www.leicesterstartups.com
500+ names on invite list
Google Group with 78 members
Support from LCC and UoL and local supplier
businesses

5. Current startups
…plus MacGuffin, Movieville, TheUniMarket, Spectral-ID & Vidquote

6. Problems
• A lot of people doing their startups in their spare time
or alongside other jobs
• Individuals held back due to lack of certain skills (e.g.
marketing)
• Timing of events excludes some people (e.g. 9-5
workers and students)
• Still some awareness and trust barriers to break down
• Need more ‘doing’ events
• Not quite at a ‘critical mass’ stage
• No superstar success story yet
• Still somewhat reliant on a few key individuals
• Community activity is currently limited to events.

7. Future plans & suggestions
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Find more existing startups?
More engagement with our universities?
Increase diversity of participants?
Establish a news source? (e.g.
http://www.scoop.it/t/leicester-startups)
More evening/weekend events & socials?
More doing events (e.g. hackathons & startup
weekends)?
Learn more from other cities?
Is establishing a ‘tech hub’ feasible/desirable?

8. Your thoughts?
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What’s holding you back?
What skills/experience/connections do you lack?
What events would you like to attend?
What facilities would help you?
Have you seen this done better elsewhere?
• What and who do you know?
• How can you contribute?