Supporting Empact Ventures in Manchester
Manoj
I recently took part in Super Connect Manchester event organised by Kosta Mavroulakis and the team at Empact Ventures. If I recall, I first met Kosta at Johnny Cadden’s Business Rocks event in Manchester where he organised an investor pitching event. It was nice of Kosta to remember me and invite me to be part of his event.
I joined a panel to discuss startups and corporates, which ended up focusing on two areas:
- How to sell to corporates
- How to sell your company to corporates
Unfortunately, the panel was biased towards startups with only Alex Palladin representing a larger business, in addition to our Chair, Keri working with larger businesses. I shared some of my experiences of trying to pitch to larger businesses (e.g. ebdex electronic invoicing exchange to United Utilities, UnifiedVU to Barclays Bank, etc). James spoke about operating below the tendering limit to win enterprise customers via paid pilots, whilst Alex spoke about their preference to acquire technology suppliers, where possible.
The event also presented a chance to get to know James and also discuss a potential partnership for one of Techcelerate Member companies. The day even got better when the only attendee from Techcelerate Member companies confirmed signing up of their first enterprise customer.
[su_button url=”https://www.canumeet.com/techcelerate” target=”blank” style=”flat” size=”14″ center=”yes” icon=”icon: arrow-right” desc=””]Schedule a Call with Manoj[/su_button]
It was good to meet Susan Kabani of uGenie Hubs, a competitor to Padoq who passionately described what her company is building. Hope she took my advice to spend £10.50 and explore what made Padoq change their business model.
As I no longer run speaker led tech events, it was nice to be involved with another organisation making a difference. Thanks, Kosta for remembering me and letting me be a part of your event.