Having teamed up with Hunter Morris, Jason Trost launched, betting exchange platform Smarkets in London, in 2010.
Quickly picked up by The Wall Street Journal as one of Europe’s 10 young companies to watch and the subject of much press attention, most recently being featured in Decembers edition of Wired, we caught up with Jason at Smarkets office in Clerkenwell.
Silicon Roundabout based Holition were formed as a venture start up and use cutting edge 3D digital solutions for point of sale marketing and create augmented reality apps for use in store, on mobile and online. Visited by Nick Clegg and Vince Cable we decided it was our turn to meet Jonathan Chippindale, CEO!
London Fashion Week started on February 17th and in the Evening Standard article ‘The shapes of things to come in fashion‘ (Friday Feb 3rd) US fashion blogger Anina says it will be “the style worlds most technologically advanced event yet….virtual reality technology will change the way shows are viewed, while electronic tags in clothes and
codes printed on them will give information via an iphone or ipad, or let customers
When we sat down to draw up our shortlist of ‘influencers’ for our ‘Ask The Expert’ panel we were very mindful of the key themes for 2012 and particularly the ‘Social Graph’. The importance of drawing upon first hand experience in both recommendation and decision making is set to loom large in the digital age.
Over the last couple of weeks we have announced four fantastic panel members in Colette Ballou (Ballou PR), Calum Murray and Andy Moseby (Kemp Little LLP). Today we are thrilled to complete the team!
Its very easy to get carried along with the weekly chatter about the ‘commercialisation’ of ‘Silicon Roundabout’.
Clerkenwell, Farringdon, Shoreditch and Hoxton continue to witness an influx of the creative, determined and visionary but that really doesn’t mean that the area is set to become a soulless, vanilla copy of other areas of London that many argue have lost their identity to the cash of the ubiqitous ‘brand x’!
Much has been made of the term ‘charm’ in its many guises, but in particular in terms of its loss by way of retail experience, to the desire for fast ‘no nonsense’ service.
Are we living in some utopian dream to think change does not mean the end of ‘charm’? No, and here are four of our favourite coffee/breakfast stops!
You would be hard pressed to have missed the raft of press articles over the last couple of months that have brought the role of public relations in its myriad forms to the forefront of our consciousness. Operating at national (take a look at Monocle magazines article ‘TENDER IS THE MIGHT-Global‘ January 2012) or domestic level (‘Now PR firms must reveal their fees“, Evening Standard 18th January 2012) there are only a few serious individuals that we would have considered hard to ignore in approaching for the role of public relations guru on our ‘Ask The Expert Panel‘!
In deciding upon the appropriate lawyers for our ‘Ask The Expert’ panel we wanted a firm that represented amongst others the award winning (AKQA were Adweeks Agency of the year), newsworthy (‘Lovefilm Signs BBC And ITV Deals in Netflix TV Battle’ Guardian 6th January 2012) and tech-savvy disruptive clients (‘Spotify apps are a big deal, and a real challenge to iTunes’ CNet UK, 2 December 2011)!
Calum Murray heads Kemp Little’s top rated TMT and digital media team. Andy Moseby is a corporate partner and digital media specialist in ‘computer games’. We are delighted that not only have they joined the Silicon Roundabout expert panel but have hit the ground running with their ‘Top 10 Legal Tips For Start-ups’;
‘Tech Entrepreneurs week’ was an eye opener in many ways, one of which was the almost insatiable desire from the audience to accumulate as much knowledge as possible from the various ‘keynote speakers’ assembled. Allied to the infectious passion from the many startups we have met in the ‘Silicon Roundabout’ area who might be termed visionaries, disruptors etc has led us to add a new dimension to our blog, a feature which we will be launching towards the end of January 2012.
We call it simply ‘Ask the Expert’.
Bringing together a collection of individuals that would grace any top 100 list of ‘influencers’ when it comes to perceptive and hopefully persuasive advice we start announcing our team shortly!
Following Sherry Coutu’s piece for us last week ‘What to remember about angel investors?’ we thought we would ask Wellington, General Partner, Daniel Waterhouse a question we have been asked over the last few months by numerous ‘Silicon Roundabout’ based startups;
‘What are the magic ingredients a digital startup should possess to become a potential investment!’
Ranked 62 in Wired Magazine’s Top 100 of the UK’s digital powerbrokers and with a portfolio that includes Adviqo, Artfinder, Hailo, Livebookings, Qype and Zopa, Daniel’s thoughts are well worth listening to!
The incredible ‘vibe’ be it on entering Techhub or The Trampery at Silicon Roundabout, grabbing a coffee at The Bookclub (Leonard Street) or sitting in the audience at Tech Entrepreneurs Week (as we did!) amongst a multitude of startups is more than tangible!
Not unexpected is the constant desire for entrepreneurs to engage with investors. With this in mind we are delighted to bring you a top tip list from arguably the best in the business.
Sherry Coutu was voted by TechCrunch as the best CEO mentor/advisor in Europe in November 2010. In May 2011, she was voted by Wired magazine as one of the top 25 ‘most influential people in the wired world’ and one of the top ten most influential investors and women.
Zetland House, Scrutton Street is in the heart of ‘Silicon Roundabout’. An old print works for The Bank of England, it now provides refurbished loft style open plan offices with original restored timber floorboards, good natural daylight and central courtyard. For founders Tony Andrews and Jamie White it has hopefully provided a point of differentiation from the competition based in Noho, Soho and Covent Garden and another successful relocation by Kushner!
With a developing client base including BAA, STA Travel and Olswang and an increasing staff roster we popped back to catch up with founder Tony Andrews and asked him how things were going and what the future held?
