The boss of one of Manchester’s most exciting tech firms will discuss her global growth ambitions at an exclusive event in November.
Patience Tucker is the CEO of digital payments specialist wi-Q, which secured £3m investment from Praetura Ventures in September.
On November 24, Tucker and Praetura’s managing director, David Foreman, will be among the speakers at the first ever quarterly Tech Barometer event.
It’s been organised by tech specialist Fairmont Recruitment and will take place at their new office in Mosley Street.
Tech Barometer will be hosted by award-winning editor Chris Maguire and will discuss everything from confidence levels in the sector, investment and recruitment.
Speaking ahead of the event, Tucker told BusinessCloud that wi-Q had pressed the growth accelerator following the investment.
“The money is to scale and we’re in scale model,” she said. “We have the opportunity to grow 3x in the next year. Our vision is to create a legacy in the hospitality sector in the years to come.
“We’ve taken our time to understand what the hospitality sector actually needs. We are giving customers choice.
“We have seen the staff shortages facing the hospitality sector and we are plugging the gap with technology.”
Tucker has just returned from a trip to the US, which has been identified as a key growth area.
Demand for wi-Q’s services has surged following an increased focus on digitalisation in the hospitality sector, something which has been accelerated by the impact of Covid-19.
Its services include Dash, a platform that allows hospitality venues to manage online food and beverage orders in real-time, and Enterprise, a platform that allows customers to order and pay for food and drink via their smartphone.
Tucker said: “We’ve got sites in the US but we’ve never had the infrastructure to support the sites in the US before. That will catapult our business. The opportunities in the US are enormous.”
Tucker said being a role model in business is important to her but it’s not the most important thing.
“I try to have as much diversity in the senior team as possible,” she said. “I want to inspire people. Being a female, black CEO has become more important but it’s not the most important thing for me. For me it’s about being a leader of integrity.”
Tucker is a mother-of-two young boys and said parenthood shouldn’t be an obstacle in business.
“I don’t want people to feel having children is an issue,” she said. “I balance my work and home life.”
As well as Foreman, she’ll be joined on the speaker panel for the Tech Barometer event by Jack Donohue, CEO and founder of Fairmont Recruitment. Established in 2018, tech specialist Fairmont has pledged to do recruitment differently and switched staff to four-day weeks last year.
- Spaces are limited and will need to be confirmed by the organisers.