Some of Greater Manchester’s top tech leaders lifted the lid on what it’s like to run a business in the region.
All the companies came from BusinessCloud’s GM 125 Rising Stars of Business list, compiled in association with GM Business Growth Hub.
It took place at DiSH (Digital Information Security Hub) in Manchester and was hosted by BusinessCloud executive editor Chris Maguire.
Meet customers face-to-face
Patience Tucker is the CEO of digital payments specialist Wi-Q and said she shared the passion of the founders.
She said: “I’m very old school when it comes to sales. As a refounder, rather than a founder, I’m a caretaker of what the founder started. Just because I wasn’t there on day one doesn’t mean I don’t have the same passions, ethos and strategic vision as they did otherwise I wouldn’t be in this role that I am now 10 years down the line.
“My approach is very much about people. People buy off people. When you’re enterprise selling and you’re selling to multi-billion dollar companies, being at the end of a telephone isn’t enough for them. You need to be face-to-face. They need to understand that you’re going to take care of their brand. You are the ambassador of their brand.
“I sell with heart. You need to understand the pain points of the people you’re selling to. Finding sales people is one of the most difficult roles I’ve ever had to fill.”
We need people who have walked the walk
Laura Pomfret is the co-founder of Financielle, the first finance app built by women, for women
She said: “Manchester’s tech ecosystem is really supportive from a founder perspective. There are a lot of proactive investors, who are trying to do a lot to provide support, events and content.
“There’s a lot of good intention but it lacks an organic network of people who have walked the walk to help practically.
“True operators are few and far between in this ecosystem that have scaled or exited a traditional company through an MBO or private equity transaction. People who have grinded and have had to go through the different level of scale. Those war stories come with the capital.”
Be bolder
Patrick Smith is the CEO of cybersecurity startup Zally, which is on a mission to get rid of passwords.
He said: “There’s a positive year ahead. We need to continue helping each other in Manchester. We also need to be bolder and braver about what we do because that will attract talent.
“Hearing the conversation today, one of the challenges we all have is attracting the right talent. We have a five-day in office policy. We’re competing against a lot of other people and that’s challenging. We are in dev mode and to do that I think we need to be sitting in our cave and doing what we need to do together.”
Aiming for scale
Janine Smith is the director of GM Business Growth Hub, which will be starting its flagship ASCEND Scale Up Programme in September 2024.
She said: “I’m really encouraged by what I’ve heard. I think Manchester’s secret sauce comes from our heritage and the sheer grit that people who came before us had. It makes us want to keep doing it.
“We want to bring more people together who have been there and done it to support people who are coming through. ASCEND sits at the heart of that. I’ve had a few people that have scaled and exited who have said they’re happy to be mentors and want to give back to.”
Investors must be realistic
Mark Hartley is the CEO and founder of banking technology provider BankiFi.
He said: “I think there’s a gap in specialism within the investment organisations in Manchester particularly around growth capital in financial technology, which is where we operate.
“We get pigeon-holed as a FinTech but we sell to banks which means our growth path is very different to a FinTech because our sales cycle can be two to three years.
CEO Mark Hartley
“Investor’s metrics don’t seem to consider this, and they therefore often have unrealistic year-on-year growth expectations.
“There are too many highly paid, often, not very capable, sales people in enterprise technology companies and that is a big problem especially with complex matrix consultative selling into high regulated organisations like banks.
“As a founder one of your biggest problems is how do you find mini me and so how do you scale? Growth and sales people are inextricably linked, so if you can’t find good sales people, the growth metrics the investment community expect can be really, really tough.
Government support
Roger Redfearn-Tyrzyk is the vice president of global gaming at identity verification platform IDnow.
He said: “I was always a huge advocate of having an office in Manchester.
“I think there needs to be a lot more grassroots support in Manchester, which means the universities need to be better linked to businesses.
“From an investment perspective it’s about getting the government, which I have high hopes for with the Labour government because we have so many Northern-based MPs, is that they connect the right people to Manchester, whether that’s PEs or VCs.
“We need to go back in a grassroots way to support the whole ecosystem from start to finish.”
Innovate or die
Nick Richardson founded The Insights Family in 2017 and has just been appointed as an innovation ambassador for Greater Manchester.
He said: “Everything is changing so much. We had Covid, we had Brexit and now we have AI. There are so many factors that are changing the outside world and that’s creating gaps.
“Those gaps are either going to kill your business or you’ve got to think differently. If you think differently through innovation and hustling to make things happen you can create whole new opportunities which can become very significant for you.”
Investment help
Westley Wood is the founder and director of Animation Toolkit, which supplies everything required for stop motion animation.
He said: “We are lucky to be part of this tech ecosystem in Manchester. We’re an emerging tech company and I feel so grateful to be in such an amazing city. We couldn’t be better placed to be developing something that we plan to release. It’s so exciting for us.
“I’d like to see easier access to finance. It’s a road that you need to hustle. We take advice where we can. For me there’s a middle ground between big investment and small business loans and we need to find that middle ground where we slot in and access bigger money without the big tech investment firms shooting us down very quickly.”
We need each other
Matt Hunt is the managing director at digital product consultancy Apadmi , which received significant investment from private equity investor CBPE in 2023.
He said: “We’ve been in mobile for a long time. We believe we’re unique in the type of work that we do.
“If you look at our competition, the people we typically come up against, where we tend to hold our ground is the mobile experience for our consumers.
“We believe there’s a need for that, not just in the UK as we’ve demonstrated but in Europe. We started that journey in the Netherlands and we’re looking across Europe and the US.
“We could not be who we are without all the other tech businesses in Manchester. We’ve been growing for a long time but rely on other tech businesses out there to attract talent.
“We rely on our universities. We need that ecosystem that makes our world easier and likewise we can benefit other companies as well.”
Cracking America
Tom Dunlop is the CEO of LegalTech Summize, which employs 50 people in Manchester and 10 in the US.
He said: “The biggest challenge for us is definitely the noise in the market and the competition and how much they’ve raised.
Tom Dunlop, CEO, Summize
“There are huge funds in the US dedicated to AI which are causing noise and distortion in the market which is quite hard to breakthrough.
“What a lot of US companies want to see is that you have intentions to become a US company.
“From an investment landscape, no US investor will invest in a British company unless they think it will eventually turn into a US company.”
Lack of risk capital
Ian Dixon is the newly-appointed head of Access to Finance at GM Business Growth Hub and said the problem was the availability of risk capital.
He said: “The key takeaway from the discussion is that there isn’t a shortage of capital in the market place. What it is, is a shortage of risk capital.
“We are still, as a finance and funding ecosystem, risk averse and we’re not channelling the right levels of capital into the early stage scaleup businesses.”
International mindset
Nicola Anderson is a senior business advisor at GM Business Growth Hub and urged companies to think internationally and understand the various markets.
She said: “The other thing I’ve taken from today is how do we act as facilitators in this ecosystem bring those people together in this setting and getting those key conversations going? What can we do to help?”
Communicate clearly
Phininder Balaghan is the head of AI and Innovation at intelligence company Naimuri and said companies needed to communicate clearly.
“For any business to succeed you need to be able to tell them what you’re doing,” he said. “Fundamentally we’re going to be using a lot more (AI) in all the stuff that we’re doing. How do you assure your customers that the thing that you’re building is the right thing?
“It’s really important that you’re able to translate all the very cool technical things that you’re doing to the customers and provide those assurances.”
ASCEND: Bringing the ‘power of connection’ to Greater Manchester’s scaleups