A delegation of tech businesses left behind the West Midlands for sunny Lisbon and Web Summit yesterday – and they could be celebrating under the blue skies by tomorrow afternoon.
Yiannis Maos MBE, founder of TechWM, has seen the West Midlands make the final three for the 10th edition of the European Capital of Innovation Awards, an annual recognition prize awarded to cities that best promote innovation in their communities.
The winner, to be selected from the West Midlands, Espoo (Finland) and Turin (Italy) will receive £1m to invest into their tech ecosystem.
“We’re all kind of holding our breath!” he tells BusinessCloud before posing for a photo overlooking the River Targus, close to where it meets the Atlantic Ocean. “But actually, it’s more about the connection to the other finalists and previous recipients of the award.”
Birmingham Tech Week founder Maos, awarded the MBE in last year’s New Year’s Honours for services to the technology sector in Birmingham and the West Midlands, is speaking to me on Tuesday, the first full day at the tech conference attended by more than 71,000 people.
“This morning, for example, we’ve been with Marseille and Lisbon, who won the previous two editions,” he said.
“This event is about making those global connections to benefit the West Midlands, but also the UK as well.”
Victory would see Birmingham host the ceremony next year, possibly as part of Birmingham Tech Week.
Messy… complex… & beautiful
“I set out on this journey six years ago to bring the ecosystem together – not just from collaboration, but also connectivity and partnerships. I think we’ve moved now to more of a strategic collaboration approach,” he says of recent linkups between business support organisations such as TechWM, the West Midlands Combined Authority and the West Midlands Growth Company; the private sector; and the wider region’s universities.
“Birmingham City Council have part-funded this trip to enable some of the businesses across Birmingham and Solihull to get access to international marketing opportunities.
“The real value in events like this – having been to a number of them in my career – is what happens on the fringes. When you get back to the UK, you can watch the talks back… but I guarantee that some of our delegation here today will form new partnerships and work together. And in some respects, you can’t measure the value of that.
“The relationships built on a trip like this last a lifetime and also help everyone to feel like they’re part of the ecosystem at a deeper level. They are then all willing to give back and contribute… and I think that’s what an ecosystem is all about: the sum of all parts, and how we can work together to help one another.
“Any ecosystem is messy and complex, but also beautiful at the same time.”
Bendi
One of the businesses in the delegation is Bendi, a Birmingham-based supply chain risk management software company which recently secured £815,000 in seed funding. Its clients are typically big brands and retailers.
CEO Mandeep Soor says it is using the investment to hire more staff and increase sales. “We’re showing that our model around Proof-of-Concept and tests can be scaled out across a broad range of clients,” she tells me.
“We are also using it to improve the technology: whenever you take something to market, it’s a version of the product – but is it the scalable version? And so we’re building that out.”
CTO Ollie Bacs says he has seen value at Web Summit on the networking side. “I’ve already made a few connections on the first morning,” he says. “Talking to other founders has already given us connections with some of the brands that we want to reach.”
Agilyx
Harpal Mattu is managing director at Agilyx, an IT services company working with Salesforce, Microsoft Azure and Unit4 “to make people’s lives easier through technology”.
The company employs 130 people across Australia, Canada, the UK and now Munich, including 25 on these shores.
“We work with the West Midlands Growth Company, which pretty much brought us to the UK,” he says. “We’re based in Bruntwood’s Innovation Birmingham.”
On the value of Web Summit, he says: “It’s that serendipity you get when coming out with a delegation. You get to meet other people based in the region and spend one-on-one time with them and people like Yiannis.
“We’re also here to learn. We’re in forever-changing times: Web3 is a big thing and you can’t do anything without talking about AI.”