So it’s been a week of good news for Cyacomb, Edinburgh and Scotland, and I thought I would share some of the highlights.
This morning I woke up to the news that Edinburgh has won the Entrepreneurial City of the Year at the Great British Entrepreneur Awards – beating off competition from Cambridge, London, Manchester and Leeds. I’m delighted for everyone in the entrepreneurial community here, having been a part of it for nearly 10 years – first with Salient Point supporting a range of companies, and now as CEO of Cyacomb.
Last week I attended the inaugural Scottish Cyber Awards representing Cyacomb, and I am delighted that we were a runner up for Best Startup – not bad for a company that only received investment a couple of months ago. We’re clearly making our presence felt already!
Last week we also heard that FreeAgent had floated on AIM – we don’t see a huge number of IPOs in Scotland and it’s great to add this one to the tally. Having two Unicorns in Edinburgh has been a great “hook” to attract the interest of investors from outside Scotland, and a recent IPO can only add to that. It’s great that FreeAgent is the first crowdfunded company to get to IPO – demonstrating yet another path to growth capital for crowdfunded companies. The crowdfunding platform concerned is, Seedrs and they are understandably delighted.
This last one is a bit of a self-indulgent addition, but I’ve blogged before about my involvement in Crowdfunding the Blipfoto Rescue. I’m delighted to say that following the re-launch of paid memberships, we have now taken a major step towards operating on a sustainable basis. We now have enough revenue from memberships to operate the site for another year, and if members continue to support us at the same level, there’s no reason we shouldn’t be able to continue indefinitely. I’m personally delighted that we were able to retain free memberships so we don’t exclude those who can’t afford to pay, and we had the confidence to use this model thanks to the excellent consultation process run by Ruth Stevenson – demonstrating yet again her ability to give you have a strong understanding of what your customers want before you launch, so you can get it right first time!
