Agenda
9.30am - Train to Bath
11.00-12.15 Rocketmakers Bath
12.30 - Train to Bristol
1.00-2.15 Lunch at EngineShed
TIGERS 🐯
2.30 Graphcore
3.15 Creative England
LIONS 🦁
2.30 Xmos
3.25 Ultrahaptics
4.00 Ferry
4.15 - Gather at FloatingHarbourStudios
4.30 - Panel
5.30 - Drinks at Severnshed
6.30 - Dinner (for those preregistered) at Severnshed - thanks to Smith&Williamson!
8.30 - Dinner close - option to go to King’s Street bar/Train back to London
Organisers
Oli Barrett MBE- Connector, Co-founder, Presenter
Oli Barrett is a serial founder who enjoys making useful connections between people and ideas.
He created Tenner, the UK's largest schools enterprise challenge, in which over 250,000 pupils have made money and made a difference in a month, starting with just ten pounds. He co-founded Volunteer It Yourself (VIY), the social venture, which has helped thousands of young people to fix their own youth clubs and is the founder of TOTS (Turn on the Subtitles), the children's literacy campaign. His first job was at Walt Disney World in Florida, and his first experience in television was working on the launch of Bob the Builder. He co-founded The Rainmakers (an innovation and incubation company) in 2004, which continues to operate out of San Francisco. From 2008, he co-created and led eleven international trade missions (including WebMission and the Clean and Cool Mission), to help companies succeed overseas. In 2011, he co-founded StartUp Britain, launched by the British Prime Minister and funded by the private sector. The campaign led to the creation of PitchUp Britain (with John Lewis and Sainsbury's) and PopUp Britain, with the opening of shops around the UK. Oli hosts The Lens podcast with Business in the Community, which pairs senior leaders with future leaders, to discuss the future of work. He is a regular conference and awards host, for events across education, technology and entrepreneurship. He is on the advisory boards of Tech London Advocates, One Million Mentors and Troubadour Theatres, and is a Fellow of impact incubator and business builder Zinc. His latest venture, The Connector Unit, founded in 2016, forges valuable and creative connections across a range of sectors and industries.
Nick Sturge MBE - Director, Engine Shed
Nick has a first in Electronics and Computing and after working at semiconductor business, Inmos, he co-founded Motion Media Technology which listed in 2000 hitting a £270m valuation.
Nick grew the Bristol SETsquared business incubator to be ranked the world’s best university business incubator, in 2015 & 2018.
In 2013, Nick co-founded Engine Shed, a collaboration between Bristol University and City Council, to drive inclusive growth.Nick is a National IoD Council member, vice-chair of the West of England LEP High Tech Sector Group and on the steering board of TechSW. He was awarded an MBE for services to the digital economy, in the 2019 Birthday Honours List.
Heather Macdonald Tait - Founder, WHY Communications
Before founding WHY Communications, Heather worked for four years at Bristol-based deep-tech company Ultrahaptics. Prior to that, she spent over a decade in semiconductor companies - Phyworks and Maxim Integrated. Her expertise spans traditional communications, from media relations to digital marketing, and international product and distribution marketing.
Heather sits on the Board of High Tech Bristol and Bath (HBB), which works with high tech companies in the West of England to promote, enhance and develop the tech clusters in the region. She is an active member of several networking and steering groups in the South West, and is passionate about promoting diversity and inclusion.
A proud (albeit adopted) Bristolian, Heather regularly hosts journalists from leading publications on tours of Bristol’s tech scene, showcasing the variety of creative technologists in the region.
Rachel Hearne - Events Director, Forgather
Rachel Hearne is Events Director at Forgather, an events company that co-creates and manages programmes for clients including Microsoft for Startups, Balderton Capital, Criteo, CognitionX and Weatherbys Private Bank and works with organisations championing entrepreneurism, including Young Enterprise and SVC2UK.
Rachel has recently moved to Bristol, and is heading up Forgather’s entry into the tech scene in the South West.
ScaleUp Institute
The ScaleUp Institute builds on the pioneering research and recommendations published in the 2014 Scale-Up Report. The Institute collaborates with policy makers, corporate partners and educational establishments to take these recommendations forward, to track the targets set out in the report, and to make a real and identifiable impact.
We aim to advance understanding of how to scale up a business, and how to build the most effective environment in which scaleups can flourish. We spread best practice, providing opportunities for scaleup companies across industry sectors and regions to meet and share ideas. We undertake research, thought leadership and targeted projects with partners.
We work with policy makers to identify opportunities that will support scaleup businesses. We share our methodology and ideas to create resources that will help aspiring scaleup businesses. We keep scaleups and their issues at the top of the UK political and business agenda.
Bath Ecosystem
RICHARD GODFREY - CEO, Rocketmakers (and our kind host)
Experienced and trusted CTO, software architect, investor, entrepreneur and innovator with a demonstrated history of delivering major systems via Rocketmakers, Microsoft and Deloitte over the last 25 years. Focused on helping innovative start-ups, scale-ups and corporates of all shapes and sizes deliver disruptive and engaging customer experiences through the application of new technology.
ROSIE BENNETT – Centre Manager, SETSquared Bath
Rosie manages activities and networks at the Innovation Centre, and is ambassador for university enterprise internally and externally. Rosie has experience in broadcast and interactive media, having joined BBC Online in its formative years. In 1999 she moved to Amsterdam, where she launched and ran the entertainment portals for UPC Broadband (a pan European Telecommunications company owned by Liberty Global). She went on to become Production Director of the team that deployed a multilingual interactive TV product on multiple set top box technologies
ALEX BUTLER - Bath University
JIM MORRISON - Founder, OneSub and CEO Deep Blue Sky
A digital expert with a deep understanding of business, sales & marketing and emerging technologies.
Owner of Deep Blue Sky; an award-winning digital transformation agency in Bath. We help companies grow by automating workflow and improve staff and customer engagement.
Director of Bath Digital Festival; a week-long, award-winning digital festival engaging schools, universities and everyday people with the latest local and global technology.
Founder of twiDAQ; a million+ strong Twitter stock exchange game and of Achieve Awesome; an intelligent, learning agency management system for busy, productive teams.
DAVID MAHER ROBERTS - TechSPARK and Global MD Dialect
David is a massive fan of the west country having run a number of companies in Bristol and Bath as well as being the founder of TechSPARK (the tech and digital hub for the Bristol & Bath area) and The SPARKies (the tech annual awards for the Bristol and Bath area). He was one of the participants in the very first Webmission to San Francisco when he was CEO of The Filter - a music and film recommendation engine startup. These days David is Global MD of Dialect, an audience engagement agency for the tech and gaming sectors with its HQ in San Francisco and offices in both Bath and London.
NATHAN MORGAN - Shaw & Co
Nathan runs the Scaleup practice at Shaw & Co, helping Founders prepare for and secure investment. We are just launching a free Funding Academy, bringing in a range of subject matter experts to supplement our support over a series of 5 workshops, to ensure businesses are ready to present to investors.
Host Companies
CREATIVE ENGLAND - Hosted by Investment Officer, Matt Browning
Creative England uncovers, connects and backs the best original storytellers; driving diversity, collaboration and growth in the creative screen industries. Our vision is for England’s creative people and businesses to be the most innovative and successful in the world. Creative England creates opportunities for new voices, products and services to emerge, helping to build inclusive, sustainable creative communities. We mobilise public and private resources to make this possible. We partner with commercial brands, like Sky Arts and Xbox, along with local authorities, universities and European bodies. We invest in talented people and their creative ideas, nurturing our richly diverse games, TV, film and digital media industries. From direct investment and loans to business mentoring; we champion the best ideas of talented people and their businesses.
1st Floor College House, 32-36 College Green, Bristol BS1 5SP
GRAPHCORE - Hosted by VP Marketing Sally Doherty
Graphcore has created a new processor, the Intelligence Processing Unit (IPU), specifically designed for artificial intelligence. The IPU’s unique architecture means developers can run current machine learning models orders of magnitude faster. More importantly, it lets AI researchers undertake entirely new types of work, not possible using current technologies, to drive the next great breakthroughs in general machine intelligence. We believe our IPU technology will become the worldwide standard for artificial intelligence compute. The performance of Graphcore’s IPU is going to be transformative across all industries and sectors whether you are a medical researcher, roboticist or building autonomous cars.
Prudential Buildings Wine St, Bristol BS1 2PH
ULTRAHAPTICS - Hosted by CFO Chris Olds
Ultrahaptics is the world leader in mid-air haptics. Our breakthrough haptic technology uses ultrasound to create rich, three-dimensional shapes and textures that can be felt, but not seen. With our technology, tools and expertise you can add amazing haptics to virtual objects, develop immersive holographic interfaces, and augment gesture control with natural tactile feedback. You can unlock the true potential of touch. We believe mid-air haptics will revolutionise how we interact. We are on a mission to create a safer, cleaner and more magical world.
The West Wing, Glass Wharf, Bristol BS2 0EL
XMOS - Hosted by Corporate Marketing Director, Esther Connock
With a 10-year pedigree in Hi-Res and multichannel USB audio solutions, XMOS is at the forefront of the far-field voice interface market, combining state of the art sound processing and artificial intelligence to deliver outstanding results. Adopted by leading brands, our high-performance solutions are transforming consumers’ interactions with everyday devices. Today our unique silicon architecture and differentiated software delivers class-leading far field voice capture, And we’re building for a more natural human machine interface tomorrow. When you need to embed voice capabilities, proven to work seamlessly in real-world situations – talk to us.
Queens Quay, 33 - 35 Queen Square, Bristol BS1 4LU
Panelists
SIMON TUTTON - Business Development Director - Deepbridge Captial
With a wealth of experience in investments, tax efficient strategies and pensions; Simon’s role is to develop and manage relationships with intermediaries across the South West of England and South Wales. Simon is a Chartered Member of the CISI, is DipPFS qualified and has worked, as a stockbroker or financial adviser, for various financial services organisations including St James’s Place, Edward Jones and Siddall’s.
BRIONY PHILLIPS - Associate Director and Scaleup Enabler, Engine Shed
Briony is Associate Director at Engine Shed and West of England Scale up Enabler. Briony champions the scale-up business ecosystem and works to overcome challenges faced by fast-growth companies such as access to investment and office space availability. She runs a variety of organisational development projects for Engine Shed including the recently launched website and community cluster-building activities.
PETER BALL - Partner - Smith & Williamson
Peter Ball has worked in Bristol and Bath since 2002 and prior to that he worked in Cambridge. He is a partner at Smith & Williamson, the professional services firm and he leads the Smith & Williamson Scale-Up programme in the South West. He focuses day to day on tax advice for founders and the management teams of fast growth businesses in both Bristol and London.
KEMPTON CANNONS - Chief Executive Officer - Techmodal
With over 20 years’ experience as a Supply Chain subject matter expert and consultant across Government and Commercial sectors, Kempton’s expertise has seen him lead global teams to Supply Chain success. He also holds 15+ years’ experience working in the Defence sector alongside the likes of the MOD, Lockheed Martin, BAE, Rolls-Royce and Leonardo, making him perfectly placed to lead Techmodal as our CEO.