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Midlands

Find support and useful resources, make new contacts and discover events in your local community

What’s new in the Midlands?

Community

Meet the Rising Stars regional winners: the Midlands’ five top early-stage companies

By Kane Fulton, December 7, 2020

⏱ 4 min read

Community

What happened next for our 10 Rising Stars 2.0 winners

By Kane Fulton, October 8, 2020

⏱ 7 min read

Community

16 exciting companies helping to create a more sustainable future

By Kane Fulton, July 3, 2020

⏱ 8 min read

Community

16 innovative AI companies to watch in 2020

By Kane Fulton, July 2, 2020

⏱ 8 min read

Community

15 exciting FinTech companies to watch in 2020

By Kane Fulton, July 1, 2020

⏱ 7 min read

Community

Tech Nation Talks Midlands: down to earth with a bright digital future

By Kane Fulton, June 2, 2020

⏱ 5 min read

How to

The working from home stack: tools, tips and solutions for founders and remote teams

By Kane Fulton, April 23, 2020

⏱ 6 min read

Community

Welcome to Tech Nation’s new National Network pages

By Kane Fulton, March 15, 2020

⏱ 3 min read

Meet Naomi Nash: our Midlands Entrepreneur Engagement Manager

By Kane Fulton, March 15, 2020

⏱ 3 min read

Community

How our Entrepreneur Engagement Managers support scaling digital tech founders

By Kane Fulton, March 15, 2020

⏱ 4 min read

Meet Naomi

  • About Naomi
  • Email
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn

I’m Naomi Nash – Tech Nation’s Midlands Entrepreneur Engagement Manager. We’re building a national network of ambitious entrepreneurs. If you’re a founder who requires support, feel free to book a meeting with me using this form.

Opportunities and events

Interested in attending events for digital tech founders in the Midlands? Then follow Naomi on Twitter, where she’ll be sharing the best ones that come her way.

Naomi also tweets noteworthy national opportunities for founders – everything from accelerators and competitions to investment and collaboration opportunities, panels appearances, and much more.

  • Have an event or opportunity for Naomi to tweet? Get in touch
Tweets by tn_midlands

Tech Nation Report 2020

Read our latest report: ‘UK tech for a changing world‘. See below for headline stats and case studies from the Midlands.

For additional stats, explore Data Commons. It’s our ground-breaking national database of technology businesses, founders, investors, VC funds, angels, accelerators, universities and service providers to the sector.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is Screen-Shot-2019-05-23-at-11.36.12-1024x512.png
£200mTotal VC investment in 2019

 

£9mInvested in emerging tech (2015-2019)
£6mInvested in AI (2015-2019)
£35,000Digital tech salary (median)
3Digital tech unicorns
3High-value tech scaleups (2019)

 

2Digital tech
unicorns

 

3High-value tech scaleups
£37,500Median digital tech salary (2018)

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James Quinn
Cofounder and CEO, Clarilis

How is your company disrupting part of the economy?

Legal automation technology is not new and has been around, in one form or another, for more than 20 years. In an industry known for its paper-heavy manual processes, the benefits of document automation are particularly appealing. Clarilis is a document automation system that saves lawyers a significant amount of time in producing the first draft of all forms of legal documentation. Our unique proposition lies with our proprietary platform and managed service approach. As an automation partner, with the largest team of Professional Support Lawyers (PSLs), developers, automation experts and analysts in the UK, Clarilis takes on the implementation challenges on behalf of client firms and businesses.

Why did you think the region you are based in was a good place?

Both of Clarilis’ founders are from Leamington Spa and it is a great place in terms of it being centrally located with easy access to the motorway network and with it being only just over an hour on the train to London.

The other main reason is there’s a wealth of good universities in the area which means there is access to a great calibre of graduates which is just what a high growth company needs.

Which markets does your company operate in?

Clarilis works with a large number of leading law firms and legal departments within organisations, including Addleshaw Goddard, Baker McKenzie, GoCompare, Gowling WLG, Herbert Smith Freehills, National Grid, Slaughter and May, TLT and Travers Smith.  We have customers who use our platform in multiple jurisdictions worldwide and we are in the process of opening an office in Singapore.

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Jennifer Hore
Cofounder, Fluence

What does your company do?

Fluence integrates AI into government departments and public sector organisations to improve decision making, automate routine tasks and verify high-stakes judgements, optimising employee time to focus on higher-value work.

Utilising cutting edge Natural Language Processing technologies, Fluence’s AI analyses 500+ linguistic characteristics to unearth new insights, quality assure existing judgements and make better-than-human predictions on your content.

Our cloud-based platform is able to process thousands of documents instantly, making it simple to deploy across your whole organisation and support employees wherever they may be based.

Why did you choose to base your company in your place or region?

Both co-founders graduated from Aston University in Birmingham and benefitted from very early-stage startup programmes such as E4F, SPEED WM and BSEEN.

We’ve stayed in Birmingham because the cost of starting a business is much lower than in other large cities. We currently work UK wide – including Northern Ireland. Being in the middle of the country means we have excellent access.

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Rebecca Gill
Nurse & Founder, VR Therapies

What problem is your business solving?

We are the first and only social enterprise who provides VR therapies for kids with special needs and adults with disabilities. We take those too poorly to walk swimming with dolphins, and children undergoing chemotherapy to explore space. From reducing chronic pain and alleviating anxiety, trips down memory lane and travelling the world, the experiences and therapies are endless.

Sharing these experiences with people as a nurse has been amazing. The benefits are immediately apparent as people forget their pain, breathe easier and smile more. Medical VR is already available in hospitals and has shown amazing results. However, the latest medical and therapeutic advances are inaccessible to the very children and adults they are designed for; they should not have to wait until they are already in the hospital to receive the benefits, nor should it be only for the rich or physically-able. We want to change this.

In 2020, we will be opening the very first VR therapies centre in the UK (and, as far as I know, the world). They combine hydrotherapy with VR so it truly feels like you’re swimming with dolphins and providing truly therapeutic VR experiences which are fully accessible and inclusive.

What challenges are you facing in your business?

Funding has been the biggest challenge by far. As a social entrepreneur, having to reduce our passion and impact down to informal numbers and profit can be frustrating. It’s been difficult adjusting to the business world and all their jargon, but I know that at the end of the day, the work we are doing is changing people’s lives.

External support for founders

Our curated picks of support for founders in the Midlands

Browse meetups

Looking to discover a new meetup? Here’s our curated picks.

Browse coworking space

Find the perfect coworking space for you and your team.

Browse finance support

Browse investment support – from grants and loans to VC.

Browse skills support

Upskill you and your team with accelerators and more.

Tech Nation resources

Tap the arrows to cycle through our toolkits, reports and other resources for founders

Digital Business Academy

Free courses to help, start or grow a digital business

Tech Nation Visa

Visa for exceptional international tech talent to live and work in the UK.

Upscale: the Book

Learn about scaling a digital tech company from those who have done it.

Data Commons for UK Tech

A ground-breaking national database for the technology sector.

The scaleup glossary

Dog food, hockey sticks and unicorns, busting the tech industry jargon.

The ultimate guide to scaling

Are you up and running and ready to take it to the next level?

UK government resources

Resources from the UK government on starting out or growing a business.

Find other companies like yours

Take a look at the companies who’ve taken part in one of our programmes.

UK Artificial Intelligence Guide

How AI will impact our lives, what it’s all about and cut through the jargon.

Fintech collaboration toolkit

Essential onboarding guidelines for fintechs looking to partner with banks.

Insurtech standards

Form corporate partnerships quicker with this suite of legal documents

Tech Nation Report 2020

Our latest report looks at UK tech for a changing world.

Tech Nation Report 2019

The UK is a global centre for socially responsible technology innovation.

Unicorn update

How is the UK doing when it comes to creating Unicorns?

A Bright Tech Future

Research that shows more than 10% of the UK is employed in digital tech.

Tech for Social Good report

The UK is a global centre for socially responsible technology innovation.

What people say about the Midlands

Thoughts, opinions and analysis on what makes digital tech in the region tick

What are the opportunities and challenges for digital tech founders in Birmingham?

Featuring comment from Innovation Birmingham, Hyve, and CyberQ Group.

What are the opportunities and challenges for digital tech founders in Malvern and Worcester?

Featuring comment from Titania, and BetaDen.

What are the opportunities and challenges for digital tech founders in Nottingham?

Featuring comment from Invest In Nottingham, ENSEK, and Deep Branch Biotechnology.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is lotanna-ezeike-XPO-1.jpg

What are the opportunities and challenges for digital tech founders in Leicester?

Featuring comment from the University of Leicester, XPO App, and Loyalfree.

Whatever your stage of growth, we’ve got a programme for you

Tech Nation Founders’ Network

Peer-to-peer network for tech startup founders.

Find out more

Tech Nation Rising Stars

Take your startup to the next level

Find out more

Tech Nation Upscale

Helping the UK’s leading scaleups grow into the tech giants of tomorrow.

Find out more

Tech Nation Fintech

Helping UK fintech startups scale, at home and abroad.

Find out more

Tech Nation Cyber

Helping the UK’s leading cyber security scaleups to accelerate their growth

Find out more

Tech Nation Applied AI

Helping the UK’s Artificial Intelligence scaleups solve real-world problems

Find out more

Have a suggestion for this page? Let Naomi know

 

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