I’m Mo Aldalou – Tech Nation’s North West 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 North West? Then follow Mo on Twitter, where he’ll be sharing the best ones that come his way.
Mo 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 Mo to tweet? Get in touch
Read our latest report: ‘UK tech for a changing world‘. See below for headline stats and case studies from the North West.
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.
How is your company disrupting a part of the economy?
Born out of a 10-year research project with Lancaster University’s linguistic and cybersecurity departments, Relative Insight originally designed its technology to support law enforcement agencies identify paedophiles masquerading as children online. No one has the technology to do what we do, and our ‘discover’, rather than ‘search’ technique is set to create a brand-new, universal insights-gathering methodology.
Why did you feel that the place or region that you are based in was a good place to disrupt your industry?
Lancaster University is known globally as one of the best seats of learning for English language and linguistics, and it was the place where our founders, James Walkerdine and Phil Greenwood, were completing their PHDs.
By putting various language assets side-by-side and comparing it, tiny nuances in the way people talk can be discovered, and these reveal game-changing insights about any specific demographic.
Which markets does your company operate in at the moment?
While we remain true to our academic roots with our HQ in Lancaster, we also have an office in London that supports the global sales and marketing function. Then, as part of a major investment programme, Relative Insight is expanding into New York in the first quarter of 2020 so that we can better service our ever-expanding portfolio of US and global clients.
Mojo uses innovative and intelligent technology to allow customers to see real-time mortgage deals for which they’re eligible in just 15 minutes. The fintech’s team of in-house mortgage experts then manage the mortgage application process from start to finish.
In the last 18 months, Mojo has secured more than 75,000 customers and £9.8m in seed round and Series A funding. The company has won numerous awards – including Best Mortgage Broker at the 2019 British Banking Awards. Mojo was recently named a finalist for Nesta’s Open Up 2020 Challenge for its new tool, MortgageScore™.
Why did you choose to base your company in your place or region?
There’s an expectation that fintechs should be based in London, but this thought-process is being disrupted in the fact that over the past 12 months there’s been a noticeable change in investors’ appetite to invest outside of the M25 – and that can only be a good thing.
The fintech scene in Manchester is leading the way as one of Europe’s leading hubs for cutting edge digital technology. There’s strong support for fast-growth digital businesses such as Mojo from institutions including the City Council and Manchester’s world-renowned universities.
The Link App is a web and mobile platform with a case tracking and management interface that helps lawyers keep in touch with their clients. It completely reinvents the transactional experience, enabling instant messaging, new business enquiries, document sharing, case updates, push notifications and secure document storage.
Why did you choose to base your company in your place or region?
We chose Manchester for a few reasons: it has a very strong legal community and great growth in the tech space. There is creativity here and some very supportive networks. Travelling to any other major UK city is easy from here and proximity to a major international airport is great, as we are planning to expand globally this year. Plus, for work/life balance, I think Manchester is unrivalled.
What changes do you feel your company has brought about in your region/the UK/the world?
We’re disrupting in a very traditional sector: legal. It has relied on old habits for a long time, and unlike other industries, it has largely not embraced tech or moved forward with it. We are enabling firms to provide better services to their clients and are also working with these firms in partnership, as opposed to charging large upfront fees, to make a real long-term difference. It’s new for a lot of people.
GoodBox is a social impact company that is driving innovation on behalf of the charity sector. In an increasingly cashless society, charities are feeling the pinch – reporting steady declines in cash donations as we continue to tap our way through train stations and coffee shops. To address this issue, we built a suite of contactless donation devices bespoke for the charity sector.
Why did you set up your company in the place/region you are based?
GoodBox HQ is located in Manchester, with offices in London and Harlow. Manchester was chosen as the head office as the CEO lives there, allowing the leadership team easy access to the base of operations. Compounding this decision was the recent emergence of a thriving fintech sector within the North West.
What challenges are you facing in your business?
Expanding the team comes hand-in-hand with internationalisation. The culture within GoodBox is something we are all very proud of; maintaining that culture, which has greatly contributed to our achievements to date, is our next big task as we push to expand the team.
GoBubble is a safer, healthier and kinder social media platform, which has been designed specifically for under 13s. It’s used in 1000s of schools and homes across 31 countries. GoBubble solves practical online safety issues around the widespread problem of children accessing and using mainstream social media.
In addition, GoBubble places a focus on child digital wellbeing and digital citizenship. When used in the classroom, GoBubble offers educators an opportunity to understand and respond to authentic student voice. As a forum for content creation, collaboration and communication, GoBubble also offers a creative outlet for kids to create and broadcast their own content safely and ethically.
What challenges are you facing in your business?
GoBubble’s global popularity illustrates the worldwide appetite for progressive social media experiences, which are safer and offer a healthier digital life for children. To ensure that we can provide the GoBubble experience to as many children as possible, we are working on incorporating more languages into the platform, which is incredibly exciting.
We have had an excellent start to the year, onboarding a huge amount of users. Ensuring that we can deliver the best possible platform for all of our users, and continuing to expand our reach, are going to be priorities for the whole GoBubble team.
How is your company disrupting a part of the economy?
Wejo is not disrupting a single part of the economy – we are creating an entirely new category. For global automotive manufacturers and data consumers – from traffic analysts to parking app developers, smart city planners and governments – Wejo unlocks the value in connected vehicle data to enable innovations in consumer propositions, drive efficiencies and create new revenue streams.
Why did you feel that the place or region that you are based in was a good place to disrupt your industry?
Wejo started in 2014 in the North West of England; we now have an office in Manchester and our HQ in Tattenhall, Chester.
The digital tech sector is thriving in the North West, attracting a growing talent pool – that’s why we chose to base ourselves here. Wejo is pioneering the mobility data ecosystem and we need a talented team behind us so we can continue to grow and compete on a global scale. We are proud to be putting the North West, and the UK, on the map in an industry that’s typically led by the Silicon Valley pack.
Our biggest commercial market is the US, where we organise data from one in sixty cars. That led us to open offices in San Jose and Austin during 2019. Austin has been named the fastest-growing large city in the US and is a hotbed for technology, startups and innovation. It also has a strong talent pool, thanks in part to the University of Texas.
External support for founders
Our curated picks of support for founders in the North West
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