Introducing Ignite #11
Yesterday marked Day One of the new Ignite Manchester programme. We had nine fresh-faced teams turn up at our HQ at The Federation, (a Coop Digital building), ready for the next 12 weeks.
We have a very busy schedule planned for them over the next three months, including mentoring, workshops, office hours, Q&As with established founders, and lots of work with a team of brilliant Entrepreneurs in Residence (more on them in another post!).
I’m excited to announce the Ignite #11 teams:
Another Story
Another Story is a platform that connects clients directly with freelance models, facilitating the end-to-end booking process and collecting smart data along the way. The modelling industry is ripe for disruption as it is currently based around traditional agencies, who take 30% commission and do not allow much space for flexible working hours for models.
Web: www.anotherstorymodels.com
Twitter: @ASmodelsUK
Coursematch
Coursematch helps those intending to enter higher education to find the right course for them. It uses a tinder-style swiping interface, where students flick through hundreds of ‘course cards’, deciding whether the course looks interesting, and registering their interest in different higher education institutes. Schools and colleges pay a subscription fee on behalf of their students, and universities pay to send push notifications to students who have registered interest in their institution through the app.
Web: www.coursematch.io
Twitter: @Course_Match
Fanfare
Fanfare helps creatives on the internet to monetise their audience more effectively. Fanfare’s first product, ‘sites’, builds websites automatically using a creator’s existing content from across the web. It includes tools for growing, engaging and converting fans with automation, email marketing, and payments.
Web: www.fanfare.cc
Helo
Easily understood as ‘uber for private helicopter rides’, Helo is a one-stop platform to find, book and pay for chartered helicopter flights. There are many online booking platforms for airlines but nothing currently exists for booking helicopters. Helicopter charters are provided mainly by brokers who have complicated booking procedures and opaque costs. Helo makes helicopter travel more accessible by allowing customers to book helicopters flying empty legs which would otherwise be wasted.
Kraken
Kraken are building a suite of tools for the large-scale engineering and construction sector. The primary focus is on improving the efficiency and ease of the flow of information on multi-national, multi-agency projects, as well as meeting industry standards around the handling of this information. Kraken’s tools and services are designed to meet the challenges of collaboration and data management for this sector as well as provide a platform for content.
Web: www.kraken.im
Twitter: @KrakenIM
Job Squad
Job Squad are redefining how hospitality venues get temporary staff. Gone are the days of old fashioned agencies — Job Squad makes it easy for venues to post a job online and select best suited team members from a pool of talented workers. With the assistance of AI, they help venues to select staff who already have a history of working well together to ensure top quality performance.
Web: jobsquad.co
Twitter: @JobSquadTeam
Partscosting
CAD designers currently waste up to 50% of their time searching for product data and availability as they create industrial designs. If a component is unavailable or too expensive, they have to return to the project and redesign accordingly. Partscosting have built a disruptive software platform to help designers save time and work on projects more efficiently. The platform integrates with existing CAD software and embeds supplier and product information in at the point of design.
Web: www.partscosting.com
Twitter: @partscosting
Perfect Planner
Perfect Planner is a new way to plan a wedding online, and aims to resolve the significant limitations in the current online wedding industry. The platform allows couples to locate, compare and directly contact wedding suppliers across a wide range of services in a single search, which takes into account the couple’s cultural type, location, season, number of guests and budget.
Twitter: @PerfectPlanner0
Sliips
Sliips is a tool to help millennials make better career decisions. The first step is a salary comparison tool that works on the basis of anonymously crowdsourcing payslips to let users anonymously explore salary within their own company and other similar companies in their market. Users can explore the current spread of salaries or take a look at their future prospectives both at their own company and at similar firms.
Web: www.sliips.com
Twitter: @PaySliips
Follow us on twitter @igniteaccel for all the latest updates from the programme, and stay tuned for more blog posts over the course of the programme.
