StartupCafe

The Float Yard, an Edinburgh-based startup building a SaaS cashflow tool for small businesses, enrolled its first paying customers yesterday. The online software, dubbed “Float”, is still in private beta, but co-founders Colin Hewitt and Philip Roberts say a public launch is now imminent.

This marks a major milestone for the company, which has been working with around 250 SMEs to develop the product over the past nine months. Float currently integrates directly with the FreeAgent online accounting platform, helping users to quickly build a picture of their current cashflow situation, and to project the health of their bank account over the next three months.

About the launch, the Float team said: “We are really grateful for all the excellent feedback we’ve received from our early users, and are blown away by the positive response we’re now receiving from our first customers.”

When asked whether they had any advice for other startups, the team responded: “launch earlier, and charge more!”

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Next Wed and Thurs (29th and 30th June) is the place to be if you’re in the creative industries and need some IP help.

Although registration fees are a little steep at £199, there are some quality speakers. You can check out the conference at: http://digitalspark.abertay.ac.uk/

In the knowledge economy, intangible assets can account for 70% of a company’s value.

This conference will explore practical mechanisms of exploiting those assets by using the intellectual property system efficiently and effectively – laying the ground work for future profit generation.

This conference will bring together industrialists, lawyers, financiers, funding agencies, intermediaries and policy makers to discuss practical steps SMEs can take to significantly enhance their competitiveness; the most important recent developments in IP law for your business; and success stories of IP management in the digital creative industries.

With an introductory workshops on the basics of IP, interactive master classes with leading business and legal experts, presentations from senior representatives of Google and Universal Music (UK), and expert panel discussions with senior representatives of Sony, Google, Aardman Rights, NCR and SEGA, this conference will help you plan for the future success of your business.

Register now to secure your place at Digital Spark 2011.

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It’s rare that I find myself in a situation where I read something at work, and feel the need to reply right away.

Posts like the original rallying call and the reply to it, is simply rehashing the same arguments over and over again; more importantly, it’s doing something that I hate – playing the blame game.

On one hand, some say that we need better and more support and coherency for entrepreneurship in the Universities (especially in Glasgow, rather than Edinburgh which is where I think Chris and Michael were referring to). On the other, some say that you should get on with it. So, who is it? Who is to blame? Is it the universities that aren’t pulling their weight, or is it that entrepreneurs are lazy and want everything handed to them on a plate?

These arguments are a complete over-simplification of the problem.

(more…)

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Our colleagues at Startup Digest and Social Penguin recently posted a call to action for the Scottish startup community, in which they identified the failure of universities to promote entrepreneurship, a disjointed startup community, and the predominance of risk-averse investors as obstacles that must be overcome before entrepreneurship can flourish in Scotland.

I appreciate the sentiment of this post and kudos to them for speaking out about something that’s obviously important to a lot of us. But while Scotland could certainly improve in these areas, I’m tired of pessimistic talk about Scotland’s weaknesses, and fear that we hold ourselves back from greater success with a self-perpetuating myth of inferiority. Scotland is already a vibrant entrepreneurial hub, enabled by our universities, our strong communities, and investment networks. Here’s why. (more…)

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Interested in joining us for the Social Innovation Camp Show and Tell this weekend?

Here are the details:

Time: 2-4pm Sunday 19th June 2011

Venue: Informatics Ventures Forum, 10 Crichton Street, Edinburgh, Midlothian, EH8 9AB (more…)

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Developing a new product is all about the pivot: making sure you speak to real customers to find out their real problems, and then changing development direction to ensure your product soothes one of these pain points.

Sam Collins—long-time entrepreneur, ex-Edinburgher, recent Londoner, and founder of the Edinburgh Tech Meetup—understands this well. In the past couple of years, he’s become an expert about events, and how we use the web to organise, promote, and discover them.

Here’s an update from Sam about their latest innovation and new product, Eventasaurus, which you can start using today: (more…)

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