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@ideatransform – startup bootcamp connecting ideas and skills to improve the world

3 April, 2012 by Bela Hamid

  • Who would like to have a meaningful impact on the world?
  • Got a cool idea but lack the skills to bring it to life?
  • Or want to use your superpowers in design, web dev or business to help develop someone else’s vision for improving education, healthcare, finance, community or mobile?

The Idea Transform team are organising a startup bootcamp weekend where people pitch ideas on a Friday evening, the audience votes for ideas they’d like to work on and people form teams to work on projects over the rest of the weekend.  The event aims to inspire projects that can deliver long-term change across the globe.  These projects will then be judged, and a winner announced on Sunday evening.

Teams will be supported and inspired throughout the weekend by mentors and speakers who will be on hand to answer questions and offer advice. The event will be held in Cambridge on 20th-22nd April 2012 at the Cambridge Judge Business School and is supported by the University of Cambridge’s Centre for Entrepreneurial Learning.

I’ve been told by the organiser that last year’s event saw many make their way down from Edinburgh and Glasgow so, if this is of interest, check out their website for more details.  Developers in particular are especially encouraged to attend!   Continue Reading »

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Recruiting rockstars series: interview with ‘code in a day’ startup – Decoded

28 March, 2012 by Bela Hamid

I’ve been interviewing startups across the UK about their quest for rockstar employees!  The idea is to give an insight into startup recruitment to folk who are interested in working for startups so that they might learn how to put themselves into a position of strength! Entrepreneurs might also be interested to see how their approach and perspectives compare to others’.

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(Also posted on http://www.workinstartups.com)

Introduction

Decoded is on a mission to demystify coding and make it accessible to everyone! This startup offers workshops to businesses to teach staff how to ‘code in a day’.

Bubbly and enthusiastic co-founder Kathryn Parsons, also co-founder of the agency The Scarlett Mark, is currently looking for new recruits and kindly agreed to have a chat with WiS about what she looks for during the recruitment process.  So listen up!

Bela: Firstly, code in a day?  How does that work? Continue Reading »

Posted in Interview, Jobs, Opinions | Tagged , , , | 10 Comments »

WhiskyWeb – THE web conference in Scotland

27 March, 2012 by Kate Ho

This Sunday is your last chance of getting hold of tickets to the inaugural WhiskyWeb conference in Edinburgh on 13th-14th April.

WhiskyWeb is conference created for the web community, by the web community, Whisky Web will have something to offer everyone who works with the web, be they a designer, a developer or something in between. This is an amazing opportunity to get your geek on in Scotland’s inspiring capital.

There’s not that many tickets left so make sure you get yours quick!

[http://whiskyweb.co.uk]

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Gameippy – startup being formed this weekend

24 March, 2012 by Bela Hamid

I’m at Startup Weekend London and have joined a team called Gameippy! We’re trying to build a startup in one weekend and could do with some support in terms of feedback, twitter follows (@gameippy) and facebook ‘likes’.  I’ll be posting updates on Startupcafe and on our twitter throughout the weekend – any feedback or messages of support will be gratefully received!

Gameippy.com is a portal where consumers can find fun games to play to win discounts and prizes from their favourite brands!

It is also a platform for brands to engage innovatively with consumers and deliver promotions through mobile games.

Why should brands use our platform as opposed to only their website?

  • For exposure to a greater audience than just those that would normally visit their websites
  • To cultivate goodwill with customers by engaging with them in a fun and rewarding way
  • Players will be able to share the games they like with their friends
  • Players can rate games resulting in rankings that show companies how they are performing
  • Companies will be able to ‘feature’ their games

Wanted: we need some feedback from companies, and agencies who are responsible for delivering campaigns for big brands.  Please spend 60 seconds to answer a few questions:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dGh3QkZLRkU3OGZRdEdzcUlyTWsxUHc6MQ#gid=0

Thanks folks!  🙂

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Recruiting rockstars series: interview with financial-tech startup MarketInvoice

20 March, 2012 by Bela Hamid

I’m currently interviewing startups across the UK about their quest for rockstar employees!  The idea is to give an insight into startup recruitment to folk who are interested in working for startups so that they might learn how to put themselves into a position of strength! Entrepreneurs might also be interested to see how their approach and perspectives compare to others’.

—–

(Also posted on http://www.workinstartups.com)

This week I interviewed the intensely-driven entrepreneur Charlie Delingpole from the internationally expanding financial-tech startup MarketInvoice to encourage him to share his recruitment experiences with us, and find out what he looks for in job-seeking candidates.

Charlie has been advertising vacancies for various roles for some time now, and after viewing truckloads of CVs and conducting many, many interviews, certain roles remain unfilled.  I wanted to find out why.
—– Continue Reading »

Posted in Interview, Opinions | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment »

Help an old textbook find a home: BookAdopter.com

18 March, 2012 by Kate Ho

BookAdopter homeThe person behind Keepmeout and Quezti, local Edinburgh University student Ali Eslami has recently started a textbook exchange site – Book Adopter. I met up with Ali and asked him about his new web app …

 

So Ali, tell me about your new startup.

Our latest project is called BookAdopter, and it’s a website that helps students buy and sell their university textbooks. Check it out at http://bookadopter.com.

Why another textbook exchange site? Why do you think you’ll succeed where others have failed?

It just doesn’t make sense that students buy the same textbooks over and over every year. Not only does this have a significant cost for students, it also has serious consequences for the environment.

The fact that there have been so many other attempts at tackling this problem shows us that people recognise the need for a solution. It’s just that up until recently we haven’t had the right combination of tools to come up with such a solution. Continue Reading »

Posted in 60 Second Interview, Local News | Tagged , , | 1 Comment »

Edinburgh startup looking for Senior Web Developer (PHP, MySQL, Javascript) – do you have what it takes?

22 February, 2012 by Bela Hamid

Edinburgh startup Hubdub are in need of a talented web developer to help them with their fantasy sports game FanDuel.  They’re offering £30-40K depending on experience as well as stock options to the right person.  Is that you? Is it?  I’ve pasted their blurb below for the more curious amongst you:

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At Hubdub we are building the next generation of sports entertainment for web and mobile. That’s a pretty big goal, and we’d love you to help us achieve it.

Our next generation fantasy sports game, FanDuel, is growing at 30% month on month and getting rave reviews from The Washington Post, ABC News, TechCrunch and (most importantly) our users.

We recognize our success is dependent on creating an amazing product, and as such our developers and designers get a pretty good deal:

• Responsibility for delivering features that matter to a highly passionate userbase
• Flexibility to work from home up to 3 days per week, choose your own hours
• Casual, non-corporate but fast-paced and exciting work environment
• Rewarding and varied development challenges that you help shape
• Play with cool stuff: web sockets, Amazon S3, TDD, lighttpd and plenty more
• Smart colleagues who push and challenge you
• A fun place to work with great office banter, team days out and plenty of free beer! Continue Reading »

Posted in Jobs, Local News | 1 Comment »

Learn programming in Edinburgh

8 February, 2012 by Bela Hamid

Are you learning, or do you want to learn, programming in Edinburgh?

Then you might want to saunter along to some free networking events in Leith aimed at like-minded folk, where the idea is for you to pair up with other people to study, and also get advice if you don’t know where to start.

A meetup called ‘Learn programming in Edinburgh’ has been organised and…well here’s the blurb on the meetup page:

“Get advice, meet other grasshoppers and find a study partner. We’ll be running some networking events and a 12 week intro class on programming & web development.

Anyone is free to pop along to the networking whether or not they think they might want to join the class.  Especially welcome are non-technical startup co-founders and web/graphic designers! Continue Reading »

Posted in Events, Local News | Tagged , , , , | 13 Comments »

Wanted: Project manager / Producer for Software Company (SoDash)

2 February, 2012 by Kate Ho

Our friends Dan and Joe over at Winterwell is looking for a new Project Manager/ Producer. Drop them an email if you are interested!

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Winterwell (http://winterwell.com) is a fast-growing data analysis/IT consultancy based in central Edinburgh. We do interestingly varied work for an interestingly varied client base. We’re also the makers of SoDash (http://sodash.com), the smart social media dashboard (as used by Pepsi, the Foreign Office, the Scottish Green Party & others). Continue Reading »

Posted in Jobs | 1 Comment »

A startup success story from Kiva

27 January, 2012 by Thomas Drapier

Whilst I love to hear startup success stories closer to home – I find it equally inspiring and heart-warming to hear stories of entrepreneurs creating enterprises that support families and quite literally change the life of the entrepreneur and the lives of their family for the better.

Today I wanted to highlight one success story which touched me.

Meet Esterlita, a 58 year old lady from the village of Malibangcao, Ozamiz City in the Philippines. At an age when many of us in this country might be thinking about slowing down or retiring even, Esterlita is busier than ever – with good reason, she has seven school-aged children to support.

Esterlita received a loan of $125 from Kiva to get her agricultural business, growing and selling coconuts and bananas, off the ground. Had she not been able to access a startup loan like this then Esterlita would not have been able to expand the business in the way she has which would have had an impact on her ability to support her family, Esterlita expanded her venture by planting and growing more coconuts and
bananas than ever before. By increasing her volumes, she now earns around 5,000PHP or approximately $115 per month which has allowed her to pay off her startup loan and more importantly she is now able to support herself and has dramatically improved the standard of living for her family.

If you want to find out more about Esterlita, you can see visit her page on Kiva.

I personally think it is fantastic to see a woman entrepreneur creating a profitable enterprise to lift themselves out of poverty. Really inspiring stuff I’m sure you’ll agree.

A guest post by Liz Goldman for Wonga.com – the UK short term loans provider and one of
the biggest corporate supporters of Kiva.

Posted in Guest Blogger | Leave a Comment »

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