Richard Apletree

For anyone interested in investing into EIS / SEIS opportunities, you might be interested in our guide

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One thing I’ve found tricky since launching Day1Data is knowing how to develop dashboards for our customers 📊 Not 𝘵𝘦𝘤𝘩𝘯𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺. But getting the balance right on how to ensure the initial views are meeting the requirements now, whilst giving them the capability to develop reports internally, irrespective of Day1Data when the requirements inevitably change in the future. 𝗣𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝘄𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝗱𝗮𝘀𝗵𝗯𝗼𝗮𝗿𝗱𝘀, 𝗯𝘂𝘁 𝗵𝗼𝘄 𝗱𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝘂𝘀𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗺? 𝗗𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗻𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗺? Requirements are naturally dynamic & reports serve different purposes to different business functions. Our approach at Day1Data: 1. 𝘋𝘪𝘴𝘤𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘺: take a long time to discover the existing reporting ways of working and which data sets / reports are used in decision making processes 2. 𝘊𝘶𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘮𝘪𝘴𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯: be flexible on developing bespoke metrics as per the company definitions which can differ company to company (we make sure there's governance in place to document the logic) 3. 𝘍𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴: build the foundations i.e. underlying data models, initial holistic & snapshot views for a specific audience 4. 𝘌𝘥𝘶𝘤𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯: teach teams how to build the views themselves (far more valuable usage of time!) Dashboards are a data product - and should be treated like one! ☝️

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A new Angel Investment Network (AIN) survey of 223 UK startups reveals the knowledge gap founders face: only 44% feel confident navigating the fundraising process. With tougher market conditions, bridging this gap is more crucial than ever.💪 We've highlighted some standout startup stats below for all founders 👇

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Fantastic to see this £30 million investment package focused on stimulating productivity and supporting Jersey businesses in key sectors! Productivity is such a crucial factor for growth and long-term impact, especially in a competitive and dynamic economy like Jersey's. At Blue Llama, we’re all about empowering businesses to maximise their productivity and make meaningful changes. With the support from grants for skills development, connectivity, and technological advancement, there’s a real opportunity here for businesses to not only improve efficiency but also foster innovation. We’re excited to see the positive impact this investment will have on the island's economic landscape and look forward to supporting local businesses on their journey to thrive and grow in this new environment! https://lnkd.in/ecW-wvjG What areas of your business would benefit most from this kind of support? #ProductivityMatters #JerseyBusiness #InvestInGrowth #BlueLlama

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Say hello to our 2024 Startup Academy businesses! Meet founder Warren Mauger, MCIM, Chartered Marketer. He is the founder of News Oasis and aims to reimagine the delivery of local news across the UK, harnessing the developments made possible using AI. Read more about Warren and his business: https://lnkd.in/epK_kXYh #StartupAcademy #BusinessAccelerator #GuernseyBusiness #GuernseyFounder

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“The kryptonite of private equity firms is the people. The funds themselves have got massive inertia. The only thing that can really kill them is some sort of internal civil war. And we want to make sure that we're looking at that and making sure that, to the greatest extent, we're not running that risk.” Great conversation with Jim Strang for our latest episode of Enter the Boardroom. 👉 Link in post below My three key take-aways ➕ Success can be a risk: “From the board's perspective, one of the things we're laser focused on is the manager and the individuals in the firm. And we have a sort of a hubris check. They have done nothing but go up in a straight line for 20 years, and that's not necessarily a great thing. So we're super conscious of what's going on in the heads of these people that we're working with, because we're so tied to what they do. And we want to make sure that we feel entirely comfortable that we’re happy with where they are.” ➕ Be aware of spurious accuracy in valuations: "Be aware of the spurious accuracy topic ... you're going to land on a number, and it's going to be a good number and the best number you can get to. But it's not going to be perfect because we don't sell shares, right? You cannot buy a single share in any company that we own. You can buy the company, but you can't buy a single share. And so the valuation of that company is going to be somewhat subjective." ➕ Learn to live with geopolitical risk: “There's not really much we could do because if we shut down the investment system …  that wouldn't have changed the answer. Because they would still be subject to the same level of geopolitical risk, it’s just we would have had fewer assets, but we'd still be on the same exposure … it’s completely out of our control. So what we have to do is acknowledge that it's out there and understand that we're running a little bit hotter in that area. And it's hotter than we'd feel comfortable with.” #entertheboardroom #investmenttrusts #boardofdirectors 

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Reflecting on an interesting London Tech Week, it's clear that the UK remains a powerhouse for innovation and business growth. Whilst the topic of AI continues to dominate many discussions, the events of the week and subsequent discussions have highlighted to me the importance of ongoing support for entrepreneurs. This is a subject that is close to my heart having started and grown multiple companies, and various teams. Key takeaways on this subject include: 🏫 EDUCATION & TRAINING: Integrate comprehensive entrepreneurial education across all levels, with practical training and industry partnerships. 💳 ACCESS TO FUNDING: Expand government grants, venture capital networks, and leverage crowdfunding platforms to facilitate capital access. 📜 SUPPORTIVE POLICIES: Streamline business registration, provide tax incentives, and ensure flexible employment laws to foster a business-friendly environment. 💡 CULTURE OF INNOVATION: Promote networking, mentorship programs, and public-private partnerships to drive innovation and showcase success stories. Empowering entrepreneurship requires a collective effort from government, educational institutions, and the private sector. With the right collaboration and strategies, the UK is well-positioned achieve it's goals and to maintain its status as one of the leaders in global innovation. Thoughts? #LTW #technology #innovation

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Edinburgh-based Computer Application Services Ltd (CAS) has secured an additional £500,000 equity investment to boost growth.   The company is increasingly referred to by its product name, Workpro, a software system for managing customer complaints and HR casework. Organic growth is providing a 20% uplift this year but, with the market quickly opening up to the benefits of using this software, it’s time to pick up the pace.  Managing workload is just part of the solution - Workpro ensures compliance with procedures which, if not observed, too easily lead to pain and penalties.  Insightful reports let users see where they are “attracting trouble” so that prevention of future issues becomes part of the package.   Maintaining a digital presence – being easily found when people come searching is an obvious must for the marketing team, a never ending task in a busy online world. The new investment will fuel more proactive activities to reach out to target audiences, some of whom don’t yet realise how readily the task of juggling cases and causes can be streamlined and supported by UK developed software. Workpro has all the right data security credentials to pass muster with government and corporate governance.       CAS employees own around half of the company through a combination of direct shareholdings, the Employee Benefit Trust and a monthly share-save scheme. External investors hold the other half – Capital for Colleagues who specifically support employee-ownership, and, more recently, two additional private investors.    CAS CEO Ken Naismith comments, “While CAS and Workpro are obviously good horses for investors to back, we do not take for granted what terrific support has been made available to us when so many businesses are worried about the future. Consumer complaints and employee relations issues are only going to rise as organisations meet 2025’s challenges. Workpro makes light work of heavy caseload and provides essential insights into issues arising from customers and colleagues.”

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Yesterday I made a post about firm KM portals that looked like they were from the 1990s The point of the post was to say that to the extent firms are investing in the AI space, their business and knowledge data is going to be crucial...yet if that data is poorly organised, you are going to get limited insights I feel the urge to issue a follow-up to this...and to be clear on something Having a KM portal that looks like it is from the 1990s is better than not having a KM portal at all. Firms that have a 1990s portal are further along in the journey of having well-classified knowledge data than those that have nothing at all Firms fall into a few brackets when it comes to knowledge management: 1. Sole reliance on DMS-wide searching - no curated spaces; knowledge is held individually. People are reluctant to share even when asked 2. Ad-hoc sharing - knowledge mostly held at the individual level, and total reliance is on people requesting information from others and people willing to share it 3. Partially organised - there are dedicated spaces for knowledge content, but they suffer from low adoption because they contain many complicated folders, and nobody can find anything. As a result, some people can self-serve knowledge, but there is a lot of ad-hoc sharing that goes on as well 4. Well-organised - there are well-organised and well-used spaces for knowledge content. Preferably, the content *itself* is categorised, rather than merely being placed on an intranet page or a folder (which is not true classification on the document) To the extent people rely on grounding gen AI in firm data, firms in brackets 1 and 2 are a bit screwed They need to ensure their AI investments are balanced against the tooling and processes needed to get them into buckets 3 and 4. For example, firms in bracket 1 will run a gen AI tool against their data that might surface up half-baked drafts sent on the other side's paper from the opposite end of the negotiation table. You need to classify and curate the data to make sure "bad" data isn't influencing the outputs of gen AI Some will place their hopes on AI doing a lot of the tidy-up work for them. As always, AI can *assist* you in doing that. But it can't do it all AI can categorise documents effectively and extract things depending on how well you have designed and measured your prompting. But it can't determine whether something is a "good" example or not, whether it is a negotiated position, the context, etc., as these things are either held in people's heads or not apparent from the text of a document. In the words of Alex Smith, "Some characteristics are more AI-able than others" So don't criticise the 1990s intranet page too much. It's better than nothing and shows a willingness to at least start doing this stuff properly

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excellent guide and insight from Growthdeck regarding EIS for investors.

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We need to get the balance right between regulation that supports innovation. I was in Westminster this week meeting with Ministers urging them to look at AI regulation in a pro-innovation way.

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"You can't build a revolution on dodgy foundations" Not a post on the UKs general election, but on Data Foundations...naturally! There's no AI strategy in isolation, without a Data Foundations strategy - despite the ambitions of many organisations. Great to see this being spoken about more frequently. Link to the article in the comments 👇 #ai #datafoundations #datastrategy

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Tech Sector Focus note: It's not what you sell, it's the way that you sell it Read Tech analyst, Ian Robertson's, recent report for the UK small- and mid-cap space on how software companies sell: https://lnkd.in/ew-cQ82W In it he discusses how many investors and analysts spend a lot of time talking about technologies and addressable markets and listening to the hype, but forget what the companies really do and what the big cost lines are. Not knowing how a product is sold can lead to serious misunderstandings about margins, recurring revenues, growth prospects, and the quality of the product and its customers. Ian examines the sales processes for six UK-listed companies and one that has recently been taken over, and considers why they have followed their respective paths. The companies examined in his report are Softcat plc, Idox plc, Sopheon plc, Darktrace, Aptitude Software, Dotdigital Group plc and Learning Technologies Group plc.

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Some exciting news for you all and thrilled to announce that Unitech Synergies is now LIVE on Crowdcube! This is your exclusive opportunity to invest in what we believe will be the next unicorn in the world of green tech for the cooling industry. Crowdcube Unitech Synergies #InvestmentOpportunity #GreenTech #ClimateSolutions #SustainableFuture #StartupFunding

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Thanks to Shane Tickell and Kanthan Theivendran for spurring me to share this thought today. I learned last week of a letter sent to NHS Trust Ops Directors / COO's attempting to mandate the uptake of app products developed as part of / extension to the Palantir Federated Data Platform (FDP) roll-out. Of 5 "products" currently being pushed, one is called Care Coordination Solutions (CCS). The product description I managed to find online is very light and high-level, suggesting the product being pushed is nowhere near ready as a tangible solution to help NHS teams proactively managing patient lists and drive down wait times. There is already plenty of SME innovation already happening in this space, much of it already deployed and proving its value. This puts this bundled offering a good few years behind, so I struggle to understand why this large scale US-led offering is being offered in place of UK SME offerings already driving outcomes. I look forward to advances in UK health tech and health data over the coming years, but under rejuvinated govt. leadership, fostering local SME innovation is key as this is where innovation itself happens (locally and in startups / SME's) I welcome standardised national data infrastructure, providing it is not all eggs in one basket and open data standards are leveraged fully. With the right help, users and teams know what is needed to run services successfully. The clue is in the name; user centred design. UX/UI/apps/services/interactions/processes/workflows should all be driven and implemented at a local level. To achieve this, more base level platforms that are designed to empower users to build and run their own digital services and processes are needed. Nationally rolled out one-size-fits-all has proven time and time again to not work in an NHS where apps/systems landscape is so vast and varies so widely from NHS org to NHS org. The NHS has been throwing increasing amounts of money at supposed gold standards in health tech platforms, invariably US HQ'd, that simply do not represent good value for money, create HUGE vendor lock-in via waterfall upgrades linked to long term and very expensive contracts that give little to no user agency through no ability to vote with their feet against poor user experience. It's time we tap more into the great talent, knowledge and expertise that we have in the UK to build great digital health products and solutions. Whilst noises coming from Wes Streeting seem to point to health tech/data being turned into a GDP/growth enabling product, one that will need other countries to buy it if it's to contribute to GDP, this doesn't justify what feels currently like one-way traffic spend on often massively overpriced and poorly iterative (infrequent version releases where the user voice and feedback is built into a constantly improving product and experience).

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