Ignite Showcase hits Manchester as a ‘flying success’

‘Europe’s largest distributed startup support and investment network’, Ignite, ran their second showcase in Manchester on the 29th March 2017 and was called a ‘success’.

The company help businesses start-up by building on their ideas and showcasing their product to the audience and potential investors.

Ignite is based in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and have last year expanded to Manchester so they can help more businesses around the UK.

At the showcase, eight companies did a presentation to the audience on their product.

These eight companies were; Flyt, Kraken, Story Models, Sliips, Partcosting, Coursematch, Perfect Planner and Job Squad.

Flossie Hunt, Programme director of Ignite, explains why the company has expanded to Manchester: “Manchester was a very obvious choice for us, it has a really interesting developing tech cluster at the moment.

“Early investors have a real potential to be there in a couple of years and we felt we wanted to be there early.

“There are some really interesting companies and great investors around here and there is still a very open community in Manchester that is very welcoming to us.”

The full interview is just down below.

Ignite claim that their portfolio is worth three times more than they have invested in it and the top six companies is worth 17 times more than they have invested in it.

Two of the companies that they are working with now called Job Squad and Coursematch go into detail about what it is like working with Ignite.

Chris Worsey, Founder of CourseMatch, says: “My co-founder did the pitch, Joe, I think he smashed it and we have had a few investors aproach us tonight, complimenting us.

“It’s been really positive for us.”

He goes onto say more about how Ignite has helped his company: “When we started Ignite we had around about 100 monthly active users and now we have 2500, we have been growing 30% week on week.”

The full interview is just down below with more detail about his company and his views on starting us your own business.

Laura Baines, Founder of Job Squad, says why she chose Ignite: “We applied on the basis that it would be an accelerator and they have been doing it for a few years so they know the ropes and they have done it a few times with cohorts.”

The full interview is just down below with some tips on how to start up a company and what an accelerator program is like.