Posts Tagged ‘competition’

London Technology Fund Competition

Monday, November 9th, 2009

London Technology Fund CompetitionI spent an interesting evening at the London Technology Fund Competition 2009 Awards Ceremony on Wednesday.

The London Technology Fund Competition was established in 2008 to help address the equity gap for high potential technology businesses in London. The awards ceremony was held at the City headquarters of The Royal Bank of Scotland on 4 November, attended by some 200 representatives of major corporates, investors, and government, as well as entrepreneurs, academics, and professionals.

The awards are in various sectors ICT, Life Sciences, Engineering etc.

It was the life sciences division that was the most interesting this year. The three finalists were:

Trojantec
Trojantec is developing cancer stem therapeutics based on its platform technology of intracellular and intranuclear delivery of proteins. It has created, thus far, two novel nanoparticle fusion proteins, TR1 and TR4, that aim to achieve normal p21 delivery to p53/p21 mutated tumors (TR1) and inhibition of notch signalling (TR4) resulting in tumor eradication in preclinical models.

IXICO
IXICO provides clinical trial services to pharmaceutical companies helping them gather evidence of drug safety and efficacy through medical images.

Fertility Innovations
Fertility Innovations is developing technology designed to enable direct treatment for male infertility by activating non-motile sperm.

The winner was Trojantec as they were deemed to have the most attractive proposition to potential investors. All the finalists have been through many rounds of interviews and assessments meaning that a lot of due diligence has already been done for investors.

All of these companies were deemed to have a very bright future assuming they can raise the capital required to meet their growth targets.

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Analyse The Competition

Wednesday, March 25th, 2009

When you are developing software that is evolutionary and not revolutionary, it is important to look at what is already on the market, learn from them and find ways to improve on their offering.

Most web apps have free trials, or it is even worth paying a small fee to see the competition’s software and “borrow” ideas.

I think the following is a good way to analyse what they do well and not so well:

  • First impressions – do not read the help guide, go onto the first page and see how intuitive it is to get started
  • Navigation – see how the navigation is arranged, can you find things easily?
  • Colours and styles – does the design and layout wow you?
  • Speed of use – does it take you ages to find what to do?
  • Typography – does it look slick and fit with the style of the site?
  • Shortcuts and signposting – can you find the actions you need quickly?
  • Consistency – is the navigation and actions consistent across the app?
  • What do they do well?
  • What annoys you about the system?

It is good to have a look around on the forums, and see what the users are saying and to see what they are suggesting that the application improves on.

It is not enough to copy what others are doing, but research gives you a good feel for the competition and can generate ideas. I like to make things as easy as possible and go back to first principles when designing the user experience. You need to make something that is materially different, or targets a new untapped market.

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