September Newsletter

After months of anticipation, Baltic Ventures finally announced the startups taking part in the first cohort of its annual accelerator programme. I’ve got full details below.

The beginning of the accelerator programme is just one reason why there’s a real buzz about Liverpool at the moment in the UK tech world.?

Last week, UKTN published a detailed report about the city’s tech sector. It really crystallises why Liverpool is a place to watch, with real potential that is only just beginning to be realised.

And then there was Liverpool Slush’d, which had people from across the North’s tech sector talking last week. I’ve heard nothing but positive feedback from people who were there. You can find out more about the person behind it in this very newsletter

– Martin SFP Bryant

Announcing: our first nine startups

Here they are! Even based solely on the number of companies I know that told me they’d applied, I know that the competition for the nine places has been fierce, and I’m sure there were many difficult decisions to make in selecting these startups.

If you want to know more about each of them, look out for more in-depth profiles of these startups in future editions of the newsletter.?

Birl: Birl?offers an “elegant resale solution that powers brands with purpose to drive their growth and sustainability goals.” It has built a new way to handle trade-in and re-sales processes that promises to be easy and valuable for brands and their customers alike.?

Cubode: Initially pitched at data analysts, Cubode’s generative AI-based product makes the power of coding more accessible for professionals who want to do more with their data.?

February: I first came across brothers Ash and Tom Lewis when they were building their first startup, Ash.tv, a few years ago. Now they’re back, with a focus on AI tools to streamline software development. Their first product is called DevGPT.?

Financielle: With the mission to help women take back control of their money, Financielle offers content, tools, and a community and has already been mentioned by Glamour, The Financial Times, and The Guardian.?

Gaia Learning: Why should children with conditions like ADHD and autism get left behind? Gaia Learning exists to help neurodivergent children get equal access to a quality education online, with the goal of improving learning and life outcomes. It offers small personalised classes, one-to-one tuition and a 'whole child view' learner dashboard.?

Heatio: Heatio offers a home energy management system that uses sensors and smart meter data alongside AI, machine learning, and intelligent building modelling to help users make the most of increasingly popular green home technologies like heat pumps, batteries, and solar panels.?

Hexis: Hexis wants to improve life for nutritionists and the sportspeople and fitness enthusiasts they work with. The startup’s tech predictively personalises each user’s nutrition plan, optimising it to suit their workouts, lifestyle, and goals. The aim is to save nutritionists time, improve efficiency, support scale, and enhance the experience, performance and recovery of athletes.?

Ittybit: With a background of working at companies like the BBC, Hulu, and Channel 4, Ittybit’s founders know plenty about how tricky it can be to work with rich media. The startup offers an API to help developers add images, video, and audio to their apps without any hassle. Its proprietary encoding engine uses machine learning to reduce bandwidth by up to 90%.?

Yuty: Yuty uses AI to hyper-personalise commerce experiences for beauty brands. Plenty of people have already seen the potential here: the startup raised a ￡500,000 pre-seed round in 2021, led by Ada Ventures and Venrex. It then received a further ￡100,000 from Google for Startups in 2022.?

You need to know...

Jonny Clark, Investment Programmes Lead at Capital Enterprise

As I mentioned above, last week’s Liverpool Slush’d event has been the talk of the Northern tech community this month, and the person behind it is Jonny Clark.

“There are always so many moving parts and long hours put in behind the scenes when delivering something like this, so to see that everybody enjoyed it and that we achieved all of our objectives is just fantastic,” says Jonny.

“It felt important to put something in the business calendar specifically for our nascent but fast growing tech sector, and I'm just so happy that everybody felt the buzz.”

Jonny’s day job is helping design and deliver Capital Enterprise’s work across the UK at the meeting point of tech startups, investment, and economic development, with a goal of helping more people build successful businesses throughout the country.

“I'm overseeing projects where we're getting hundreds of startups coming through per quarter, at a range of different stages of their journey,” Jonny says.?

“Creating useful learning journeys for each of them and helping them to iterate on their business is exciting because there is so much variety. There are also some top secret, incredibly exciting things in the pipeline at Capital Enterprise that people will just have to keep their eyes peeled for.”

Jonny is also an angel investor, and has backed startups including Supplywell, Betmate, Uhubs, Teamed, Make Thread, and Tastily. As someone who has worked with many founders, what quick fix has he noticed that can make startup life easier?

“Something that does alarm me a lot is founders approaching tasks in an unstructured manner - like not keeping a simple spreadsheet that lists who they've sent a deck to, what the feedback was, when they last contacted them and so on... You can do little things like this, which make your life so much easier further down the line.”

Scouse Word of the Month

Each month, we celebrate the city we are from, by helping you learn the lingo....

Go'ed: A generic positive term, often used in celebration

You're Invited...

This autumn Baltic Ventures is launching a brand new event series, designed specifically for founders...The Tuesday Tech Founder Sessions.?

Happening every Tuesday from October 3rd, Baltic Ventures will be hosting industry experts for exclusive, founder only deep dive and networking events.?

All of these events will be hosted at the Baltic Ventures Hub in the Baltic Triangle, Liverpool. You can find out more, and register at the Baltic Ventures events page.?