Dave Baines
Co-founder of Hyperact - a product development consultancy that helps tech companies create and grow awesome products I've spent two decades in cross-functional teams in a product or delivery capacity, building and growing great products with brands such as cinch, BBC, DfT, TfGM, and NHS Digital.
Founding, running, and growing a services business. Creating a pitch deck, and securing funding. Creating and growing great products - rapidly testing product ideas, getting to product market fit, scaling tech
Growing my network. Validating our positioning and marketing strategy. Operationalising sales and marketing.
Danny Blackman
Founder & Experience Director of design studio, 11:11. Recovering VC backed start-up founder.
Product and brand design, validation, testing and development
Jonny Burch
Designer, Product-er and exited founder looking to go again. Recently moved to Manchester. Co-started this thing with Alberto
Fundraising, product and design, brand, SaaS (especially in future of work and selling into HR)
Finding co-founders and collaborators
Augmented reality, mobile app design
finding PMF / revenue / raising money
James Chillman
Founder of Revenue Amp a HubSpot agency, Over 15 years of SaaS/Software startup experience mainly on the commercial/go to market function.
Go to Market Strategy, Pricing, General startup guidance!
Building a better network!
Rich Clensy
Recent Manchester import, non-technical founder with a social on marketplace and social impact start-ups. Strategy and ops focused, spent the last 4 years building out Beyond Meals, continuing the legacy of Meals for the NHS. Now with more time on my hands, looking to explore other problems to solve, focused on impact tech and doing some good along the way.
Community, sound boarding and ntechnical skillset
Not sure just yet
Jem Davies
Self employed open source software engineer, looking to start a software business in Manchester!
Tech & Software
Starting a business - ins and outs, finding funding etc.
Alberto Fortin
Software engineer and entrepreneur, born in Italy, based in Manchester. Addicted to creating things.
Build an MVP, full stack coding, AI coding
Building an audience, finding the right marketing channels
Chris Fortune
Originally from Warrington and now based in Salford, I've been working for myself as a programmer for the past 10 years across a few different start ups. When I’m not coding, you’ll likely find me at Eccles Rugby Club, either on the pitch playing or on the sidelines coaching.
Full stack coding and ideas
Raising money and our GTM
Initial Product Market Fit + web-scraping
Scaling and implementing processes.
Kofi Josephs
Kofi Josephs is an international professional basketball player, mental health advocate, and tech founder. He’s the founder of Why Not I, a wellbeing platform designed to improve mental health within high-performance environments, starting with elite sport. The platform delivers real-time insights and data to help organisations better support their athletes and staff. Kofi combines elite sport, lived experience, and mission-led tech to drive meaningful impact across communities and industries.
Being connected to like minded founders and people ahead of me in the process either from VC, Private equity or angel investors. I would like to meet exited founders.
Community. Learning from exited founders.
Phin Mpofu-Masamba II
Phin Mpofu-Masamba II is the founder of Ugenie, a next-gen discovery and attribution social commerce platform that's making affiliate links obsolete in the social commerce world. With a deep passion for building startup ecosystems and mentoring talent, particularly from underrepresented backgrounds, Phin has dedicated his career to driving impactful growth. Prior to Ugenie, he served as the interim Chief Growth Officer at BYP and was the Director of Global Community at Startup Grind, where he was part of the team that scaled the community to over 600 chapters in 120 countries within 2 and half years. His work has earned him recognition, including being named to the Maserati 100 and winning the CMX Professional of the Year award. Phin currently resides in Manchester.
Building community as your unfair advantage.
Getting connected to Fashion Content Creators and Fashion & Apparel Brands.
Ian Nuttall
Serial builder with a few big exits and 100+ smaller exits. Former (ish) SEO. Always learning. Usually from my mistakes.
Building an audience, SEO, introductions
Talking to people in real life!
Tom Parson
I grew a tech agency for 10 years and now I am an independent consultant and about to launch a SaaS business in a few weeks with a cofounder. I’m also a teacher and music producer!
Tech prototyping and MVP development User research and idea validation Tech upskilling Hiring and growth
Product traction / marketing
Kristaps Romanovskis
Bootstrapped my way through D2C eCom, now into early-stage B2B SaaS. Prod Man + UXR&D background = curious by design.
Early validation, scrappy growth ideas, proper JTBD/Mom-Test interviews and Bullseye customer def. I’ll challenge your focus, pressure-test your proposition, and call out fuzzy UX or product thinking.
Figuring out how to cross the pre-seed gap. Got paying customers lined up, but stuck on getting a lean technical MVP out the door. Need help making the build real.
Leon Rossiter
Founder who's been and tech and start ups 10+ years. Worked on a couple bootstrapped with some small exits, then first international hire for Colu who raised $45M out of Tel Aviv where we operated the worlds largest local digital currencies. Moved onto to Peepl where we raised £700k from the Combined Authority for open source blockchain based local currencies (hope to go back to that one day). Currently running Leaf AI, where we raised a £250k pre-seed in March 2024, using conversational AI for social care organisations and supporting families with Dementia.
Strategy, built a lot, succeeded and failed a lot. Love solving problems.
Introductions to Angels be great, as trying to avoid VC's.
Product & Technical Strategy, launching products and anything AI / onchain focused
Feedback & general chats to share the pains
Harrie Wheatley
Building agentful.ai and eating too much pizza!
Anything technical or growth-hacky. Also happy to just be a sounding board for ideas.
Raising & moving fast while doing so.
David White
CEO of Papermill, early stage startup. We're building the document stack for AI: https://www.papermill.io/ I previously built prototypes for AI companies, before that I worked in academia on AI and Software Engineering and for a while on quantum computing. Previously did some film and art making. Originally from Manchester, I came back two years ago to build Papermill and contribute to Manchester's tech companies. Also worked for N Brown group a very long time ago when the NQ had very few bars and Ancoats was derelict.
Building stuff, managing software dev, bit of sales, everything you're thinking about in the first two years of a startup.
Always keen to learn everything from everyone. I think GTM is the most important aspect of any startup and also the most nebulous and difficult skillset to pick up, so always trying to improve there.
Vasudev Zaver
Hi, I'm Vas. I'm new to my entrepreneurial journey, having worked in the NHS as a full time doctor for the last 7 years. With a pre-seed level idea, I have found it invaluable to hear the lived experiences of other entrepreneurs in the Found Up North community and learn so much about the dos and don't of start-ups. Look forward to meeting more of you!
Medical insights and insider industry experience.
Branding and marketing to help launch and scale my business.
Donglin Zhao
Sharing marketing strategy.
Learning from different business model.