Sponsors

Partners

About

The Web Mission is a competition to identify and support the best fast-growing Web companies in the UK. Web Mission is run by Polecat in collaboration with the Technology Strategy Board, UK Trade & Investment, Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe, TechCrunch, Oracle, Sun, G2I, Silicon Valley Bank, Enterprise UK, Web 2.0 Expo and a number of other key partners.

Polecat

Polecat is a market intelligence software company. Polecat’s product, MeaningMine, enables strategic decision-makers such as the Technology Strategy Board and other partners on the Web Mission, to better understand the environment in which they are engaged, surfacing emerging and dominant trends, influencers and perception statistics. MeaningMine enables investors and entrepreneurs to judge the impact of technology solutions currently in the market and track the relevant trends for building new technology funds and businesses in the future. For the Web Mission, the MeaningMine solution was deployed to identify and now monitor the online discussions, topics, trends, key people and organisations active within the UK tech sector. MeaningMine is also being used to provide media monitoring services for the Web Mission. For more information please visit www.meaningmine.com.

Oli Barrett

Oli Barrett is an established entrepreneur with a wide social network of fellow entrepreneurs. Oli is based in Central London and is involved in a large number of new ventures and projects. Oli is a keen promoter of entrepreneurship in the UK. Oli Barrett runs Connected Capital, an innovation company and he is the founder of “Make Your Mark with a Tenner”. For more information please visit www.dailynetworker.co.uk/about.

Technology Strategy Board

The Technology Strategy Board is a business-led executive non-departmental public body, established by the Government. Its role is to promote and support research into, and development and exploitation of, technology and innovation for the benefit of UK business, in order to increase economic growth and improve quality of life. It is sponsored by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS). For more information please visit www.innovateuk.org.

UK Trade & Investment

UK Trade & Investment (UKTI) is the British government organisation that helps overseas companies bring high quality investment to the UK and also helps UK-based companies succeed in an increasingly global economy. UKTI provides a range of expert services, individually tailored to maximise a company’s international success. These services are offered through a network of international specialists in British Embassies and other diplomatic offices around the world, as well as key experts in government departments across the UK. For more information please visit www.uktradeinvest.gov.uk.

Orrick

Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP is a global law firm with more than 1,100 lawyers in 21 offices. Orrick’s Emerging Companies Group is a multidisciplinary group of lawyers that merges deep experience and commitment to high-growth businesses with a global platform that scales with its clients as they grow. Representing more than 600 venture-backed emerging companies worldwide, the Group runs a strong network with more than 100 venture capital firms, banking and accounting firms, national laboratories, universities and public companies in Europe, the United States and Asia. For more information, please visit www.orrick.com/emerging.

TechCrunch

TechCrunch Europe is a blog covering Web 2.0 and Mobile start-ups. TechCrunch EU is part of the TechCrunch Network, which includes country-specific blogs for France and Japan. TechCrunch EU is edited by Mike Butcher. Mike has written for UK national newspapers including the The Financial Times, The Guardian, The Times and magazines including The New Statesman. He is a former editor of New Media Age magazine, the leading new media weekly in the UK, and The Industry Standard Europe and he has launched or re-launched several media web sites. In 2004 he was voted One of the 100 Innovators of the UK Internet Decade by GfK NOP, the fourth-largest custom research business in the world. In July 2008 Mike was named as one of the Top 100 people in Londons creative industry the UK by The Independent newspaper and the best Web 2.0 and business blog in the UK, by Computer Weekly magazine. He has appeared on BBC News, Sky News, Channel 4 and Bloomberg, commenting on technology and new media. For more information, please visit http://eu.techcrunch.com.

Oracle Corporation

Oracle Corporation (NASDAQ: ORCL) is the world’s largest business software company. For more than 30 years, Oracle has led the industry through continuous innovation and a relentless focus on customer success, providing reliable, secure, and integrated technologies that help customers access the knowledge they need to become leaders in their industry while responding to market conditions with speed and agility. Today Oracle provides database, middleware, and collaboration products; enterprise business applications; application development tools; and professional services for businesses and organizations worldwide. Oracle Corporation UK Ltd believes that established businesses have a role to play in nurturing start-ups and entrepreneurs. Our Emerging Business Partner Programme was set up to give practical support to innovative businesses taking new and exciting ideas to market. Such enterprises have innovative solutions for critical challenges around information-sharing and real-time decision-making, but are looking to collaborate with Oracle to build robust, scalable IT platforms and gain access to potential markets. Oracle has established a flexible process to engage with these companies collaborating with them to understand how its products, services and the Oracle Partner Network can meet their individual requirements. Oracle provides companies with support to build the product, in addition to general business and commercial sales advice to help accelerate the speed to market.

For more information, please visit www.oracle.com.

Sun Microsystems Inc

The Sun Startup Essentials program is designed specifically to help young SMB’s/startups get off the ground running, and at lower cost, whilst building a scalable future-proof platform. Supporting your startup with: Aggressively discounted hardware, storage and MySQL Licences; Discounted Hosting offers; Global PR and outreach; Startups Ask Sun — Free technical support services; Free Training; Networking, community collaboration; Connect with investors; Discounted Event tickets — FOWA, NexWeb etc; Listed in the Startup Directory — Exposure on Sun.com. For more information, please visit http://sun.com/startups.

g2i

g2i is the highly successful investment readiness programme that works with exciting young London start-up and early-stage businesses with high growth potential to help them secure equity funding. Designed to maximise the success of London based companies, the g2i programme is structured to help them develop their teams, propositions and pitches. g2i offers companies the opportunity to work with experienced entrepreneurs and investors to become ‘investor ready’. The success of the programme has seen over £27m (US$39m) of private investment raised by participating companies, and has seen it recognised as representing “best practice” in Europe for an Investment Readiness training programme. Supported by the London Development Agency, the g2i programme is delivered by a consortium of four private sector companies, all with proven skills of adding value in the area of entrepreneurship and private equity investment. The consortium is lead by Grant Thornton UK LLP, a member firm within Grant Thornton International, one of the world’s leading international organisations of independently owned and managed accounting and consulting firms. The consortium included expertise across sectors including ICT, wireless, cleantech, meditech, manufacturing, and the design and creative sub sectors, provided by Grant Thornton, E-Synergy, Quotec and Pembridge Partners. For more information, please visit www.g2i.org.

Silicon Valley Bank

Silicon Valley Bank is the premier commercial bank for emerging, growth and mature companies in the technology, life science, private equity and premium wine industries. SVB provides a comprehensive suite of financing solutions, treasury management, corporate investment and international banking services to its clients worldwide. Through its focus on specialized markets and extensive knowledge of the people and business issues driving them, SVB provides a level of service and partnership that measurably impacts its clients’ success. For more information, please visit www.svb.com.

Enterprise UK

Enterprise UK is the national campaign working to give people in the UK the confidence, skills and ambition to be enterprising. Its vision is of a society where an enterprise culture and entrepreneurial behaviour drive economic prosperity and social cohesion. Enterprise UK boosts entrepreneurial motivation and confidence, nurtures entrepreneurial capability and ambition and stimulates the creation and growth of business. For more information please visit www.enterpriseuk.org.

Web 2.0 Expo

Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco brings together the designers, developers, entrepreneurs, VCs, marketing professionals, product managers, and business strategists – from start-ups to enterprises – that are building the next-generation web. Along with a dynamic Expo Hall and plenty of networking opportunities, five main conference tracks discuss a spectrum of Web 2.0 topics from business strategy to web design, user experience, developer hacks, community building, security, mobile, web ops, user-generated content, and more. For more information, please visit www.web2expo.com.

People who make the Mission a success

The Clean & Cool Mission has many people helping in different ways, here are a few of the people whose assistance has proved invaluable…