London Innovation Lab seeks second round of FinTech startups

The second annual FinTech Innovation Lab has opened its applications to attract early-stage entrepreneurs to the capital.

The 12-week programme, run by Accenture, aims to accelerate product development in the financial services sector by providing mentoring, workshops and networking for early-stage companies.

Accenture Lab with Alistair Grant.jpg
Accenture is keen for the programme to incorporate companies which are creating innovative products in the areas of mobile payments, big data and analytics, security, and social media.

The programme involves executives from financial institutions including Bank of America, Barclays, Citi, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, Lloyds Banking Group, Morgan Stanley, RBS and UBS.

It also has support from the Mayor of London, City of London Corporation and UK Trade & Investment, along with independent advisors Euclid Opportunities, the Technology Strategy Board and UK Business Angels Association.

Technology officers and executives will select six startups to participate in the 12-week programme, through which they will be partnered with bank executives and successful technology entrepreneurs to develop their products and business strategies.

The programme will end with an Investor Day presentation in March 2014, where the six companies will pitch to venture capitalists and financial industry executives.

“[Being involved with a hub] plants both feet firmly inside the door, when previously you struggled to get a toenail in,” said Rich Newton from startup Calltrunk, which took part in the Accenture Innovation Lab 2012. “You then leverage that to build commercial relationships.”

This guide from Computer Weekly provides you with everything you need to know about startups in the UK, with news, business profiles and advice starting relationships with UK startups.

Alistair Grant, CIO for Europe, Middle East and Africa at Citi, was a mentor in last year's Innovation Lab. He told Computer Weekly that he’d happily repeat working with companies which were appropriate to Citi’s technology portfolio.

The bank is also still in conversations with a number of the startups about their offerings. “We met a number of startups through that initiative. From our perspective, it enables us to bring the outside in, and choose what to bring into Citi from a whole branch of different startups. Big data, cloud, agile computing – we’re really keen on all of those areas, and it was great to work with startups thinking in the same vein – just a little bit quicker than we are,” he said.

But Grant did not go into the mentorship with the specific aim of securing commercial contracts. “I put aside thoughts of commercial activity until the programme finished, as I felt the important thing was to do genuine end-to-end sponsoring – mentoring on how companies could be successful in a corporate environment, anywhere across the financial sector,” he said.

“I didn’t want them getting bogged down in how it worked specifically for Citi. Once the programme finished, if we wanted to talk to them further, there was a different way to approach it.”

Of the many technologies and threats emerging in financial services IT, Grant believes that Citi must keep working on intrusion detection. As a result, he mentored startup Digital Shadows, which develops technology for the “darker side” of the internet.

“There are a lot of very sophisticated groups who look to disrupt services for major banks, and it’s not limited just to banks these days,” he said. “As these attacks get more sophisticated, we have to be really on our game to make sure we have the best possible detection capability implemented in our systems, and at the very least be able to react very quickly if there is a new attack.”

Another successful startup from last year’s Innovation Lab is Growth Intelligence. The company tracks the performance activity of every registered company in the UK by analysing their online activity. This web behaviour information is collated in real time by searching and analysing vast amounts of publicly available data from the internet.

In recent research it found that there are nearly 270,000 active digital companies in the UK, compared with the government’s previous estimation of 167,000.

The closing date for applications to this year’s Innovation Lab is 8 September 2013.

Tablet jackpot spoiler leads to FAST audit at London bingo club

London Palace Bingo Club IT director Chris Pugh took a gamble when he purchased tablet PCs direct from a Chinese manufacturer.
The gamble did not pay off, however, as a Federation Against Software Theft (FAST) audit subsequently identified significant under-licensing of Microsoft products at the club.

As a result, London Palace Bingo Club bought a Microsoft Open Licence for 255 Windows Pro 8 products to cover the tablet.
"We looked at purchasing hardware direct from manufacturer to lower our total cost of ownership and believed the pre-installed software was fully-licensed," said Pugh.
"The information we were given was incorrect, however, and the FAST investigation highlighted the risks involved in dealing direct with manufacturers in China. It was an honest mistake on our behalf and we welcomed FAST's intervention, which has improved our understanding of the risks and resulted in positive changes to our procurement process and software asset management," he added.
Alex Hilton, CEO of FAST, said: “We would recommend that any business considering cutting costs by buying and using cheaper Chinese products be aware that there is very often a highly complex and convoluted supply chain, with goods passing through several suppliers before they reach the ultimate end user.
"We would urge consumers to think again at the very least, and check the legality of the licences any product purports to have.”

As Computer Weekly has previously reported, the software industry needs to work with users to make terms and conditions of software licensing clearer.

'The World's End' Premiere: Cast Celebrates Boozy Pub Crawl Comedy in London

LONDON -- Less stagger and more swagger was the order of the evening as Simon Pegg and fellow cast members Nick Frost and Rosamund Pike strolled among the fanboys and tourist gawkers for the world premiere of Edgar Wright's The World's End.

Pike, a former Bond girl, turned up in a shin length white dress designed by Victoria Beckham. She said working on the film was like discovering she had three clever older brothers.

PHOTOS: 19 Movies for The End of the World

The Universal Pictures-backed Working Title and Big Talk production marked its global debut in the famous British capital landmark theater the Empire Leicester Square on July 10.

The crowds were to be expected for the movie that reunites Wright with actors Pegg and Frost, as they enjoy cult status, following the trio's successes with Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz.

The trio have teamed up for another round of boozing, buddying and B-movie parodying, as described in THR's review, in what has been presented by the trio as the third movie in co-screenwriters Wright and Pegg's cheekily titled "three flavours cornetto" trilogy, named after the ice cream cone that makes cameos in each movie. Premiere attendees were handed a mint cornetto on arrival at the theater.

Paddy Considine (The Bourne Ultimatum) and Eddie Marsan (Sherlock Holmes), who join the Wright, Pegg and Frost gang onscreen for the first time, also enjoyed the premiere.

There was a ripple of disappointment that Martin Freeman (The Hobbit), the other newcomer to the gang, couldn't join the outing because of other commitments.

Sporting a powder blue suit with black trim, Pegg said the movie has "little bits of all of us" in the characters.

VIDEO: 'The World's End' Trailer: Nick Frost and Simon Pegg's Supernatural Pub Crawl

He also hinted that the trio of Wright, Frost and himself will make another film together, but "without the cornetto."

Big Talk chief and producer Nira Park thanked working title for allowing her to make the trio of films "without interference, particularly Working Title co-chairman Eric Fellner."

She gave a shout out to Universal and Focus before bringing Wright to the stage.

Wright introduced co-conspirators Pegg and Frost along with Pike and Marsan to the stage inside the cinema ahead of the screening.

Wright told the audience that if anyone "tweeted about the surprises" ahead of its wide release "he would kill" them.

FILM REVIEW: The World's End

The movie is released by Universal in the U.K. on July 19, a month ahead of its U.S. bow via Focus.

It stars Pegg as an immature 40-something who drags four friends on a 12-pint drinking marathon in the small English town of Newton Haven where they grew up.

After assembling for the outing, the evening takes a turn for sci-fi as they find themselves fighting off an alien invasion amidst the drinking games and final pub goal.

Wright said from the blue carpet earlier that the whole premise of the movie was based on a pub crawl he and his friends from his home town in Somerset had "failed miserably at the age of 19" to complete.

Select premiere-goers were invited on a one-bar only hop of their own to the swanky West End club and eaterie DSTRKT for a party scheduled to run late into the night.

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What London can teach Silicon Valley

Left to right: Tech City CEO Joanna Shields, Accel Partners' Sonali de Rycker, and Fortune's Stephanie Mehta

FORTUNE -- Though many aspiring entrepreneurs still adore Silicon Valley, London is working to create its very own supportive environment for fledgling companies. London's Tech City CEO Joanna Shields, Accel Partners' Sonali De Rycker, and Facebook (FB) global marketing VP Carolyn Everson discussed the famed city's relationship with the tech ­industry and what it's doing to create a version of the Bay Area that works for its founders at a Fortune Most Powerful Women meeting in London on Monday.

Shields has spent an equal amount of time in both cities (14 years each) and doesn't pretend that London is the next Silicon Valley. London is composed of tech clusters across the city, each with its various strengths, rather than one large location where all entrepreneurs congregate. Such a cluster model brings together ­lawyers, accountants, bankers, and other professionals from the surrounding ecosystem, she said.

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Silicon Valley isn't the only innovation hub, De Rycker added. "There's a big difference between starting a company vs. getting to critical mass." At that point, she said, entrepreneurs need to locate in an industry cluster ­that suits their needs. "People go to clusters for talent," De Rycker continued. In Silicon Valley, there's so much activity and so many potential employers for developers, that salary costs can quickly grow prohibitive. Also, enabling institutions ­like government, immigration policies, and access venture capital ­make several different cities appealing to different founders.

London aims to emulate Silicon Valley's philosophy ­that success is not just a possibility but also a prerogative. Shields said she's seen London entrepreneurs shift more towards that ethos. When she first moved abroad, her employees scoffed at stock options. They wanted pensions. She laughed, saying today that they all want to be the next Mark Zuckerberg.

Though everyone wants to found the next hot startup, De Rycker said that Silicon Valley's undiluted obsession with tech is not necessarily the right recipe for other cities. That focus gives the Valley an edge, but she seemed wary of the sustainability of that model. (Though, she clarified, she is not saying Silicon Valley is dead.) Shields did applaud large American companies' acquisitive nature, explaining that they look to entrepreneurs for innovation. "The energy that comes in with a new idea can completely transform a business and lead you on a new trajectory," she explained, encouraging European companies to take notice of the small companies growing in London's tech clusters.

London may have learned from America's streak of entrepreneurial successes, but sometimes the Silicon Valley way doesn't translate so well. Everson moved to London in January to search for Facebook's next president of its European, Middle East, and Asian business. ­Shields stepped down from the position to head Tech City ­and was immediately surprised by the way the social network was perceived abroad. "Externally, we didn't have a clear articulation of what Facebook meant for marketers," she said. Clients told Everson that Facebook's presentations weren't humanizing, which led her to get in touch with Menlo Park and refocus the company's branding. "There's been a lot of work on the brand," she told the audience, crediting her move to London with her changed approach.

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The Facebook exec then shared some of the best advice she's ever received: When you walk into a room, think of yourself like a thermostat; dial it up and down as needed. As London's presence in the tech world grows, it seems to be doing just that, taking only what it likes from the Silicon Valley model.