WCIT Celebrates ‘Oscars for Technology Entrepreneurs’
Last Thursday 1st July saw the Oscars for Tech Entrepreneurs, the room was alight with some of Tech’s finest businessmen and women. Chairman of Enterprise Awards, John O’Connell said, “We are living in turbulent times at the moment and the economic future remains uncertain. Yet, the technology sector is in robust health and well suited to support the quality and innovation needed to support ongoing growth in the economy. The superb quality we have seen from the entrants and winners of this year’s awards gives me great confidence that the entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well across the UK technology sector. Once again, the event has lived up to its reputation as the Oscars for the technology industry.”
One of the major accolades, Young Entrepreneur, was awarded to Tom Hatton, CEO and co-founder of RefME, an accurate and automated citation tool, which lets students collect and add any source to bibliographies with just a click, scan book and journal barcodes on their smartphone, and format citations in over 7500 styles. The Award for Emerging Entrepeneur went to Becky Downing, CEO and founder of Buzzmove, a revolutionary online price comparison and booking platform for the moving industry.
Ed MacNair, CEO of cloud security company, CensorNet, won the Serial Entrepreneur Award, given to entreprenuers over the age of 50 when they founded their business. The Developing Entrepreneur went to Ian O’Rourke, Adthena, which provides competitive intelligence for major Google search advertisers.
Hellen Bowey of Alcove, which provides a personalised all-in-one service for anyone who wants to live independently at home, won the Social Enterprise Award.
Simon Hansford, co-founder and CEO of Skyscape, the assured cloud services provider, picked up the Public Sector Award while Joanne Smith, founder and CEO of RecordSure, the compliance montoring solution provider, won Female Entrepreneur. Steve King and Hugo Amos of international data science agency, Black Swan, received the Enterprise Award and Adam Hale, CEO of Fairsail, which provides HR software for mid-sized organisations, was successful in the ScaleUp category.
The Judges’ Award for Growth Potential was handed to Rhydian Lewis and Peter Beherens of peer-to-peer lending company, RateSetter while Steve Cliffe, CEO and President of touchless haptics, company Ultrahaptics, won the Judges’ Award for Innovation. Last but not least, the Mentor Award was handed to Nick Travis, partner at financial services provider, Smith & Williamson.
This year’s WCIT Enterprise Awards were sponsored by, Questers, The Sage Group plc, ScaleUp Group, Silverpeak, Smith & Williamson and TechMarketView. techUK, the trade association for the UK’s tech sector again supported the event along with the Innovation Warehouse, and PR consultancy, Whiteoaks.
The event also featured a rousing speech from CEO of the Sage Group, Stephen Kelly, a passionate champion of entrepreneurs, urging them to fill the gap left by politicians and seize the business opportunities out there in the marketplace today.
