Blog
Trampoline receives Cambridge University “Company of the Year 2012″ award
By Trampoline Systems | March 27th, 2012
Last night Trampoline was honoured to receive the 2012 Company of the Year award from the Cambridge University Computer Lab Ring. Charles Armstrong (CEO) and Craig McMillan (CTO) accepted the award at a dinner held in Queen’s College Cambridge attended by leading figures from the Cambridge technology community.Presenting the award, Professor Andy Hopper commended Trampoline for its imagination and determination pursuing a disruptive innovation through to success in the market. Receiving the award Charles commented:
“Trampoline’s journey has not always been straightforward. We were probably five years too early in the market with our business network analysis technology. Then the global economic crisis led our main investor to withdrew from the market, leaving us high and dry. But far from losing heart Trampoline has always thrived on challenges. We had a radical innovation and we knew the commercial opportunity was huge. So we invented a new form of venture finance, becoming the world’s first company to raise money through equity crowdfunding; we turned our offices into Shoreditch’s first shared workspace, now famous as The Trampery; we reconfigured our product strategy to match customer opportunities. 2011 was an amazing year for Trampoline with a succession of high-profile projects culminating in the launch of Tech City Map by Prime Minister David Cameron. Now 2012 promises to be even more exciting. We are honoured to receive this award tonight from the University where Trampoline’s story began. Above all we hope it inspires other innovators and entrepreneurs to play the long game and muster the determination required to bring truly disruptive innovation to the market.”
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Charles Armstrong keynote lecture to Atos Scientific Community
By Trampoline Systems | February 8th, 2012
This afternoon Charles delivered the keynote lecture for the annual gathering of Atos’ worldwide Scientific Community in a decidedly chilly Paris. His talk introduced techniques for mapping and analysing informal networks in business communities. He went on to explore how this analysis could be used to improve performance around collaboration and innovation. This was illustrated with case studies from Trampoline’s experience; identifying top influencers in a global business by analysing corporate email using Trampoline’s SONAR technology; and dissecting networks in the East London innovation cluster by analysing Twitter data in the Tech City Map.Charles concluded with a discussion of Atos’ widely discussed Zero Email initiative which seeks to transition all internal communication away from email by 2014. He examined a possible role for network analysis in benchmarking overall patterns of email use, identifying outliers and using game mechanics to discourage long CC lists and heavy attachments.
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UK Prime Minister David Cameron Launches Tech City Map
By Trampoline Systems | November 10th, 2011
Earlier today UK Prime Minister David Cameron visited Shoreditch to launch the Tech City Map, the project created by Trampoline to analyse the fast-growing ecosystem of technology businesses located in East London. The platform uses Trampoline’s SONAR technology to pull in Twitter feeds for more than 800 businesses in the area and analyse their connections, influence and focus on the community. David Cameron said of the project:“The Tech City Map, which underlines the fantastic level of creativity and innovation taking place in the area, is a great showcase for East London’s start-up community. It’s also a demonstration of how small, innovative businesses can collaborate with leading corporations. It’s fitting that the Tech City Map is 100% home-grown in East London with its creators Trampoline and Playgen both based in Shoreditch.”
The project was developed in partnership with Thomson Reuters, Mother, Cisco, Atos and LinkedIn and the user interface was designed by Shoreditch-based business Playgen. The BCS and London Borough of Hackney also supported the project.
A gallery of photographs from the launch event is available on the Trampery’s Facebook page.
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HRH the Duke of York opens the Trampery
By Trampoline Systems | October 10th, 2011
This afternoon HRH the Duke of York (otherwise known as Prince Andrew) visited the new Trampery to meet the entrepreneurs working there and perform an opening ceremony. The Duke started by meeting Charles and Eric van der Kleij (CEO of the UK Government’s Tech City Investment Organisation) to discuss the state of the East London technology community. He then hosted a roundtable discussion with a dozen entrepreneurs where there was a lively discussion of the challenges faced by UK startups and ideas for measures that could help more businesses succeed.After this the Duke walked through the Trampery workspace, stopping for a short demonstration of Fuerte’s augmented reality iPad application, before arriving in the newly-opened Trampery Studio where he met with influential figures from the Tech City community and additional entrepreneurs. Finally Charles gave a short speech welcoming the Duke, after which the Duke gave a speech and unveiled a plaque commemorating his visit.
There are some wonderful photographs from the Duke’s visit on the Trampery’s Facebook page.
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Charles Armstrong lecture to UCL entrepreneurs
By Trampoline Systems | October 6th, 2011
This afternoon Charles gave a lecture to two hundred entrepreneurship students at University College London. He presented a vivid picture of Trampoline’s path from formation through investment, its first customer deals and growth. A video of the lecture is available on the UCL website.Posted in Events | No Comments »
Financial Times on Trampoline’s response to larger imitators
By Trampoline Systems | August 12th, 2011
In today’s Financial Times there’s a great article by Jonathan Moules (Enterprise Editor) exploring how innovative startups should respond when much larger firms develop imitative products or services. Trampoline is the main case study used in the article. There’s a hilarious photo of Charles lounging in the Blue Room at the Trampery.
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Launch of Tech City Map Partnership
By Trampoline Systems | July 7th, 2011
This afternoon twenty-five senior representatives from government, private sector and academic concerns convened at the Trampery. The purpose of the meeting was to identify different stakeholders’ information needs as they relate to the East London technology community. After an introduction by Eric van der Kleij, CEO of the Tech City Investment Organisation, there were contributions from policy makers, investors and corporate stakeholders plus expert presentations on previous initiatives to track technology ecosystems and reports on ongoing projects that are compiling datasets of East London businesses.Towards the end of the meeting I demonstrated the prototype of a platform developed by Trampoline that sets out to analyse the cluster of businesses by aggregating social network feeds for up to 10,000 people working in East London. The prototype only includes 80 businesses but it can already generate analysis on the relative influence of each one and link them by the similarity of their interests.
The meeting concluded with the group agreeing to form a partnership bringing together all existing datasets and developing an analytic platform to furnish the information required by stakeholders. Trampoline will coordinate the partnership and lead the development effort.
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A new Trampery opens its doors
By Trampoline Systems | May 27th, 2011
Since opening its first Shoreditch office in 2003 at Old Aske’s Hospital on Pitfield Street, Trampoline has always had a reputation for creating beautiful workspaces. In 2009 we built on this tradition to create “The Trampery”, Shoreditch’s first co-working space at a quiet location on Dereham Place. We’d encountered so many interesting startups who wanted to locate in Shoreditch but couldn’t find a suitable space that we finally decided to do something about it.We designed the Trampery as a microcosm of the East London creative community. It rapidly became known for its distinctive style, deftly mixing antique furniture and contemporary design, persian carpets and modern art, gleaming computers and victorian machinery. Rather than focusing exclusively on technology businesses we built up an inter-disciplinary community including non-profits, media and arts projects alongside hardcore software engineers.
By the end of 2010 the Dereham Place space was bursting at the seams so we took the decision to move to a larger site and spin it off as a separate venture. Today our plans reached fruition with the opening of an all-new Trampery on Bevenden Street, just the other side of Old Street. We’ve doubled our deskspace capacity, gained a dedicated 2,500 sqft space to host events and laid on facilities that are even more sumptuous than the first version. Interior features include a 20 metre wall clad in teak decking reclaimed from an old ship and bespoke meeting room doors made from slabs of solid oak that pivot in the floor and ceiling. We’ve placed the canteen at the heart of the site. It’s the social junction of the whole building where people cross paths and swap news. We wanted it to be the first things guests encounter when they arrive.
There are some photographs on The Trampery’s website and its Facebook page. You’re welcome to come and visit us.
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Trampoline joins McKinsey, Google & others for Tech City report
By Trampoline Systems | April 12th, 2011
Earlier this week David Cameron, the UK Prime Minister, launched the Tech City report outlining a set of measures to develop a world-class cluster of technology businesses in East London. Trampoline contributed to the report alongside McKinsey, CISCO, Intel, Google, Vodafone, Facebook, LBI, Qualcomm, Barclays and Silicon Valley Bank.Download the report from McKinsey’s website
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Trampoline in Wired Magazine feature on UK technology policy
By Trampoline Systems | January 31st, 2011
Wired Magazine’s February 2011 issue includes a feature dissecting the UK government’s plans to create a technology cluster of international significance in east London. The initiative, announced by the Prime Minister in November 2010, seeks to build on Shoreditch’s existing cluster of technology start-ups by bringing in large US technology firms, attracting venture capital businesses to the area and converting parts of the £6 billion Olympic site in Stratford into an “Accelerator Space” for more developed businesses.The policy is essentially a good one, recognising a phenomenon that’s already creating value and looking for ways to augment it. Unfortunately this sensible idea got mixed up with the Government’s political need for a convincing story about what happens to the (hugely expensive) Olympic site after the games are finished.
I was interviewed for the article and Wired used several of my more colourful quotes in the article, including this:
“Old Street is one thing: you’ve got this clear historical process,” Armstrong says. “In the 80s it became a cluster for the printing industry. Graphic-design businesses grew out of that and as a result Curtain Road, Shoreditch, became the epicentre of our dotcom boom. To take that natural phenomenon and then say there’s going to be a Tech City stretching from Shoreditch to Stratford — that’s just not a logical step.”
and this:
“In the case of Silicon Valley, and Israel too, it’s absolutely clear that the starting point was a massive defence industry investing in that area, which created a university system of a particular kind and a certain technical base. Unless the Government is planning on creating a huge weapons programme in Stratford and then waiting for 40 years, then it’s mad to be fixated on that model.”
You can read the whole article online. Meanwhile I’m meeting the Prime Minister’s policy team on Wednesday so I’ll have an opportunity to discuss my thoughts directly.
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