Launch of Top Tech Yorkshire 2024

The evolution of a tech company: what help do you need and when do you need it?

Join Mills & Reeve as it launches the latest edition of Top Tech Yorkshire. Previously run as a profile-raising programme for Yorkshire tech companies to help them gain interest and potential investment, Top Tech returns in a new and extended form.

Top Tech member businesses will still benefit from the profile-raising boost which their free membership will deliver, but the primary focus of Top Tech Yorkshire 2024 will be a curated programme of peer-to-peer networking and mentoring events for businesses in the Yorkshire tech community.

Top Tech will proactively encourage members of the extensive and diverse Yorkshire tech community to share insights and experience, ask for help and guidance, and extend their networks, all with a view to helping local tech businesses navigate their way from the current phase to the next and beyond.

The speakers:

The Top Tech launch event at Leeds Digital Festival will see a panel of experts from across the tech scene in Yorkshire come together to explore the help a tech business needs to progress through stage to stage, and when it most needs that help.

Alex Newman, partner at Mills & Reeve, hosts a panel of Yorkshire tech entrepreneurs, investors, and service providers, giving you the chance to hear, first-hand, the story of local tech businesses. The discussion will be followed by a Q&A so you can ask your own questions.

• Jordan Dargue – Co-Founder, Lifted Ventures. Jordan Dargue, is a founder, senior executive, investor, NED, and seasoned investment expert. Her boundless passion for innovation, coupled with a remarkable track record of achievements, positions her within the realms of growth and investment. Jordan’s transformative influence is evident through her leadership in orchestrating multi-million equity-based investment rounds, cultivating award-winning investor networks, and offering unwavering support to thousands of SMEs on their journey toward expansion and investment. Jordan is Co-Founder of Lifted Ventures. Lifted exists to increase the flow of early-stage capital to female founders and promote the significant business benefits of backing women. The Lifted Ventures flywheel has an angel network at its core, alongside education, community, and consultancy. Previously Jordan was co-leader and Board Director of multi-award-winning NorthInvest, and in 2020 she co-founded Fund Her North and Women Angels of the North, a collective of women in VCs and Angel investors who support female founders to get equal access to finance;
• Ryan Atkins – CEO & CoFounder, Supercycle. Ryan is the CEO of Supercycle, a B2B SaaS that is enabling circular economy business models at scale. A previously exited founder of a Shopify agency working with some of the largest e-commerce brands in the UK and US. Alongside that Ryan also launched a portfolio of D2C brands ranging from vintage sportswear, growing diamonds in a lab, and delivering flowers through your letterbox;
• Alex Newman – Intellectual Property lawyer, Mills & Reeve. He has been an intellectual property lawyer, living and working in Leeds, for 25 years now. He spend most of his time helping tech businesses (and IP asset-rich businesses in other sectors) to better understand the intellectual property assets relevant to their business, to unlock value relating to the IP assets they own, and to mitigate risk relating to IP assets they don’t own. With this rebooted version of Top Tech, Mills & Reeve is trying to bring the Yorkshire tech community together in a focused, structured way to unashamedly harness the collective wisdom, experience, and expertise of that community for the mutual benefit of everyone in it. As a Top Tech mentor, he will be looking to connect people who can help each other, and dispel some of the common misunderstandings and enduring myths relating to IP. What he’s looking for in Top Tech members is an open mind and genuine appetite to accept help from, and to offer help to, their peers and our diverse group of tech-sector supporters and mentors;
• Sarah Tulip – CGO, Conquer Technology. Sarah is the CGO at Conquer Technology, she is multi-award winning and has previously held a number of COO roles within fast-growth technology businesses and operated in senior roles for some of the most highly regarded consultancies in the world including EY and Cognizant. She is passionate about equality and is also the founder of WILD Digital, which is a 2500 member+ Northern community-led initiative, focused on both creating and highlighting activity that encourages minority groups to consider choosing a career in digital and empowering people from diverse backgrounds to have the confidence and skills to strive for senior roles. She is the Digital Ambassador for the city of Leeds where she chairs the Leeds Digital Board & Leeds Digital Forum where she can guide on the digital ecosystem and use her expertise to support and ensure the city is the most inclusive and best place to be a digital business. Sarah is also the Chair of the Regional Productivity Forum – Yorkshire, Humber & NE – the forum focuses on how government policy can make changes which lead to economic growth, and examines the causes of the UK’s persistently weak productivity growth. When Sarah has time she uses this expertise and experience and speaks at a national level about diversity, digital, and economics and is often requested to facilitate high profile events within the tech calendar;
• Matthew Lawrence – CEO & Chairman, Skuup. A veteran of the digital tech sector, Matthew has served the likes of Nike, Audi, Aviva, McDonald’s, Adidas, NatWest and AstraZeneca. A former executive director at 3 of the “big five” global digital marketing agencies (WPP, Publicis Groupe, Interpublic Group), he continues to invest in both established and start-up enterprises primarily in the UK, USA and UAE. He brings strong academic credentials culminating in an MSc in Change Management and business transformation, as well as an award winning track record delivering innovative solutions within large corporates and fledgling start-ups. He also understands the real world challenges facing enterprises today including how to fail in this highly charged and contested environment.

It’s a rare occasion to hear from business owners about the help they have valued most, and the help they wished they would have had but didn’t. An event not to be missed!