🌟 Vicinity: Your Place Management Technology Partner 🌟🔗 https://getvicinity.com 🔗Working with over 100 organisations across the UK, and North America.Welcome to Vicinity, born from the merger of Solomon and LoyalFree in October 2023. We are a technology company dedicated to the place management industry, serving BIDs, councils, DMOs, and property owners.Our mission: To empower every place-maker to build thriving, engaged communities and gain support based on the value they provide.

After graduating from University, I started Crowdfund Campus to support University students raise funding for their ideas. After pivoting, the business is now focuses on providing tools for Enterprise Education. It was Incubated at the University of Warwick Software Incubator, and Accelerated at Entrepreneurial Spark in Birmingham.Currently Crowdfund Campus has two products - http://sandpit.cc (primary) - http://crowdfundcampus.comBoth are creating a generation of graduate entrepreneurs. With a focus on Enterprise Education, we use crowdfunding (reward and simulations) to raise funds, test markets and validate ideas. We are trusted by Universities across the UK to support staff, educate students and promote the entrepreneurial pathway. ACHIEVEMENTS- Over 2000 students a year use Sandpit within Undergraduate, Postgraduate and MBA courses across University faculties- Contributor to the European Commission's framework on Entrepreneurship Competencies- Contributor to UK government roundtable on Enterprise Education- Associate Lecturer in Enterprise, at London College of FashionPAINFUL LESSONS- Didn't build a team early enough and as a result took a year to launch first product- Didn't undertake enough validation of customer problems- Initially underpriced product- Didn't fully appreciate the importance of incentives .....I could go on!

LoyalFree is a multi award winning innovative mobile phone app promoting businesses through deals, loyalty schemes, competitions, event listings, tourism information and interactive tours and trails. A market leader within place promotion, LoyalFree works with 65+ towns and cities in the UK and aims to improve the overall digital presence of the high street.

Investing, buying, building, and operating niche B2B software businesses.

As Commercial Director of EBI.AI, I worked with CDOs, Customer Experience Directors in the insurance, retail, public, housing, and travel & transport sectors. They were typically experiencing high and growing call volumes coming into their customer care teams and they wanted to free up their agents OR they wanted to create sticky, retentive experiences for the customers that increased lifetime value.Our clients were the most forward-thinking individuals, embracing new technologies to deflect calls from their contact centre, improve self-service and create amazing experiences for their customers.At EBI.AI we believe that every interaction between your people and your customers is a crucial opportunity to build customer loyalty, but your staff need to be liberated from the boring, mundane and repetitive tasks to enable them to deliver amazing customer experiences. That's where we come in.If that sounds at all familiar, and you want to find out how we do it using conversational AI assistants, please get in touch with them at hello@ebi.ai

We are one of the most advanced bot makers in the market. A UK-based, highly specialist business that is building the future – today. Our bots will cut the cost of your customer interactions and demonstrate a measurable capacity to increase sales and boost engagement.Our PaaS (Platform as a Service) enables you to deploy your bot in weeks – not months; we build bots using IBM Watson, the best AI brain on the market today. We are live across multiple sectors, including property, banking, insurance, retail and travel.We are actively putting chatbots and voice assistants on our clients' frontline. To find out more about these technologies and how they can help your business grow, feel free to contact me to find out more.We’re always hiring, so if you think you are the future, get excited by AI and want to be part of the next big thing, then get in touch.

- Sourced products from Chinese manufacturers- Inspected a Chinese factory and products- Arranged shipping to Europe and South Africa

- Attended a French crepe making course in Brittany, France- Bought the necessary equipment to make and sell crepes at events, markets and festivals- Experimented with crepe canapés for large functionsPAINFUL LESSONAfter 10 days at the Wolverhampton Christmas market in the freezing British December, I realised there's a time, place and market for your product, even one that everyone seemingly likes. The wonderful people of Wolverhampton were not a good target market for my French style crepes. December was not the right time of year. Chilblains hurt!

- Sourced funding from Sports Councils- Reached out to rural primary schools in Herefordshire to offer tennis coaching - Delivered summer term tennis coaching in PE classes to 6 primary schoolsPAINFUL LESSON- Need long term (or recurring) funding sources in order to create a sustainable business model