Too little time, too many meetings—but for fuel cells at least, where not too many people are making money, there’s an easier way of finding a partner.
There’s no attempt to editorialise anything so what comes in as announcements is raw, so to speak, so it’s Caveat Emptor for the user.
But it’s very clear from the start what people are doing—offering job opportunities, selling hardware ,looking for investment or selling their skills, etc. How does Harper make it pay? That’s easy. If you want anything more than a free listing and wish to participate more fully, then your company has to subscribe to get the full benefits of the service, i.e. your own sub-website .
It’s cheap for universities and academic institutions, according to Duncan Bott, Harper’s partner, starting at £5000 per annum and from then on going up in increments to a maximum of £25,000 for large corporates.
For that, says Bott, you get a sub-site built for you and an account manager/marriage broker trying to put companies together into collaborative arrangements. In this writer’s distant past, British Governments tried to do the same thing with big pharmaceutical companies and small biotech entrepreneurs. It very nearly worked. Well, a few academics survived the 1990s.
Now in the wild west days of free market capitalism, these technology marriage brokers may achieve more. What have you got to loose? It’s just a click away and there really aren’t too many pop-up windows.
Why do we go to conferences and meetings? To learn? Maybe. To sell? Often.
To network? Frequently. But how many times are you are able to network with enough new people successfully in the desperate environment of a three-day event, when you have to reassure your existing customers, confirm a few orders, eat the rubber chicken, etc, etc. It’s damn hard work at the best of times. And that’s before your plane was cancelled, you luggage was lost, you got a hard time in airport security and you got a stomach upset. And you couldn’t get your e-mails because the hotel had a stone age telecom system, so getting back to the office became and even greater nightmare than before!
And that’s for an established business like batteries. Now try the same scenario for the fledgling business of fuel cells. Let’s be clear. Not too many people are making money— plenty are spending investors’ money but somewhere in the future there will be business—that’s the hope. Let’s not give it all away to the hangers-on. As a tired and weary technical journalist, I saw the biotech industry eaten by both the money men and the marketing guys—so I’ve seen it all before. What if there was a way to meet companies and individuals from the comfort of your own desk or in my case, if it were summer, the comfort of my own garden?
It doesn’t take too much imagination to say that’s its the internet, but until now most of the attempts to create half decent portals have been abysmal. They either had too much Macromedia flash “gizmos” or they didn’t really understand what the individuals wanted from such a facility.
Toddington Harper, whose father, Brian Harper has been in the battery industry for many years has grasped what so many others have failed to do—how to create an on-screen market place where you can find bread at the bakers shop and meat at the butchers shop so to speak.
In any market, there are those who come to buy and those who come to sell—trade shows don’t always make that clear.
Some people are inveterate information gatherers— they just scoop up all of your literature—they are catered for by this site. There’s the ubiquitous on-line directory so if you want to search for a particular supplier of equipment, say, gas analysis in the USA, fill in the appropriate boxes. There’s a section dedicated to recruitment and of course an inevitable list of meetings you could go to. And products and technologies for sale.
There’s no attempt to editorialise anything so what comes in as announcements is raw, so to speak, so it’s Caveat Emptor for the user.
But it’s very clear from the start what people are doing—offering job opportunities, selling hardware ,looking for investment or selling their skills, etc. How does Harper make it pay? That’s easy. If you want anything more than a free listing and wish to participate more fully, then your company has to subscribe to get the full benefits of the service, i.e. your own sub-website .
It’s cheap for universities and academic institutions, according to Duncan Bott, Harper’s partner, starting at £5000 per annum and from then on going up in increments to a maximum of £25,000 for large corporates.
For that, says Bott, you get a sub-site built for you and an account manager/marriage broker trying to put companies together into collaborative arrangements. In this writer’s distant past, British Governments tried to do the same thing with big pharmaceutical companies and small biotech entrepreneurs. It very nearly worked. Well, a few academics survived the 1990s.
Now in the wild west days of free market capitalism, these technology marriage brokers may achieve more. What have you got to loose? It’s just a click away and there really aren’t too many pop-up windows.
