
Monday, 23 February 2009
Friday, 13 February 2009
Inspiring the next generation of entrepreneurs…

Cloud9 presents a unique opportunity to inspire young people who are shaping their futures, considering their options and making significant decisions.
Many successful entrepreneurs ascribe their success, at least in part, to a “eureka moment”. Ajaz Ahmed’s was to completely revolutionise Internet use in Europe and make him a rich man.
Ajaz Ahmed is the Founder of Freeserve, the UK’s largest ISP now known as Orange. His eureka moment came when he bought a PC at PC World in Leeds and nobody in the store could tell him how to get onto the Internet. After much persuasion by him, Dixons launched Freeserve in September 1998 and became the UK’s largest ISP in just three short months. It floated just nine months later at a market cap of £1.5bn and entered the FT 100 soon after, in March 2000 it had a market cap of £9bn.
Ajaz was one of the three founding executives to launch the business, seeing it through flotation and the £1.6bn sale to Wanadoo. Ajaz held the position of Business Development Director until April 2001 when he left the company to pursue a variety of business interests. He now sits a number of boards and has a number of investments which he is actively involved in, he sits on the Governing Council at the University of Huddersfield, board of Yorkshire Forward and is an ambassador of Princes Trust.
Thursday, 12 February 2009
Live Challenge at Cloud9!

We’ve asked a selection of North East entrepreneurs to come up with problems facing enterprise in this current economic environment. We hope we can put you to the test to come up with answers, rise to the challenge and prove the worth of the entrepreneurs of tomorrow!
At Cloud9 everyone will be given a specific business problem to solve, with the answers to be posted before the lunch break, in one of our special ballot boxes around the arena.
So at the summit, either go and find some sharp-looking fellow attendees and form a group (but no mates please!) or just by yourself, and use your creativity and common-sense to provide a top-notch answer to our enterprise conundrum!
From a shortlist, winners will be decided by CLAP-O-METER on the stage, with some nifty prizes for the most ingenious solutions.
We will be pre-posting some of the questions and more information on the format closer to the event- so watch this space…
Tuesday, 10 February 2009
Enterprising.At Cloud9

Created by young entrepreneurs, for young entrepreneurs, it is a free-to-access community of like-minded peers.
The first member-led event (of many) will take place after Cloud9 at about 4pm.
Up to 40 young and aspiring entrepreneurs will join us to discuss the issues they face in getting their business off the ground and achieving their ambitions.
It's a valuable opportunity to meet other creative minds and hear the stories of successful young people. And because we're run by young entrepreneurs, we're dynamic and welcoming. So for us, there are no stupid questions.
If you'd like to book your place or you have students who you feel would benefit from being part of Enterprising.At Cloud9 please contact stephen@entrepreneursforum.net
(We'll provide transport to ensure that all those who stay on for Enterprising.At Cloud9 will get home safely)
We'll also provide briefing packs for all those involved with young and aspiring entrepreneurs to outline the vision for Enterprising.At and how future events will work across the region.
Film and Media Competition at Cloud 9
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We want students who attend Cloud9 on 25th February to help us capture their experience and perspectives on the day as part of the official film of the conference (or encourage some who hadn't previously registered but have an interest in film to come along!)
Thanks to Northern Film and Media we have 30 'Flip' cameras available for schools, colleges and students to record up to an hour of footage on the day.
We'll provide a full briefing and guidance from leading North East film professionals on how to capture some great footage.
And we'll also have a professional camera set up for the whole day for those people who meet someone interesting and would like to interview them a bit more formally.
All we ask is that students, schools and colleges entering the competition provide us with their best minute of footage- don't worry too much about fancy editing!
We'll work with the director and editor to select up to three winners who can work with us to produce the Cloud9 official film.
Students can enter the competition as individuals or as part of a team from their school, college or university.
We can also provide film footage that we capture of the day, including the speakers, for students who want to produce their own film of the day.
Interested? For more information contact: stephen@entrepreneursforum.net
Wednesday, 4 February 2009
Come along and be inspired...
Young entrepreneur Imran Hakim is best known as one of the most successful individuals to gain investment on
After securing investment on the programme, Imran has gone on to successfully launch the award-winning iTeddy and associated licence platform http://www.iteddy.com/, billed as the Teddy Bear brand for the 21st century. This year Imran has put together a distribution deal with Vivid Imaginations UK’s biggest toy company, and the product is now retailing in more than 40 countries world-wide, including every major UK toy retailer (including Tesco, Asda, Argos, Costco, Makro, John Lewis, Littlewoods, Harrods, Hamleys etc) with an extensive TV campaign planned for later in the year.
However his business experience goes far beyond the realm of television. An optometrist by profession, Imran runs a successful group of independent practices in and around his home town of Manchester. Having run his own business since he was 16, he has extensive first-hand experience of a huge range of business sectors.
Imran controls a diverse business portfolio ranging from restructuring existing loss-making businesses out of administration to become successful and profitable operations and successfully negotiating licensing arrangements with global brands including Reebok, Longines and Revlon in order to secure distribution rights within given territories.
He has won countless business awards over the years in recognition of his numerous
IoD’s Northwest Young Director of the Year 2008.
Monday, 2 February 2009
The Entrepreneurs’ Forum is delighted to welcome back the immense talent which is, Caspar Berry!
Caspar is the perfect choice to host Cloud 9, having worked with the Forum on our previous two incredibly successful Graduate Conferences (Start Local/ Think Global & Be1) he brings with him, a wealth of experience and understanding of the challenges facing those thinking about emerging into the world of enterprise; especially building a business as a graduate.
Indeed, it was following his attendance at the launch of The Entrepreneurs’ Forum, back in 2003 that Caspar cites as his defining moment to set up his own business venture. Speaking with keynote speaker Richard Branson at the launch, motivated and steered Caspar in a direction he hadn’t thought possible.
During the summit, Caspar will inspire and entertain delegates as he guides us through the full day, drawing out the crucial questions you want to hear from our incredible line-up of speakers, exploring radical themes and new ideas about business and life success, as well as investigating the art and science of making good decisions and taking calculated risks. Caspar takes an interesting look at risk takers from poker, business and life, giving examples of why embracing risk, in a calculated way is good; why it ensures genetic survival and why, the most enduring and successful people and organisations take calculated risks every day.
Career background:Caspar started life as an actor in Byker Grove, went via Cambridge University to write screenplays for Film Four and Columbia TriStar, before embarking on his own personal risk strategy, becoming a professional poker player living and working in Las Vegas. Caspar returned to England in 2002, co-founding Twenty First Century Media- building it into the fastest growing audio visual media company in the North of England. It was whilst still at the helm of Twenty First Century Media that he began his career as a consultant, working with organisations such as BP, Nestle, Nationwide, AXA, Barclays, Cisco, Citigroup, The Metropolitan Police and The Shaw Trust; relating the themes or risk in poker to the decisions we take every day in our business and personal lives. He is a poker expert for Poker Night Live and Sky Vegas, writes a regular column for Flush Magazine and was the poker advisor on the James bond film, Casino Royale.