Tonight is the awards night of startupsawards, the awards (thatneednospacingbecausethisistheweb) that are given out by startups.co.uk.
I know how these things work because I too work in publishing, if they don’t make money from an entry fee then they make money by getting you to buy tickets. Its fair enough I suppose, you get to network your socks off in return for the cost. But it is not always affordable to every start-up and there are quite a number of such awards.
But tonight’s orgy of glamour and glitter caught my eye because looking through the shortlist, I can’t see any technology companies listed there. I’m sure they are all run by very serious-minded people but the shortlisted firms are mostly consumer rather than industrial or engineering start-ups.
Looking at the shortlist there is a lingerie firm, ice cream maker, hand-tailored suits company and a training your staff at ‘corporate battlefields’ firm and so on. With a sigh of relief, Glue4 Technologies is up for an award in the Best Use of Technology category.
The others in that category are an e-learning business, a buyers’ review website, and a customer feedback firm. Either no proper technology firms applied or they didn’t understand the ones that did.