Innovation in Software

Vagueware is based in Manchester, England. This is not an insignificant fact.

Manchester was once known as the heart of the Industrial Revolution. You can walk around the city and if you know your history, will be confronted over and over again with stories of world-changing events occuring right here.

The canals around Castlefield are on a tentative UNESCO World Heritage site shortlist because of their importance in the 19th century – the Bridgewater canal was the first artificial inland waterway to be built in Britain since Roman times.

Jospeh Whitworth invented the design of the standardised screw on nuts and bolts here – several streets and buildings are named for him. Before that he had worked on Babbage’s calculating machine.

John Dalton worked – he taught Joule, also a notable man at what later became the University – and studied here and looked after the clock in the Portico library which is still one of the most beautiful libraries in Britain. Manchester was home to the first rate-supported public lending library in the country.

The University was the place where Rutherford and Bohr invented the field of nuclear physics (Rutherford’s lab is now so highly radio-active that it is entombed in concrete) and it is also the place where Turing worked on The Manchester Mark I.

The political reform acts of the 19th-century that reformed democracy for all, were kick-started by the movement started here in Manchester as a result of Peterloo and the Free Trade Movement. Emily Pankhurst had her home here, and Manchester was a central force in the Suffragette movement with notable support from one of the more famous locally-born politicians

Elizabeth Gaskell called this city home, and invited Dickens to visit – at the time 40,000 people a week were moving to Manchester looking for work, and conditions were grim. No surprise then that Marx and Engels travelled here and sat in the local pubs considering the conditions of the working man – Engels paid for much of Marx’s life out of the proceeds of his Manchester business, as it happens.

It’s an important place. It has a history that is neglected even by the locals, but there are plenty of reasons other than those above that mean I want to keep Vagueware here and let it flourish.

First off, it’s a University town – the largest in Europe. Whilst I don’t have a huge amount of respect for the discoveries of academics who don’t have to fiscally justify their research, being in a city full of young, enthusiastic people with fresh ideas is infectious. If you sit in a coffee shop in Silicon Valley you probably hear all about who is sleeping with who in some D-list tech company nobody cares about. In Manchester, you overhear people’s dreams.

Secondly, it’s still a relatively cheap place to live. Not cheap in real terms, but compared to London it’s a snip. What’s more, it’s small so you don’t need a car or an infinite supply of change for black cabs and tubes to get around – I can walk everywhere I need, and afford to live here on a lowish income. I live 500 yards from a mainline train station, 25 minutes from an international airport and less than an hour to either the Peak District or the Lake District (everybody needs a day off). It’s a great place to start a business.

More importantly though, there is a tech industry here waiting to burst out. Most of the firms tend to be standard new media web development shops that take on bespoke work – there’s plenty enough to go around. What isn’t here is a company that wants to build dot.com products/services and let them stand on their own. There is no Ycombinator, no 37signals, no groups of people ready to take on the World. What isn’t here is a company championing leadership, innovation and being brave. That’s where I want Vagueware to fit in.

Over the next 12-36 months, I want Vagueware to show it is possible to build viable dot.com entities and base them out of Manchester. Once I do it, others will follow. And then, with a bit of luck, the next industrial revolution can start to take off in the home of the last one.

Gutsy talk this, I know. Almost arrogant. But heck, if I fail, who is going to care? I’d rather fail spectacularly than get by meekly.