The ICT Cluster aims to encourage innovation and showcase the companies that are bringing new technologies to the market, generating employment opportunities in the Midlands and demonstrating that our region has talent comparable to the tech start ups in technology hotbeds such as Silicon Valley.  Civico, Majestic12 and Spysure are the first of our Rising Stars series which identifies up and coming West Midlands technology companies.
These companies are all Birmingham based, with Civico taking advantage of Birmingham Science Park’s Entrepreneurs for the future scheme and Majestic also based at the Science Park.

We asked each company to answer a series of questions on their products or services, inspirations and achievements so far.


Civico

Summarise in 100 words what your company does
CivicoLive is an online democracy engagement platform which enables councils and public-facing organisations, through their meetings, conferences and events, to actively engage with citizens.
Civico has developed a technology that aims to change democracy by opening up the process to include all citizens in the dialogue wherever they may be, so delivering greater access and transparency.

In one sentence, describe your main product or service
The Civico platform provides access to live streaming of debates or presentations with integrated social web tools, to increase attendance and opportunities for participation.

When was the company set up and by whom? How many people do you employ?
The company has been operation for 6 months and employs three people and a bank of freelance specialists from across the Midlands.
What has been the main factor behind your success to date?
Our ongoing partnership with the PdF (Personal Democracy Forum) has been a phenomenal opportunity.  It has been an extremely effective platform for Civico to demonstrate our ability to facilitate democratic engagement through innovative technologies.

What have been your company’s biggest achievements?
Providing online democracy and participation to a number of initiatives including:
• Personal Democracy Forum EU
• SessoWeb Catalunya
• Presidential Question Time, Basque Country
• Digital Britain Report
• Digital District Conference
• Hello World Conference
 
What are the advantages of being based in the West Midlands?
The region has a reputation nationally and internationally for being a leading hub for social web innovation and technology. Through the “Bridging the Opportunity Gap” project we are enabled to develop a European network of relationships.

What are the three biggest factors that have contributed to your success?
The use of our platform to deliver Lord Carter’s ‘Digital Britain Report’. Birmingham’s international ‘Hello Digital’ World conference brought us to the attention of event organisers both regionally and nationally.
Delivering the internationally acclaimed and highly prestigious European ‘Personal Democracy Forum’ from Barcelona, has provided a great number of international business opportunities.
Relocating to the Birmingham Science Park Aston, enables access to the higher level business support and infrastructure needed to position the company and our services for a greater scale of operations.

 
Majestic12

Please summarise in 100 words what your company does.
Commercially, we sell business intelligence – in particular, backlinks intelligence about who links to who on the Internet. We wanted to build a world class web search engine that makes use of the popular “distributed computing” model, whereby volunteers download software and run it on their computers.

As a part of this process, a number of systems were developed to allow large scale analysis of how the web is composed. We sell the data produced by some of these systems so that we can invest it to drive the development of greater things.

In one sentence, describe your main product or service
Our main service offering is the sale of information about who links to who on the Internet via our website at www.majesticseo.com

When was the company set up and by whom?
The company was founded in 2004 by Alex Chudnovsky

What have been your company’s biggest achievements?
• Becoming the first organisation other than Google to publicly announce a web graph of over one trillion backlinks (see www.prweb.com/releases/2009/10/prweb3016214.htm).
• Becoming internationally recognised as a market leader in the backlinks intelligence field, which led to us winning an Econsultancy award for innovation in Natural Search and SEO.

What are the three biggest factors that have contributed to your success?
• Technology – without the amazing developments in processor speed and storage none of this would have been possible.
• Community – it’s not just about running software – we have a good team of people in the members of the distributed project who have helped in a number of ways, and motivated the team immensely
• Communication – whilst, without the internet we would be doing something very different, the way it facilitates communication has been amazing, not just from a customer acquisition angle, but also to other parties such as the owners websites we crawl and access to documentation and research.

What are the advantages of being based in the West Midlands?
It’s a good hub, easily commutable from the rest of the country, and pretty good internationally. Local transport is generally good also, and there’s also a good selection of office accommodation close to the city centre. The Birmingham Christmas market is a nice bonus too.

What is your goal for the next 3 years? 
To consolidate our position in the backlink intelligence market, expand our target markets, as a consequence of which we will be able to continue research into the development of a world class search engine.

Spysure

Please summarise in 100 words what your company does.
Spysure has developed an innovative PC & Internet Monitoring Software package, which records all online and offline activity on a computer. The main features include a website tracker, email capture, online chat capture on yahoo and MSN, screen capture and a keylogger which records all keystrokes

In one sentence, describe your main product or service
The Spysure software application helps employers monitor employee activity in the workplace, to minimise misuse of Internet and electronic communication, as well as parents wishing to monitor the use of the family computer. 

When was the company set up and by whom?
Spysure is a subsidiary of Alphatalk Ltd. The Spysure division has been going since 2007 and was set up by Zafar Majid

How many people do you employ?
10

What has been the main factor behind your success to date?
Having a vision to see where we want to go and then going out there to make that vision a reality.

What have been your company’s biggest achievements?
• Being  approached by Amazon to have our software listed on their site. 
• Supplying our products to Staples.
• Opening a US office.

What are the three biggest factors that have contributed to your success?
• Hard work
• Having money available to invest in the business
• A good dynamic and talented team of staff

What are the advantages of being based in the West Midlands?
• Excellent central location which creates easy accessibility to be able to get anywhere in the UK
• Competitive prices on properties, whether you buy or rent
• Good access to a pool of labour when recruiting
 
What is your goal for the next 3 years? 
To create a recognisable UK brand for internet monitoring software