Tech entrepreneur buys into £600k business festival

SCOTT Fletcher MBE, the chairman and founder of cloud and managed services provider ANS, has made a six-figure investment in the upcoming Business Rocks festival.

Fletcher and Business Rocks founder Jonathon Cadden are now the two major shareholders in the company set up to run the annual two-day tech event which runs April 21 and 22 at Manchester Central.

Described as a global tech and investment summit brought to life by music, the event will include more than 100 international speakers who will share their expertise on the industry.

Speakers include Steve Wozniak (pictured), co-founder of Apple; X Prize winner Dr Anita Goel; and Jeff Hoffman, co-founder of Priceline.com and UBID.COM.

Cadden is the former managing director of Fluid, a Manchester-based recruitment and executive search agency, which he founded in 2006. Although he retains his stake in the business, Cadden relinquished his directorship last year to concentrate on building the Business Rocks brand.
Cadden and Fletcher want the festival, which is costing £600,000 to put on, to emulate the success of South by Southwest in Texas or Dublin’s Web Summit.

Cadden told TheBusinessDesk: “We want this to be the biggest tech summit in Europe within the next five years. We have in the business plan to get to 15,000 delegates a day for three days.”

Fletcher said: “Business Rocks is an event designed to showcase Manchester’s vibrant tech, entrepreneur and cultural scene. The decision to back the project was very easy for me, as backing the event is backing the future of the city.”

In addition to high profile speakers, Business Rocks will include tech demos, interactive debates, a £50,000 Invov8 Pitch Battle prize, a Homeless Hackathon and a live EU Referendum debate where the audience will vote live.

Cadden added: “The event will bring together some of the most inspiring and entrepreneurial thought-leaders and start-up CEOs from across the UK and beyond.”