On the weekend there was an event called Silicon Milkroundabout which is basically a jobs fair for TechCity, the tech hub for London. I was going to physically attend, but it was a cold Autumn Sunday afternoon, so I decided not to. Luckily, the website had a full list of all the companies there so I opted for a Virtual Tour and came away with a few gems I wanted to share:

• http://import.io – an interesting concept of turning (scraping) web pages in to data
• https://www.fundingcircle.com/ – a potentially disruptive way of funding, without banks using peer-to-peer lending
• http://www.medicanimal.com – nothing hugely new, in that they’re a veterinary supplies site for the public but as I love animals this one is worth noting :-)
• http://www.pitchup.com – a booking site for campsites and holidays – just seems a bit different
• http://www.quietriots.com – any site that uses the Mad as Hell speech from Network should have something going for it. These guys are facilitating consumer action, so that’s a big tick from me
• https://www.sportpursuit.com – a discount sports gear site
• https://state.com – another opinion aggregation site, but more generic than quietriot
• https://transferwise.com – something close to my heart – international money transfer without ripoff fees
• https://www.rentify.com/ – a seemingly popular renting website, again bypassing the intermediaries aka Real Estate agents who also had some great articles on “engineers”
  • In Engineers We Trust (to Get Shit Done) which simply states what they don’t do:
    • Deadlines
    • Micromanage
    • Assign projects
    • Make your decisions
  • How we interview engineers

I think the common theme here is in removing (usually bloodsucking ;) intermediaries such as Agents, Distributors etc… which I personally think is a worthy endeavor for a company. In all, well worth spending 1/2h or so going through the site. I may even physically pop along there next year…