During the first week of September I was asked to act as the ‘blogger in residence’ at Sunderland Software City. This involved a commitment to write a blog post every day for a week on the ‘trials and tribulations’ of running a small business in the software sector.

Sunderland Software City is a new initiative, based in the North East of England, designed to inspire and encourage the growth of the Software Industry in the region, and to make the area an attractive location of choice for software businesses.

My posts are here:

• Today is catchup Monday
  A insight into how messed up the world becomes when you return from holiday!
• Data entry day
  Why using one CRM system is a good idea!
• Job descriptions make me mad
  A general rant about why small businesses need engaged and well incentivised staff…not time wasters.
• I would rather play golf than discount our prices
  A rant on the current market conditions, and how people have started to abuse the position.
• I am a Butcher, a Baker and a Candlestick Maker
  Just a general commentary on the fact that small business owners need to wear many hats just to keep the ship on track.

I really enjoyed the opportunity to rant, vent and generally spout shite. I hope that people enjoyed looking at my world through my rose tinted glasses

In these times spare a thought for David and Jane Alexander, the unfortunate directors of Crome Internet Limited. Crome Internet employed 8 staff in the Kendal area and had been trading in the design and hosting market for many years. Unfortunately, Crome Internet was placed into liquidation in March of this year. After nine profitable years the Alexanders called in Tenon Recovery to close the company and liquidate the assets. In performing a liquidation the directors are supposed to raise funds with which to secure payment of the creditors. The creditor list was rather long and included Rozmic Wireless to the tune of over £6,000.

A true entrepreneur deals with failure by defying it, and Dave and Jane are keeping this in mind. Rather than languish in failure they used their entrepreneurial flair and have gotten up off the floor to go on and setup two new businesses. Jane now runs the rather similarly named design agency Crome New Media Ltd and Dave runs a sole trading concern called Host and Promote.

Usually I would encourage any business owner get up and move on after failure, but I feel that the Alexanders have not played the game fairly here. I am not concerned that Jane has setup a similarly named company without the permission of the court (pursuant to section 216 of the Insolvency Act). I am not angry that David continued to consume our company’s resources during the period of January (when he setup Host and Promote) and March when he placed Crome Internet into liquidation. I am not even angry that they didn’t have good manners to call and explain and apologise before the liquidation. What drives me mad is that I have been recently contacted by a company who claim to have bought the customer base of Crome Internet Ltd in a deal which was done before the company was placed into liquidation (contrary to section 213 of the Insolvency Act).

It seems that entrepreneurial standards are not high in the county of Cumbria.

UPDATE (11th May 2009):
After only a few hours this article is now listed in the number one place on Goolge for the following search terms:

• Crome Internet Ltd
• Crome Internet Limited
• Crome New Media

UPDATE (12th May 2009):
This article is now listed as number one place on Google for the following additional search terms:

• David and Jane Alexander
• entrepreneurial standards are not high in the county of Cumbria

Still owe money dating back to August 2008.

It seems that the Alexanders have run out of luck.

UPDATE (8th June 2010):
I have just received the report from the companies liquidator. It seems that there is no cash left (no surprise as the rat left with the spoils) and all the furniture was stolen but Dave and Jane!
It also seems that the liquidator has deemed it necessary to report David and Jane to the Department of Trade and Industry Disqualification Unit under the Company Directors Disqualification Act 1986….naughty, naughty!

We have been playing with a few ideas, namely:

1. A version of GoOpen for the North East
2. A FOSSCamp event on the theme of the very popular BarCamp concept
3. A ‘hackathon’ or ‘mashup’ type event

Some of us are meeting up for a sandwich at 13:00 on Thursday 26th June at Panis cafe in Newcastle-upon-Tyne.

I hope that we can get a few interested people together to throw around a few ideas. The whole concept is in a very early stage so we would like to invite ANY interesed parties to attend.

If you cant attend please feel free to add your comments to this blog entry and I will raise your comments at the meeting.