Biography
Neil is a British entrepreneur and startup mentor who has been working across Europe, most notably in the Balkans, for several years. His background in the music industry led to him starting a series of tech businesses in the merchandise sector. He now consults, mentors, and runs award-winning accelerator programmes that get concrete results for startup founders.
His first business was a record label, on which he was also a DJ and producer. He toured the world for several years before closing the label to be the co-founder of Dizzyjam, an e-commerce and merchandising service for the independent music industry, and RampTshirts.com, the smartest online service for buying promotional merchandise for events and businesses.
“Implementing so much of your advice, thank you! Also, my revenue is up 30% per sale from our conversation!”
– Aaron, founder, tech hardware founder
As a creative and digital/tech industries consultant, startup mentor, and startup ecosystem developer, Neil has also worked with many international organizations and governments, including Downing Street and Buckingham Palace. He sat on the boards of the Welsh Music Foundation and and Ffilm Cymru Wales.
As co-founder and organiser of the TEDxCardiff conference he built its reputation to the point that it would regularly sell out in under 1 minute. As co-founder of Cardiff Start, Wales’s largest startup community, he has been recognised with an “Outstanding Contribution to Cardiff” award.
Neil devised and oversaw an innovative cold email campaign that has brought the Ramp Tshirts many new customers, international attention (over 100,000 have read about the campaign), and has been written about in multiple languages as an example of how you can test smart marketing campaigns with zero budget.
p.s. If you’ve Googled me, you’ve almost certainly seen that I have a Wikipedia entry. And it’s WAY bigger, and more comprehensive, than I deserve. I just want to make it publicly known that I had absolutely nothing to do with it. My ego isn’t quite that big. I’m happy to expand on how I think it happened. Just ask…
Photos
To download click on any pic, and choose from the options in the top right. All pics taken by the marvellous Dan Green.
Tech accelerators and incubators? The good, bad and benefit to corporates
Information Age spoke to Louis Warner COO at the Founders Factory on the benefits of tech incubators and accelerators, both to entrepreneurs but also companies. Then we spoke to entrepreneurs who have experienced either, or both.
Fresh Business Thinking Power 100
Every day entrepreneurs shape our business and personal lives in the UK; driving innovation, creating purpose and disrupting markets. The Fresh Business Thinking Power 100 represents those people who most impact on the lives of entrepreneurs; those who shape policy, create working environments, champion, mentor and promote entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship in UK plc.
Wales’ tech start-ups ‘lack cash and advice to scale up’
Technology start-ups face a lack of relevant funding and advice in Wales when they begin to “scale up” into “large, successful” firms, a business network has said.
Neil Cocker, the lucky man
“At the age of fifteen I thought I was going to be a Marketing Manager for some big organisation, work my way up the ladder and by the time I was forty do some sort of senior management buy-out, have a top of the range Volvo and 2.4 children”. Not what most teenagers dream about perhaps, but thankfully, things didn’t quite work out that way for Neil Cocker.
