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North West 42 Under 42 Dinner 2009
There are awards dinners, business dinners with bawdy comedians and then there is the Insider 42 Under 42 dinner. It is quite like any other dinner in the North West.
The simple purpose is to introduce the 42 new people, under the age of 42, included in our prestigious list of young achievers, to other members of this exclusive club. We also invite friends of Insider who we feel could mentor and benefit this emerging generation.
This year’s sponsor was Investec, a bank with a particular interest in serving entrepreneurs with personal as well as corporate banking services.
We held a quiz where the total possible mark you could achieve is, appropriately, 42. That’s not meant to be too serious, but for the record the bottle of champagne was collected by the team captains Laura Wolfe of Out There Events and MC2’s Mike Perls. See if you could have done better.
The speakers for the night were Insider editor Michael Taylor, who explained the reason for the evening, the methods Insider use in collating this annual list and why it is vital that businesses in the region collaborate; Imran Hakim, the founder of toy business iTeddy; and Keith Curran, an entrepreneur with several businesses on the go at the moment.
Hakim urged the audience to think of the glass as being half full. Everyone still goes to work eager to make a difference to grow their businesses, whatever the economic conditions. “An optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty and the pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity,” he said.
Curran spoke of his different businesses and how he had learned lessons from starting each one. “Do something everyday that scares you,” was one lesson, another was to “know where your priorities lie”.
Curran’s businesses, The Coffee Hub, Name Your Number, Lauden Chocolate and Mavcast are all in various stages of development, but as he revealed last night, his most ambitious idea is to turn the mobile phone into a remote control that can instantly purchase items using a code embedded in an advert. “It will transform how we shop,” he said.
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