I was amongst the remarkably thin audience at Manchester’s Cornerhouse last night to hear Julie Meyer of Ariadne Capital speak about entrepreneurship and innovation.

If there were 40 people in the room I’d be surprised and it’s hard to gloss over the fact that this reflects badly on the city when you consider that Julie is a genuinely significant figure in this field.

She was the founder of the hugely influential First Tuesday and a major investor in some ground-breaking businesses (Skype being one) as well as having a high profile through Dragon’s Den and appearances on Newsnight.

Why wasn’t the room packed to the rafters? Is Manchester’s start-up scene so stunted?

Much of what Julie said can be gleaned from her speech at TEDx and you can find out more from her new initiative Entrepreneur Country.

But what of Manchester’s start-up community?

I have been hovering in and around it for some months doing some research and development on business idea that hopefully will see some progress soon. If only I could find a developer to build the prototype….

My experience certainly echoes one of Julie’s themes that finance and technology have to work in harmony towards a business goal not with one being the means to get to the other.

But I worry that the two mind sets are quite far apart.

From a technology perspective developers are in short supply and highly variable in their approach to business development.  They are also very difficult to track down.

From a finance perspective I am sure that there are plenty of people drifting around with fag packet plans asking people to do development work on a purely speculative basis and there is the problem of how a non-developer adequately briefs and project manages a developer, something I admit to struggling with.

How many good ideas that might turn into real businesses go nowhere because the two can’t find a way to overcome that initial risk barrier?

There is a need for a regular forum where developers can meet entrepreneurs in an informal setting but with a commercial agenda, where the entrepreneurs have to come with a clear business plan and some money on the table but the developers have to commit to meeting deadlines and being responsive.

Maybe what we need is a new version of First Tuesday, not for entrepreneurs to meet VCs, but to get developers and entrepreneurs talking the same language.

Julie, do you fancy coming back to Manchester?