Celtx Raises $3.3M from Build, Killick

The Support Network the Nurtured Celtx

Who needs an accelerator when you’ve got Mark Dobbin, Permjot Valia and Bernard Hughes?

Having begun in 2000, Celtx was up and running well before the world was awash with accelerators and university entrepreneurship courses. But Mark Kennedy has still relied over the years from a network of remarkable mentors in the development of the company.

Mark Dobbin, the CEO of Killick Capital, first invested in the company in 2006 and has been a constant support for Kennedy through since. He sits on the Celtx board, and Killick has participated in the latest funding round.

This funding came about largely because Build Ventures Principal Patrick Keefe got to know the company, and Keefe first met Kennedy at MentorCamp, the intense one-day instructional sessions organized by international mentor Permjot Valia. Kennedy attended the first MentorCamp in 2011 as a mentee, and has since been a mentor at subsequent sessions.

The final cog in the machinery that supported Celtx is a colourful web enthusiast called Bernard Hughes. He started the world’s 744^th website back in the 1990s, and now has a site called www.timedancer.com. (On it, he lists his major job skills as laziness, poor memory, bad eyesight, carelessness and reframing.) The native of Manchester, England, Hughes has lived in St. John’s for years, though he now spends a good deal of time in India. Kennedy says that over the past decade and a half whenever things got dicey at Celtx, Hughes as invaluable as a sounding board and advisory panel.