Tech City: the magic roundabout

Original post by Patrick Kingsley via guardian.co.uk 

A busy junction in east London surrounded by low-rent offices doesn’t look as if it could rival Silicon Valley. But could its small-scale startups be the key to Britain’s economic recovery?

The area around Old Street is home to tup to 600 digital startups, by some estimates. Photograph: Jeff Blackler/Rex Features

It’s Friday evening, it has just gone seven, and I am walking towards a lift with the Bloodhound Gang’s Adam Perry. “Do it now!” he sings as he bangs some imaginary drums, and launches into The Bad Touch, the Gang’s most famous track. “You and me, baby,” he posits, “ain’t nothing but mammals.”

We are in the heart of Shoreditch, east London, a few blocks away from the traffic junction that joins Old Street with City Road. For decades, this was just the ugly Old Street roundabout. Since 2009, it has been coined the Silicon Roundabout, supposedly Britain’s answer to California’s tech-centric Silicon Valley. Three years ago, the area housed only a dozen digital startups. Now there are at least 300 – and that’s a conservative estimate. Last.fm is based here, as are SoundCloud and TweetDeck, which was recently bought by Twitter for £25m. It was a sale that made the tech world sit up and listen.

While the rest of the economy flatlines, Silicon Roundabout – or Tech City, as the government recently branded it – is booming, with new companies arriving nearly every week. “So let’s do it like they do on the Discovery Channel.” Perry and I are on our way to the Silicon Drinkabout, a get-together for anyone connected to the tech scene, hosted every week by a different local bar. Perry is here because he has just founded his own startup, BandApp, which creates app-building software for aspiring musicians. As a rocker-turned-techie, his presence seems apt. Everyone here is keen to tell  me how the CEO of a tech startup is today’s equivalent of a 60s rock star. So keen, in fact, that it becomes the cliche of the evening.

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10 great insights from London’s tech hub

Original post by mongezi mtati via memeburn

I was recently in London for the Tech City UK Entrepreneurs Festival, as part of Britain’s Global Entrepreneurship Week with over 300 tech entrepreneurs from around the globe. The experience was educational, to say the least, and gave me some insight into what any initiative aimed at developing entrepreneurship in the tech sector should be doing.

Throughout the course of the week long conference, it became evident that emerging market initiatives like Silicon Cape in South Africa and the iHub in Kenya are definitely on the right track. There were, however, a number of guidelines I took away from Tech City UK that could easily be replicated by any entrepreneurial programme in the emerging world. A number of initiatives may already be implementing these guidelines, or at least ones like them. These insights are, nonetheless, worth taking note of.

1. Acknowledge and celebrate local talent
   During the week, there were two award ceremonies which celebrated promising innovations by local startups and acknowledged entrepreneurs who are part of the change. They also showcased local entrepreneurs who are building the community and businesses that investors may be interested in.
2. Arrange mentorship
   Part of the conference included a speed-dating type of mentoring session, where entrepreneurs met with investors and funders who they pitch their businesses to. The sessions lasted for about 10 minutes, during which the mentors advised start-ups on how to strengthen their pitch, which in turn prepares them for meetings with investors. Some of these mentors were early stage funders and they were open about what kind of companies they would be likely to invest in. On average, entrepreneurs met with 12 mentors over two days.
3. Partner with government
   Government has become synonymous with bad a word for entrepreneurs, but the conference was opened by the Minister of Trade Investment and the ministry’s commitment is evident. The project was led by a number of entrepreneurs in residence, who attract investment to the Tech City hub. This also piques the interest of international startups and rapidly builds an ecosystem that encourages growth.

READ 4 TO 10 HERE 

Could London Become the Tech Capital of Europe?

Original post by RICHARD FLORIDA via theAtlantic Cities

With New York City’s emergence as a start-up hub, the suburban nerdistan model for high tech start-ups appears to be losing some luster. “Whether Silicon Valley’s hegemony is in jeopardy or not,” I wrote Monday, “there can be little doubt that high-tech has taken on much more of an urban cast in the first decade of the 21st century.

“The same urban tech dynamic appears to be taking root in London. This map from Tech Citycharts the rise of London’s “Tech City” or “Silicon Roundabout” in the area around Shoreditch, where some 200 significant high-tech companies and as many as 600 tech-related firms have sprouted, according to a report in Gigacom.

Dan Crow, who authored The Guardian article that the map accompanies, has a long history in high tech. He left the U.K. in 1996 to work as a software developer at Apple in Silicon Valley. England was start-up and tech-unfriendly at the time, he wrote, and offered few opportunities to work in cutting-edge software development. Crow spent ten years in the Valley, “founding or helping to run” four tech start-ups, before heading to Google in New York – the last assignment likely exposing him to the urban turn in tech. He recently returned to England to become the Chief Technology Officer of a small start-up.  Crow notes Prime Minister David Cameron’s interest in supporting high-tech development as well as that of minister David Willets.  This is something I am somewhat familiar with: I met Willets in his office while traveling to London to give an address to the Royal Geographic Society 18 months or so ago, and I was subsequently invited to and participated in a meeting with members of the Cameron administration and others to discuss the broad issue of urban tech.

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Watch out, Silicon Valley – Silicon Roundabout is the new kid in town

Original post by NCT 

Hi-tech companies are springing up every week in London but more must be done to make the UK a powerhouse of innovationIn 1996, I left the UK to work for Apple in California. At the time, there were few opportunities for an ambitious software developer in Britain. California was a different story. Not only were the world’s best software companies based there, but the attitude towards new ventures was completely different and very exciting. Instead of the British attitude of “avoid failure at all costs”, on the west coast you are encouraged to take risks and try new ideas. If you fail, you get up and try again. Failure is recognised as the greatest tool for learning; until you’ve got a couple of spectacular failures under your belt, people tend not to take you seriously.Winston Churchill said: “Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.” That attitude is at the heart of the Silicon Valley culture.I spent the next 10 years in the Valley, founding or helping to run four tech startups. Then, after three years at Google in New York, I returned to London. I realised the UK has changed significantly while I was away. There are clusters of tech startups across Britain with the biggest being “Silicon Roundabout” in Shoreditch.Working at a startup company is exciting and nerve-wracking. You don’t know whether the company will find success – indeed most startups fail. You work long hours to convert an idea into a real product that customers love. You take a small team of people and forge a functioning, successful business. When it goes well, it’s one of the most invigorating, challenging and exciting things you can do. When it goes badly, it’s a lot less pleasant. Closing down a failed company and laying off the people you’ve worked with is a hard lesson and you come away determined never to let that happen again.A year ago, I left Google and joined Songkick, one of the original Silicon Roundabout startups. Songkick is a young, ambitious company with worldwide reach: we’re currently the second largest live music website in the world, with more than three quarters of our users coming from outside the UK. Our product is used by millions and helps music fans discover great new bands – on average Songkick users go to 70% more concerts in the year after they start using us than they did in the year before.In a time when we seem to be drowning in bad economic news, Silicon Roundabout stands out as a real British success. New companies spring up every week and existing companies are growing fast. In October, Songkick organised the second “Silicon Milkroundabout” a job fair for startups. More than 100 companies attended, offering more than 500 jobs, and 1,500 developers came along on the day. That’s up from 40 startups and 400 developers at the first event in May. Clearly there is a lot of interest in working at a startup and there are a lot of opportunities to do so.Last week I met David Cameron at the launch of the Tech City Map. I was impressed by the prime minister’s interest in startups. He was informed, willing to listen and to offer concrete help. One of our biggest challenges is letting people know about what is happening in east London and the government’s involvement helps us highlight the exciting growth we are seeing

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