TechNation200 Almanac 2015/16
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<strong>TechNation200</strong> <strong>Almanac</strong> <strong>2015</strong>/<strong>16</strong><br />
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Overview | <strong>TechNation200</strong> <strong>Almanac</strong> <strong>2015</strong>/<strong>16</strong><br />
Mapping<br />
digital<br />
success<br />
Tech City UK started life<br />
in London’s Shoreditch,<br />
launched by prime<br />
minister David Cameron to<br />
support the East London<br />
tech cluster. Since then, it<br />
has sparked a nationwide<br />
movement supporting the jobs<br />
of the new economy and driving<br />
growth and productivity.<br />
Early in <strong>2015</strong>, Tech City<br />
UK began a landmark study.<br />
The result was Tech Nation, a<br />
ground-up report that provided<br />
the fi rst comprehensive<br />
analysis of Britain’s digital<br />
businesses, mapping areas<br />
of digital specialisms such<br />
as cyber security and fi ntech,<br />
employment fi gures and<br />
emerging tech ecosystems.<br />
It was only after the results<br />
came together that the depth<br />
and breadth of the UK’s<br />
digital economy could truly be<br />
appreciated.<br />
Our Tech Nation project is<br />
made up of two components.<br />
First is an online, interactive<br />
tool, built in conjunction with<br />
DueDil, that allows users to<br />
glean information about more<br />
than 47,000 digital companies,<br />
as well as a report created<br />
This <strong>Almanac</strong> is twice the size of earlier editions,<br />
reflecting the nationwide nature of UK tech and<br />
recognising the work being done to understand<br />
our Tech Nation. Tech City UK chief executive<br />
Gerard Grech welcomes the report.<br />
in partnership with Adzuna,<br />
Crunchbase, F6S, AngelList<br />
and others, that highlights tech<br />
clusters and digital companies<br />
across the UK.<br />
Second is an ongoing<br />
initiative with the Tech City<br />
UK Cluster Alliance, which<br />
connects key representatives<br />
from digital cities around the<br />
UK so that they can share best<br />
practice and, ultimately, help<br />
drive innovation.<br />
We surveyed more than<br />
2,000 digital businesses to<br />
build this project. Our fi ndings<br />
have allowed us to map and<br />
understand the growth of digital<br />
businesses in cities across the<br />
country, and recognise just<br />
how well the UK is doing in the<br />
ultra-competitive world of digital<br />
business.<br />
Tech Nation has shown the<br />
digital technology sector at the<br />
heart of the UK’s economic<br />
success. The headline fi gures<br />
speak for themselves: the UK<br />
is the largest e-commerce<br />
exporter in the G7; it is the<br />
country with the largest<br />
percentage of GDP attributed<br />
to digital; and digital job growth<br />
is predicted to outperform all<br />
other occupation categories<br />
by 2020. The rapid rise of the<br />
UK’s digital economy, and its<br />
positive consequences for the<br />
economy at large, has been<br />
outstanding.<br />
At the heart of the Tech<br />
Nation project is a desire to<br />
shine a light on the growth of<br />
Britain’s digital companies, to<br />
build on the origins of London’s<br />
Silicon Roundabout.<br />
Tech Nation, therefore,<br />
becomes a tool that gives<br />
investors an understanding<br />
of the different clusters and<br />
specialisms around the country,<br />
and which has driven support<br />
for policy initiatives from central<br />
and local government. This<br />
amalgamation of investment,<br />
entrepreneurs, academia<br />
and established businesses<br />
allows the UK to enjoy a stellar<br />
international reputation for<br />
digital success today.<br />
Tech Nation signals Tech City<br />
UK’s broader commitment to<br />
the digital economy, providing<br />
up-to-date data, analysis and<br />
reporting on Britain’s dynamic<br />
digital economy and startup<br />
success stories.<br />
In my role, I am privileged<br />
to be in contact with<br />
entrepreneurs and investors<br />
from all over the globe who<br />
are increasingly aware of the<br />
UK’s reputation. Tech Nation<br />
demonstrates that, across a<br />
wide variety of sectors,<br />
ranging from virtual reality to<br />
edtech, digital businesses all<br />
over the country are capitalising<br />
on this.<br />
It’s the people behind<br />
these businesses who defi ne<br />
Tech Nation. We welcome<br />
TechCityinsider’s initiative to<br />
celebrate the heroes behind the<br />
growth of the digital economy<br />
in this <strong>Almanac</strong>.<br />
3
<strong>TechNation200</strong> <strong>Almanac</strong> <strong>2015</strong>/<strong>16</strong> | Introduction<br />
Tech tour<br />
finds class<br />
of <strong>2015</strong><br />
At the back end of 2014,<br />
soon after we published<br />
our <strong>Almanac</strong> for that<br />
year, we took a decision to<br />
expand our TechCityinsider100,<br />
until that point a list of largely<br />
London game-changers, into<br />
something that took in the<br />
whole of the UK.<br />
Tech City UK was about to<br />
publish Tech Nation, a landmark<br />
report that measured and<br />
celebrated the technology<br />
startup scene throughout the<br />
country.<br />
We too decided to extend our<br />
horizons beyond our London<br />
home and so embark on a<br />
tech tour of the UK throughout<br />
<strong>2015</strong>. While in previous years<br />
we had profi led 100 tech<br />
business folk, in <strong>2015</strong> we<br />
would profi le 200. A hundred<br />
of these would be from outside<br />
London, with fi ve profi led in<br />
each of 20 key technology<br />
clusters. The Tech Nation report<br />
would give us our location road<br />
map.<br />
In London, the UK’s<br />
A UK tech tour?<br />
What a splendid idea.<br />
TechCityinsider did just<br />
that in <strong>2015</strong>, talking to<br />
tech businesses in 20<br />
cities outside London.<br />
Julian Blake reports.<br />
predominant technology hub<br />
by far (see just how far on<br />
page 32), we opted to maintain<br />
the coverage we’d given the<br />
capital, by continuing to profi le<br />
100 digital business leaders<br />
from or working in the capital.<br />
The 200 would be selected<br />
by the recommendation of their<br />
peers in the TCi Network.<br />
We set off in January <strong>2015</strong>,<br />
taking in two tech cities each<br />
month.<br />
First stop, Brighton. A place<br />
perhaps known more for play<br />
than work, the city boasts the<br />
biggest number of startups<br />
per head outside London, with<br />
strengths in gaming, creative<br />
and shared economy. It’s also<br />
home to one of our fastestrising<br />
tech stars, Brandwatch.<br />
It was a short coastal hop<br />
over to Bournemouth, where<br />
Tech Nation had (surprisingly<br />
to doubters) found the UK’s<br />
fastest-growing tech business<br />
cluster. We found less tech<br />
product and more tech<br />
services, with a thriving techdriven<br />
agency culture.<br />
Our short hops from London<br />
continued with Reading. For<br />
an area fuelled by corporate<br />
tech, it was unsurprising to fi nd<br />
that startup culture struggled<br />
to fi nd a voice, until the arrival<br />
of ConnectTVT, a new hub<br />
working out of one of the city’s<br />
many business parks.<br />
In nearby Oxford, new tech<br />
ideas have emerged from the<br />
city’s university for years. The<br />
university’s Isis Innovation hub<br />
helps businesses spin out<br />
from education. Among its<br />
most impressive graduates is<br />
background checking business<br />
Onfi do.<br />
Heading west in March, we<br />
hit Bristol and Bath, where<br />
Silicon Gorge thrives in one of<br />
our largest technology centres.<br />
Big outfi ts sit alongside small<br />
and the tech specialisms are<br />
diverse. Brunel’s old Engine<br />
Shed, home to SETSquared,<br />
is the new hub of the startup<br />
scene.<br />
Over the Severn bridge into<br />
South Wales, where Cardiff is<br />
emerging from its industrial past<br />
to stake a claim as a UK hub for<br />
sports and health technology.<br />
Neighbouring Swansea,<br />
Newport and Caerphilly all<br />
play host to smaller startup<br />
communities.<br />
4
Introduction | <strong>TechNation200</strong> <strong>Almanac</strong> <strong>2015</strong>/<strong>16</strong><br />
May took us to the North<br />
East, to Newcastle and<br />
Sunderland. Herb Kim (Tech<br />
North chair from <strong>2015</strong>) runs his<br />
TED-like Thinking Digital event<br />
from Sage Gateshead. The tech<br />
entrepreneurial spirit is strong,<br />
demonstrated nowhere more<br />
strongly than at Campus North,<br />
where Ignite100 also runs its<br />
much-respected accelerator<br />
programme.<br />
Staying east in June, we hit<br />
Cambridge and Norwich.<br />
As a tech hub, the former is<br />
clearly more mature. Giants like<br />
Hermann Hauser have turned<br />
their technological success<br />
back into helping the next<br />
generation of innovators, as he<br />
has through Amadeus Capital.<br />
In Norwich, they defi nitely<br />
like to do things differently, and<br />
keep it independent, too. New<br />
co-working hub White Space<br />
shows what can be done.<br />
Our most surprising<br />
destination of all was Malvern,<br />
in the sleepy Worcestershire<br />
hills. There, for historical<br />
defence reasons, a cybersecurity<br />
sector has matured<br />
into a cluster that’s 80 strong.<br />
England’s second city,<br />
Birmingham has had<br />
something of an understated<br />
image. When we visited in July,<br />
we found that is changing,<br />
with the city council backing<br />
Innovation Birmingham<br />
alongside public-private<br />
investor Finance Birmingham,<br />
and the city gaining a label as<br />
Britain’s most entrepreneurial<br />
city.<br />
Since George Osborne<br />
coined the term ‘northern<br />
powerhouse’ in 2014, the idea<br />
has rarely left the agenda for<br />
England’s main northern cities.<br />
Osborne backed the initiative in<br />
his <strong>2015</strong> budget with £11m for<br />
new tech hubs.<br />
Tech North, created with<br />
a £2m budget and a line-up<br />
of expert support, is already<br />
shining a light on the work<br />
of the nation’s seven biggest<br />
northern cities.<br />
August’s fi rst stop,<br />
Manchester, is one, and it<br />
claims a role as the heart of<br />
the northern powerhouse.<br />
Its impressive tech business<br />
activity, at MediaCity in Salford,<br />
Sharp Project and the emerging<br />
Forward tech hub (backed by<br />
£4m of that Osborne cash)<br />
gives it a strong reputation.<br />
Down the M62 in Liverpool,<br />
a different kind of cluster<br />
has emerged, changing the<br />
economy of a city already<br />
physically transformed by<br />
regeneration. The Baltic<br />
Triangle is the centre of startup<br />
land. The legacy of Sony’s lost<br />
presence in the city has been<br />
a strong gaming business<br />
community.<br />
September saw us cross<br />
the Pennines into Yorkshire. In<br />
our fi rst stop there, Sheffield,<br />
tech innovation is redefi ning<br />
the term ‘Made in Sheffi eld.’<br />
Making, creative and gaming<br />
are big strengths for the city of<br />
steel, backed by the likes of the<br />
impressive Dotforge workspace<br />
and accelerator, and Access<br />
Space.<br />
Leeds, next stop, has<br />
steadily built a reputation for<br />
health, fi ntech and data, with<br />
big banking and Nation Health<br />
Service back-end functions<br />
based here. Its new FutureLabs<br />
workspace (also backed by<br />
Osborne) will give the city’s<br />
startup scene a new focus.<br />
In Hull, our fi nal Yorkshire<br />
city, the cluster there celebrated<br />
the opening of its new Centre<br />
for Digital Innovation tech<br />
campus in <strong>2015</strong>. It’s supported<br />
by superfast connectivity,<br />
created by state-of-the-art<br />
fi bre broadband from KC<br />
Lightstream.<br />
October took us up north<br />
to Scotland and to Glasgow,<br />
where the city is emerging from<br />
the shadows of its neighbours,<br />
and industrial decline, to claim<br />
a growing role in the Scottish<br />
tech economy. RookieOven, at<br />
the Govan shipyard, offers a<br />
great new space, with the UK’s<br />
fi rst eSpark tech hub offering<br />
another way forward.<br />
Dundee, two hours away<br />
on the east coast, has a<br />
vast gaming legacy. It’s<br />
the birthplace of gaming<br />
phenomenon Grand Theft<br />
Auto, and is where work is<br />
done to bring Minecraft to the<br />
consoles of millions. Publisher<br />
DC Thomson is also investing<br />
in digital.<br />
In Edinburgh, our last<br />
Scottish stop, tech startup<br />
culture is big. CodeBase is<br />
the UK’s largest tech hub,<br />
and home to fantasy gaming<br />
giant FanDuel alongside<br />
smaller promising businesses.<br />
Skyscanner, another Edinburgh<br />
product, is now a genuine<br />
international tech success story.<br />
Finally, to Belfast, where<br />
Northern Ireland innovation has<br />
seen the creation of some very<br />
interesting tech businesses,<br />
from cemetery disrupter Plotbox<br />
to beer tech startup Brewbot.<br />
They’re backed by great<br />
support from NISP Connect.<br />
Twenty cities beyond London,<br />
then. What did we learn?<br />
Of course, that there are<br />
great businesses, with great<br />
stories to tell, right across the<br />
UK. Also, that the physical<br />
transformation of our cities<br />
is impressive, and is helping<br />
to generate new tech-led<br />
economies.<br />
There are challenges,<br />
certainly. A common one is a<br />
lack of local tech investment.<br />
London remains the centre<br />
of the UK tech funding world,<br />
and that’s why many non-<br />
London businesses choose<br />
to have a offi ce in the capital<br />
too. Initiatives to encourage<br />
investment, along with some<br />
local funds and angels, are<br />
pushing change in the right<br />
direction.<br />
Diversity is also a challenge.<br />
Tech is a male-dominated<br />
sector, as all the stats tell us,<br />
particularly among leaders. In<br />
London, women entrepreneurs<br />
are making strides and there<br />
are brilliant examples outside<br />
of the capital. But we found<br />
the gender imbalance bigger<br />
outside London.<br />
We’re not claiming undeniable<br />
evidence here, but the<br />
difference in the male-to-female<br />
split in this almanac – 60/40 in<br />
London but 82/18 outside it – is<br />
striking. As more women role<br />
models emerge, the balance<br />
should start to redress.<br />
Back at TechCityinsider<br />
HQ, we have rolled out our<br />
TechCities coverage. Our fi rst<br />
TechCities Awards event, in<br />
November <strong>2015</strong>, recognised<br />
the best new tech businesses<br />
in cities across the country.<br />
The awards, and our new<br />
TechCities content area, are<br />
backed by a new network of<br />
ambassadors on the ground<br />
in each place. We’re grateful<br />
to them for their support<br />
and are working to tell more<br />
stories from around the UK<br />
in 20<strong>16</strong> and beyond, at<br />
www.techcityinsider.net/<br />
techcities.<br />
5
<strong>TechNation200</strong> <strong>Almanac</strong> <strong>2015</strong>/<strong>16</strong> | Contents: London<br />
Welcome to the <strong>2015</strong>/<strong>16</strong> <strong>TechNation200</strong> <strong>Almanac</strong>. During <strong>2015</strong> we interviewed 200 people helping to<br />
redefi ne UK digital business, with 100 interviews within London, and a total of 100 in 20 key tech clusters<br />
outside of London, with fi ve interviews in each. Each spread starts with an overview from that area.<br />
Laurence Aderemi Moni (32) Tushar Agarwal Hubble (33) Ross Bailey Appear Here (33)<br />
Rebecca Bright Therapy Box (33) George Burgess Gojimo (34) Lucy Burnford Automyze (34)<br />
Faisal Butt Pi Labs (34) Vanessa Butz Interchange (35) Susanne Chishti Fintech Circle Innovate<br />
(35) Matt Chocqueel-Mangan Vote for Policies (35) Claire Cockerton Innovate Finance (36)<br />
Simon Cook Draper Esprit (36) Julian David techUK (36) Josh Davidson Night Zookeeper (37)<br />
Samir Desai Funding Circle (37) Becky Downing Buzzmove (37) Sarah Drinkwater Google<br />
Campus London (38) Matt Drozdzynski Pilot (38) Julia Elliott Brown Upper Street (38)<br />
Alain Falys Yoyo Wallet (39) Anthony Fletcher Graze (39) Ian Fordham Edtech UK (39)<br />
Rosemary Forsyth Forsyth Group (40) Matt Fox Snaptrip (40) Lorenzo Franzi ZipJet (40)<br />
Emi Gal Brainient (41) Ande Gregson Fab Lab (41) Julia Groves Trillion Fund (41) Luke Hakes<br />
Octopus Investments (42) Bridget Harris YouCanBookMe (42) Cassandra Harris Venturespring (42)<br />
Tom Hatton RefME (43) Josefine Hedlund GeekGirl Meetup UK (43) Bruce Hellman uMotif (43)<br />
Michael-George Hemus Plumen (44) James Hind Carwow (44) Mads Holmen Bibblio (44)<br />
Eddie Holmes Launch 22 (45) Alex Hoye Runway East (45) ShaoLan Hsueh Chineasy (45)<br />
Anne-Marie Huby JustGiving (46) Pete Jaco Puckily (46) Clare Johnston The Up Group (46)<br />
Ivailo Jordanov 23snaps (47) Hussein Kanji Hoxton Ventures (47) Axel Katalan Pointr Labs (47)<br />
Nick Katz Splittable (48) Tom Kihl London Belongs to Me (The Kentishtowner) (48) Alex Klein<br />
Kano (48) Nidhima Kohli My Beauty Matches (49) Aleks Krotoski Broadcaster and academic (49)<br />
Simon Lee Locassa (49) Marjorie Leonidas Taggstar (50) Guy Levin Coadec (50) Rhydian Lewis<br />
RateSetter (50) Rose Lewis Collider (51) Roberta Lucca WonderLuk (51) Julia Macmillan Radisso<br />
(51) Tina Mashaalahi KweekWeek (52) Jan Matern Emerge Venture Lab (52) Ivan Mazour Ometria<br />
(52) Ian Merricks Accelerator Academy (53) Juliette Morgan Cushman & Wakefi eld/Tech City UK<br />
(53) Prash Naidu Rezonence (53) Melinda Nicci Baby2Body (54) Suzanne Noble Frugl (54)<br />
Emer O’Daly Love & Robots (54) Aaron O’Hearn Startup Institute (55) George Olver Movidiam (55)<br />
Rhea Papanicolaou-Frangista Prettly (55) Rahul Parekh Eat First (56) Belinda Parmar Lady<br />
Geek/Little Miss Geek (56) Samiya Parvez Andiamo (56) Alastair Paterson Digital Shadows (57)<br />
Mutaz Qubbaj Squirrel (57) Steven Renwick Satago (57) Anthony Rose 6Tribes (58)<br />
Julia Salasky CrowdJustice (58) Michael Seres 11 Health (58) Titus Sharpe MVF Global (59)<br />
Liv Sibony Grub Club (59) Peter Smith Blockchain (59) George Spencer Rentify (60)<br />
John Spindler Capital Enterprise (60) Jason Stockwood Simply Business (60)<br />
Paulina Sygulska Tenner GrantTree (61) Freddie Talberg PIE Mapping (61) Adizah Tejani<br />
Filanthrophy/Level39 (61) Fabio Torlini WP Engine (62) Sarah Turner Angel Academe (62)<br />
Daniel va n Binsbergen Lexoo (62) Alexandra Vanthournout Fashercise (63) Aneesh Varma<br />
Aire (63) Antony Waldorf Virtual Walkthrough (63) Jozef Wallis Toothpick (64) Imogen Wethered<br />
Qudini (64) Florence Wilkinson Warblr (64) Barney Worfolk-Smith That Lot (65) Will Wynne<br />
Smart Pension (65) Juliana Zarate Mucho (65).<br />
6
Contents: TechCities | <strong>TechNation200</strong> <strong>Almanac</strong> <strong>2015</strong>/<strong>16</strong><br />
Belfast (8) Paul Brown DisplayNote Technologies Paul Hamill Infl yte Leona McAllister PlotBox<br />
Stephen McKeown Analytics Engines Chris McLelland Brewbot Birmingham (10) Mike Bandar<br />
Turn Partners Will Grant Droplet Nick Holzherr Whisk Veejay Lingiah FlashSticks<br />
Sue Summers Finance Birmingham Bournemouth (12) Nuno Almeida Nourish Care David Ford<br />
Bright Blue Day/Silicon South Andrew Henning Redweb Arabella Lewis-Smith Salad Creative<br />
Tom Quay Passenger Technology Group/Base Brighton & Hove (14) Darren Fell Crunch<br />
Benita Matofska Compare and Share Antony Mayfield Brilliant Noise Giles Palmer Brandwatch<br />
Andy Peck TrustedHousesitters Bristol & Bath (<strong>16</strong>) Paul Archer Daredevil Project Tom Carter<br />
Ultrahaptics Nick Davies Neighbourly Bonnie Dean Bristol & Bath Science Park Ben Trewhella<br />
Opposable Group Cambridge (18) Hermann Hauser Amadeus Capital Partners Steve Marsh<br />
GeoSpock Toby Norman SimPrints Dave Palmer Darktrace Barnaby Perks Ieso Digital Health<br />
Dundee (20) Piers Duplock eeGeo Kenny Lowe Brightsolid Steve Parkes STAR-Dundee<br />
Jason Swedlow Open Microscopy Environment Chris van der Kuyl 4J Studios<br />
Edinburgh (22) Nigel Eccles FanDuel Colin Hewitt Float Ed Molyneux FreeAgent John Peebles<br />
Administrate Gareth Williams Skyscanner Glasgow (24) Vicky Brock Clear Returns Tracey Eker<br />
Flexiworkforce Mark Gracey Scottish Equity Partners Michael Hayes RookieOven Louis Schena<br />
Swipii Hull (26) Matt Abbott Label Worx Salma Conway MrLista Thom Davy Stashboard<br />
David Keel Sonoco Trident Alex Youden NFire Labs Leeds (28) Mark Barrett Hebe Works/Leeds<br />
Data Mill Adam Beaumont aql/NorthInvest Royd Brayshay NewRedo/Agile Yorkshire<br />
Sanjay Parekh Cocoon Daniel Rajkumar Rebuilding Society Liverpool (30) Chris Barker<br />
Draw+Code Leo Cubbin Ripstone Martin Kenwright Starship Group Gavin Sherratt Studio<br />
Mashbo Carl Wong LivingLens Malvern (66) Mike Gogan Virtual Experience Company Robin King<br />
Deep-Secure Emma Philpott Malvern Cyber Security Cluster/IASME Consortium<br />
Alastair Shortland Textlocal Nick Tudor D-RisQ Manchester (68) Claire Braithwaite Tech North<br />
David Levine Digital Bridge John Kershaw Bristlr Al Mackin Formisimo Eudie Thompson Bright<br />
Future North East (70) Si Brown Skignz David Dunn Sunderland Software City Alasdair Greig<br />
Northstar Ventures Tristan Watson Ignite100/Campus North Jo York Reframed.tv<br />
Norwich (72) Ali Clabburn Liftshare James Duez Rainbird Technologies/White Space John Fagan<br />
Axon Vibe/Sync Norwich Neil Garner Proxama Fiona Lettice Norwich Business School<br />
Oxford (74) Tim Fernando Esplorio Husayn Kassai Onfi do Michalis Papadakis Brainomix<br />
Riham Satti MeVitae John Stuart Bounts Sheffield (76) Paul Brooks Twile Carl Cavers Sumo<br />
Digital Aldo Monteforte The Floow Giles Moore Airstoc Paul Rawlings Deliverd<br />
South Wales (78) Neil Cocker Dizzyjam /Cardiff Start Warren Fauvel Nudjed Tom Gallard Pwinty<br />
Ollie Gardener NoddlePod Jason Smith Blurrt Thames Valley (80) Louize Clarke ConnectTVT<br />
Alex Jacques Creative Jar Adam Smith Rawnet Chris Sykes Volume Ross Williams Venntro<br />
Media Group.<br />
7
<strong>TechNation200</strong> <strong>Almanac</strong> <strong>2015</strong>/<strong>16</strong> | Belfast<br />
Paul Hamill<br />
Founder and chief<br />
executive<br />
Inflyte<br />
Belfast is fast becoming a promising tech<br />
hub. In 2014, 25 startups led series A funding<br />
rounds, raising more than £1m.<br />
If Dublin is famous for the tech giants it attracts, Belfast is<br />
Ireland’s city of entrepreneurs.<br />
The city is the right scale for entrepreneurs – small but with<br />
very good national and international connections – and has<br />
a priceless talent pool made up of some of the world’s best<br />
science and engineering professionals.<br />
The city has two universities, and graduates with<br />
entrepreneurial ambition can depend on the collaborative<br />
ecosystem for comprehensive support.<br />
The Northern Ireland Science Park (NISP) provides<br />
educational seminars, mentorship programmes, capital<br />
competitions, public policy advocacy and access to premium<br />
investment through HALO – one of the best angel investment<br />
networks in the UK. In 2013 Northern Ireland produced 6% of<br />
UK angel investment, despite only accounting for 3% of the<br />
population.<br />
Established in 2000, NISP Connect is an independent, nonprofi<br />
t organisation that supports the development of innovative<br />
technologies and early-stage companies. It has built an army of<br />
1,000 volunteers, made up of some of the most experienced<br />
people in the city, including major business owners.<br />
One of the best things about Belfast is its collaborative<br />
ecosystem. Institutions increasingly work with each other, rather<br />
than competitively. Northern Ireland’s Department of Enterprise,<br />
Trade and Investment helps, too.<br />
The province is starting to see the results, with some great<br />
startups taking root and growing to maturity. In 2014 alone, 25<br />
startups led series A funding rounds, raising more than £1m.<br />
Belfast’s entrepreneurial community is looking to align<br />
with the other regions and clusters in the UK, as well as<br />
internationally.<br />
In 2014 a Northern Ireland trade mission to Silicon<br />
Valley, organised in conjunction with NISP Connect, Invest<br />
Northern Ireland and Belfast City Council, saw some of<br />
the best entrepreneurs showcase and network with fellow<br />
entrepreneurs, customers, investors and potential collaborators<br />
from across the pond.<br />
Belfast’s ecosystem has been developing consistently over<br />
the past 20 years to make it what it is today: not just a city<br />
with entrepreneurial potential, but a city with entrepreneurial<br />
success.<br />
TechCityinsider’s TechCities ambassador for Northern Ireland is<br />
Steve Orr of NISP Connect (www.nisp.co.uk/nisp-connect).<br />
“We cater to big and small.<br />
If Sony Records has an<br />
account with us and you<br />
are on its mailing list, Sony<br />
would invite you to sign up<br />
to its account on Inflyte. You<br />
could use the app so that<br />
Sony could send pre-release<br />
demos to you. Then all this<br />
will sync on your device, as<br />
well as the artwork and press release. Once you have given<br />
feedback, Inflyte will deliver the audio file to your Dropbox.<br />
Small independent labels can start off at £40 a month for<br />
sending out one campaign, and that goes right up to £200 a<br />
month for PR clients. We also have enterprise plans above<br />
that, which include everything from watermarking and more<br />
reports. We also build in anti-piracy technology.”<br />
Infl yte allows its business users to listen to music and give feedback<br />
online and offl ine, as well as offering access to real-time reporting and<br />
analytics, one-click ratings and Dropbox integration. @InflyteApp<br />
Stephen McKeown<br />
Chief executive<br />
Analytics Engines<br />
“Companies are storing more and more data, but the key<br />
to its value is being able to ask questions of it. If it’s sitting<br />
in different places you can ask for parts of it, but that’s not<br />
where the value sits. That’s where we come in. We provide the<br />
ability to ask those questions and construct the capability within<br />
your organisation to do that. That’s where it’s the weakest and<br />
where people are getting stuck. We’re positioned to help them.<br />
The common thread between all the companies we work with<br />
is that they’re sitting on silos of data – customer data, fi nance<br />
data, social media data, factory fl oor data. We help them pull it all<br />
together in large volumes and at faster speeds.”<br />
Analytics Engines is enabling organisations to easily and quickly adopt<br />
big data analytics as a core part of the business and accelerate the<br />
conversion of data into valuable business insights. @AEacceleration<br />
8
See the full profile interviews at www.techcityinsider.net<br />
Leona McAllister<br />
Co-founder and commercial director<br />
PlotBox<br />
“Cemeteries and<br />
crematoriums are only<br />
going to get busier. The<br />
baby boomers are all going<br />
to be dying off and we’re<br />
expecting it to start hitting<br />
in 20<strong>16</strong>. So cemeteries have<br />
to start getting ready for it.<br />
Our original idea had two<br />
parts. One was a genealogy<br />
website, where people can<br />
go on and search for records<br />
of the deceased. Then the<br />
back end could be used by<br />
parishes to add a burial and<br />
sell a plot and know where<br />
it is. We built PlotBox with<br />
customer-driven development, speaking to our customers every single step of the way. A<br />
drone takes images, but then there’s a lot of secret sauce in the background as to how we<br />
process it and make that accurate with our surveying expertise and then turn it into a map.”<br />
Northern Ireland’s PlotBox is breathing new life into cemeteries on both sides of the Atlantic, using drones to<br />
open up alternative revenue streams and modernise their ancient systems. @Plotboxio<br />
Paul Brown<br />
Chief executive<br />
DisplayNote Technologies<br />
“We listened to some of the problems edtech clients<br />
were having with displaying tech and new devices such<br />
as smartphones and tablets. They all had this front-of-<br />
classroom display, yet the trend was for smart<br />
devices and one-to-one initiatives. We sought to<br />
address that problem. The aim had been to take<br />
that content from the front of a room and mirror<br />
it to all the other connected devices. Part of<br />
our next phase is pushing into corporate and<br />
enterprise. DisplayNote can partially address<br />
that market, but it’s very much driven by and<br />
focused around a presenter at the front.<br />
Quite often in the boardroom environment<br />
we’re all equals, so in a meeting we might<br />
all have things to share among each<br />
other, so it’s not quite the same kind of<br />
facilitator environment.”<br />
DisplayNote transforms presentations for<br />
presenters and participants and can be used<br />
to present wirelessly with an iPad or Android,<br />
so the screen can be mirrored on every<br />
participant’s device. @displaynote<br />
Chris McLelland<br />
Co-founder and chief<br />
executive<br />
Brewbot<br />
“We travelled a lot, tasted<br />
a lot of beers, came back<br />
to Northern Ireland and<br />
IPA hadn’t really got that far,<br />
so we wanted to brew our<br />
own beer in the offi ce. We<br />
learnt from that experience<br />
how hard it was but it allowed<br />
us to tap into our technology<br />
backgrounds. We were<br />
doing a lot of mobile apps<br />
and realised we could apply<br />
that to the brewing process<br />
– so we started to build our<br />
own machine. There’s a big<br />
technology opportunity in that<br />
and we’re looking at how we<br />
can democratise it and build<br />
a community of brewers – the<br />
largest distributed brewery,<br />
as we call it. That’s really<br />
what we’re in it for – building<br />
a brewery that connects<br />
that ecosystem together in a<br />
different way.”<br />
The internet has fi ltered into<br />
almost every aspect of our lives<br />
and digitally distributed pale ale<br />
may sound like every bearded<br />
east London tech hipster’s dream.<br />
But Belfast-based Brewbot is<br />
making it a reality. @brewbot<br />
9
<strong>TechNation200</strong> <strong>Almanac</strong> <strong>2015</strong>/<strong>16</strong> | Birmingham<br />
Mike Bandar<br />
Founding partner<br />
Turn Partners<br />
In <strong>2015</strong>, Startup Britain labelled Birmingham<br />
the UK’s most entrepreneurial city. Support<br />
from the city council and Europe is helping to<br />
create the conditions for tech startup growth.<br />
Birmingham is a perfect test bed for new technology and<br />
innovation. It’s one of the original ‘knowledge cities’,<br />
having long championed the growth of the knowledge<br />
economy – a rich combination of the private and public sectors,<br />
academia and citizens.<br />
The city’s knowledge economy is driven by large-scale<br />
investment in high-value manufacturing, the UK’s largest<br />
professional and fi nancial community outside of London, fi ve<br />
universities – and thousands of tech jobs.<br />
Birmingham has the largest concentration of businesses<br />
outside of London – home to more than 34,000 companies,<br />
including almost 700 international fi rms. It’s also the youngest<br />
city in Europe, with under-25s making up nearly 40% of its<br />
population.<br />
In <strong>2015</strong>, Birmingham was named by Startup Britain as the<br />
most entrepreneurial UK city outside London. Some 18,337<br />
new businesses were registered during 2014.<br />
Birmingham’s geographical advantages are feeding its<br />
growth. Over 90% of the UK market is within four hours’ travel<br />
time and more than 4.3 million working-age people live within<br />
an hour’s drive of the city centre. It’s also the most popular<br />
destination outside the South East for people relocating from<br />
London.<br />
Birmingham is home to SCC, Europe’s largest independent<br />
technology solutions provider. Delivering annual group<br />
revenues of £1.74bn, SCC is a critical magnet, attracting and<br />
retaining tech talent within the city.<br />
At the other end of the city’s tech spectrum is the Innovation<br />
Birmingham Campus, which has a 33-year history in nurturing<br />
tech startups. The council-owned Campus looks to work with<br />
and bring together the public and private sectors, driving<br />
collaboration and promoting innovation.<br />
Birmingham’s other main centres of tech startup activity<br />
include: Birmingham Research Park in Edgbaston, specialising<br />
in life sciences; The Custard Factory and Fazeley Studios in<br />
Digbeth, with their vibrant community of creative companies;<br />
and Longbridge Technology Park.<br />
In the summer of <strong>2015</strong> Google set up its pop-up Digital<br />
Garage business advice service at the stunning new Library of<br />
Birmingham, adding to the business support available in the<br />
city.<br />
With the city’s demographic and geographical strengths<br />
playing to its advantage, Birmingham is in good shape to<br />
further develop as a true tech city.<br />
TechCityinsider’s ambassador for Birmingham is Charlotte Crossley<br />
of Innovation Birmingham (www.innovationbham.com).<br />
“Turn Partners is focused<br />
on acquiring and turning<br />
around businesses, but<br />
we build our own startups as<br />
well. I met Julia Macmillan,<br />
the founder of dating site<br />
Toyboy Warehouse. My<br />
business partner James<br />
Vardy and I acquired 90%.<br />
With Hopper, another<br />
business under Turn<br />
Partners, we are trying to<br />
solve the problem of being able to schedule Instagram posts.<br />
Birmingham is the city to be in to start a business because<br />
the cost base is so much lower and, from a lifestyle point of<br />
view, it’s just amazing. Birmingham does have a phenomenal<br />
history of industry. You can almost feel that in certain pockets<br />
of Birmingham you’re in a moving industrial city.”<br />
Turn Partners is focused on the acquisition and turnaround of<br />
distressed and under-utilised businesses. It has developed a small,<br />
diverse business portfolio by grouping previous projects, including the<br />
acquisition of leading niche dating platform Toyboy W arehouse.<br />
@Mikebandar<br />
Will Grant<br />
Co-founder and chief technology officer<br />
Droplet<br />
“The Droplet app lets people collect rewards on their phone,<br />
so it digitises loyalty cards with payment as a background.<br />
That was inspired by some of the best payment experiences<br />
out there, like 1-Click on Amazon. Payment as a background<br />
service appealed to customers and to us as well. With the<br />
new product, Rewards, that’s exactly what we’ve done. For the<br />
user , it’s a way to collect reward stamps and get free stuff. This<br />
has started to work massively and we’ve added hundreds of<br />
merchants, thousands of users<br />
and built something that people<br />
want to use. We’ve spent a lot<br />
of time and money but I don’t<br />
think we could have got here<br />
any other way.”<br />
Mobile payment app Droplet<br />
rewards users each time they<br />
spend in their favourite places.<br />
It is free for customers to use<br />
and doesn’t charge merchants<br />
any transaction fees. By <strong>2015</strong> it<br />
had raised £1.5m in investment,<br />
including £500,000 on<br />
Crowdcube. @DropletPay<br />
10
See the full profile interviews at www.techcityinsider.net<br />
Nick Holzherr<br />
Chief executive<br />
Whisk<br />
Sue Summers<br />
Chief executive<br />
Finance Birmingham<br />
“With fi nding the right thing to eat, buying all the ingredients and then making the meal as tasty<br />
as possible, I’d always found that I wasn’t fully making the best of it. I saw how technology was<br />
developing and what was available and thought there was a big opportunity there. Our mission<br />
is to empower people to live happier lives through food. We’re all very inspired by it, we are making<br />
good progress with it and it’s loads of fun. The reason I chose to set up in Birmingham is because of<br />
the tech talent. The real value is the type of talent you get here. We’re doing lots of natural language<br />
processing and big data stuff. The universities and some of the companies specialise in that and<br />
we’ve been able to fi nd some really good candidates.”<br />
Whisk is a free smart app that turns recipes into handy shopping lists that users can access anytime,<br />
anywhere. Its mission is to give people simple, intelligent ways to discover, organise, shop for, cook and share<br />
food. Holzherr achieved fame in 2012 when he was runner-up on the BBC’s The Apprentice. @WhiskTeam<br />
Veejay Lingiah<br />
Chief executive<br />
FlashSticks<br />
“FlashSticks are uniquely printed Post-it notes for<br />
language learning. They are colour coded by gender, so<br />
blue notes for masculine nouns, pink for feminine. If you<br />
take a device with the FlashSticks app, you can hover over<br />
a note, the app will recognise what you’re looking at and a<br />
native speaker will pop up and tell you how to pronounce<br />
the word. People need ways to keep progressing with their<br />
language learning, and that’s what FlashSticks is about. We<br />
experimented with augmented reality technology and aligned<br />
ourselves with 3M, which owns the Post-it brand. They came<br />
on board to help us make FlashSticks possib le.”<br />
FlashSticks offers a novel educational tool that combines the simplicity<br />
of the printed Post-it note with augmented reality and translation tech to<br />
help young people in particular learn new languages. @FlashSticks<br />
“Finance Birmingham<br />
is now one of the<br />
largest regional venture<br />
capitalists in England<br />
and it is set up to provide<br />
growth capital to SMEs.<br />
We have a number of<br />
funds in our portfolio –<br />
advanced engineering,<br />
generic growth funds –<br />
across all sectors. Finance<br />
Birmingham’s partnership<br />
with Birmingham City<br />
Council is innovative. It is<br />
breaking new ground to<br />
bring out debt and equity<br />
funds for local businesses.<br />
We work with Ascension<br />
Ventures, introducing<br />
them to some of the local<br />
companies in the digital<br />
media sector that required<br />
investment and they join us<br />
in investing in their growth.”<br />
Finance Birmingham is a<br />
venture capital company owned<br />
by Birmingham City Council,<br />
investing in both local and<br />
national businesses via a range of<br />
funds and programmes, operating<br />
commercially for a wider social<br />
benefi t. @finbham<br />
11
<strong>TechNation200</strong> <strong>Almanac</strong> <strong>2015</strong>/<strong>16</strong> | Bournemouth<br />
Arabella<br />
Lewis-Smith<br />
Founder and<br />
principal<br />
Salad Creative<br />
The Dorset mini-conurbation of Bournemouth<br />
and Poole surprisingly hosts the UK’s fastestgrowing<br />
tech cluster, according to Tech City UK.<br />
The <strong>2015</strong> Tech Nation report claimed that Bournemouth<br />
was the UK’s fastest-growing digital cluster. Between<br />
2010 and 2013, it boasted a 212% rise in the formation<br />
of digital startups – almost double the number of any other UK<br />
cluster.<br />
The ‘BH’ postcode covers next-door Poole too (which<br />
together form the UK’s 13th largest metropolis), and the<br />
digital cluster spreads into Dorset more widely. The concept<br />
of ‘Silicon South’ was created as a description of the creative<br />
digital cluster across the whole area.<br />
Key to the area’s growth is a combination of strong<br />
companies, committed public support and a supply of new<br />
talent. Silicon South is focused on supporting the creation of<br />
3,500 new jobs in the creative digital sector by 2021.<br />
Base is symptomatic of the highly connected and<br />
enthusiastic cluster. It has set up the world’s largest Open<br />
Device Lab – a room fi lled with 450 devices that can be used<br />
for testing any software application across most operating<br />
systems.<br />
Base is also responsible for the Re:develop Conference –<br />
a one-day conference for developers by developers – and<br />
hackbmth, a proactive cluster that arranges hack events<br />
throughout the year.<br />
Silicon Beach, now in its fi fth year, brings in fi rst-class<br />
speakers for two days at the end of the summer to discuss all<br />
things digital and marketing.<br />
Poole hosts two strong creative universities – Bournemouth<br />
University and Arts University Bournemouth. They provide a<br />
valuable pipeline of graduate talent, including to an emerging<br />
games industry.<br />
Dorset has strong sectors in fi nancial services, marine and<br />
health, and this provides some interesting opportunities for<br />
companies looking beyond digital as a vertical market.<br />
Creative England’s Digital Accelerator was run in<br />
Bournemouth, and provided help to eight startups, nearly<br />
all of which were developing cross-sector products. Silicon<br />
South is leading ambitious plans that include founding new<br />
incubation facilities, as well as larger offi ces dedicated to more<br />
established creative digital businesses.<br />
Critical to digital success is a good network. Bournemouth<br />
is home to the UK’s largest pure fi bre-to-the-home (and offi ce)<br />
network, which delivers reliable speeds of up to 1000Mb.<br />
TechCityinsider’s TechCities ambassador for Bournemouth & Poole is<br />
David Ford from Silicon South (www.siliconsouth.org.uk).<br />
“The Clipper round-theworld<br />
yacht race is a<br />
global brand. Anybody<br />
can take part. We have<br />
developed a new site for<br />
the race. It contains lots<br />
of very timely, relevant<br />
content. We have been<br />
building some neat<br />
functionality. The race<br />
can be tracked by its<br />
audience. Each boat has a full telemetry on board. If you visit<br />
the site, you can see the position of every boat, wind speed,<br />
weather conditions and what position they are in the race<br />
– and that’s a bespoke tool. We are making it work across<br />
tablets and mobile to allow fans to follow the race. This all<br />
has to be very stable, because if the technology fails, there<br />
are lots of people in the middle of the ocean that people care<br />
about. It’s important that it works and delivers information in<br />
a smart way.”<br />
Dorset-based integrated design agency Salad Creative is creatively led<br />
and specialises in brand identity. Its digital offering has grown rapidly<br />
as it fi nds tech is increasingly needed to meet its clients’ needs. Typical<br />
of its new agenda is a technology-led project for the Clipper round-theworld<br />
race. @SaladCreative<br />
Tom Quay<br />
Chief executive, Passenger Technology Group<br />
Founder and director, Base<br />
“We work in public transport,<br />
looking after a couple of<br />
the big bus operators in<br />
the country. Bournemouth<br />
Yellow Buses is one and was<br />
the spark when we took them<br />
on as a client six years ago. A<br />
big part of what we do is the<br />
smart car management and<br />
the systems that run passenger transport. We also have journey<br />
planning tools and fare calculators on the information side, but we<br />
do the transactional bit as well. Operators face the same kinds<br />
of problems across the country and across the globe. So we’re<br />
seeing good demand for what we do.”<br />
Product innovation and service design studio Base mixes mobile, web,<br />
agile and lean to accelerate commercial ideas. The studio is also home<br />
to an open lab for device testing. Passenger is Quay’s new venture<br />
focusing on imobile ticketing for transport operators. @wearebase<br />
12
See the full profile interviews at www.techcityinsider.net<br />
Nuno Almeida<br />
Founder and chief executive<br />
Nourish Care<br />
David Ford<br />
Chief executive, Bright Blue Day<br />
Chair, Silicon South<br />
“A brand needs to be useful,<br />
entertaining or interesting. A brand is<br />
really a series of experiences, much<br />
more than bricks and mortar or a logo.<br />
That applies in the social media space as<br />
well as physical environments. Our job is<br />
to stitch together a story that works across<br />
those touchpoints and brings a brand<br />
to life. We make lots of things and try to<br />
build in that concept of experience. It’s<br />
important to emphasise that experience<br />
as a way of unifying the technology, the<br />
product and bringing that to life for people.<br />
Technology is absolutely key. Historically<br />
you were either a tech agency or a creative<br />
agency. Today it is much more of a blend,<br />
with tech and creative people working<br />
together. We do a lot of work around apps,<br />
content aggregation and mapping the data<br />
that we pick up.”<br />
Bright Blue Day builds “go-to” brands for<br />
clients including Emirates, Visa and Vue,<br />
putting technology at the heart of its offering.<br />
Silicon South works to promote and grow the<br />
Bournemouth and Poole tech cluster.<br />
@BrightBlueDay<br />
“When an element of your startup is to do with<br />
intellectually complex problems, you often find yourself<br />
thinking that you want to<br />
give your team a bit more<br />
space. That’s when being away from a big city can be<br />
advantageous. Sometimes when we have to crack a really<br />
complex problem, we find ourselves talking about it in<br />
the morning and then going for a walk. Of course you can<br />
do that in London, but then it’s not as much fun. And of<br />
course there’s a financial element, too. The cost of living<br />
in Bournemouth is a fraction of what it is in London. Doing<br />
business down here doesn’t preclude you from doing business<br />
in London, but you have the nice aspects of life as well.”<br />
Bournemouth-based social and<br />
healthcare technology startup<br />
Nourish is looking to revolutionise the way that social care<br />
is given, managed and received, through its cloud<br />
and mobile apps. It is serial entrepreneur<br />
Almeida’s third business.<br />
@nourishcare<br />
Andrew<br />
Henning<br />
Founder and chief<br />
executive<br />
Redweb<br />
“Our background is design<br />
and build. So we very<br />
much come at what we<br />
do from an equal creative-totechnology<br />
perspective. Most<br />
of the work we do involves<br />
building, designing and<br />
maintaining the core web<br />
offerings for large blue-chip<br />
clients. We have to combine<br />
a lot of different things, from<br />
new technologies through to<br />
creative innovation, as well<br />
as all the way down to things<br />
like security management.<br />
Our peripheral services are<br />
a big growth area, and these<br />
cover search, content, UX<br />
services and more.”<br />
Celebrating its 18th birthday<br />
in <strong>2015</strong>, Redweb’s digital<br />
agency work covers web design,<br />
creativity and strategy. It has<br />
built its reputation on harnessing<br />
technology for best results,<br />
across a client base that includes<br />
corporates and charities alike.<br />
@Redweb<br />
13
<strong>TechNation200</strong> <strong>Almanac</strong> <strong>2015</strong>/<strong>16</strong> | Brighton & Hove<br />
Darren Fell<br />
Founder and chief<br />
executive<br />
Crunch<br />
Once regarded by many as London-by-sea,<br />
the Sussex coastal city of Brighton & Hove<br />
has grown quickly into its own tech business<br />
cluster, with a distinctive focus on creative<br />
digital and gaming.<br />
It’s sometimes said that if you throw a pebble in Brighton<br />
you’ll hit four startups. This claim is backed by statistics<br />
from the Centre for Cities <strong>2015</strong> Outlook, which found that<br />
Brighton has the highest number of startups per capita outside<br />
of London.<br />
If there’s one thing unique to Brighton, it’s the fusion between<br />
creative arts and tech. A huge proportion have founders with a<br />
background in arts and humanities – they represent nearly 50%<br />
of digital businesses.<br />
The support network in the region is particularly good and<br />
reinforces this feeling of belonging to a tech cluster.<br />
Wired Sussex is a Brighton-based membership organisation<br />
for companies and freelancers operating in the digital, media<br />
and technology sector.<br />
The Brighton Fuse project was born from a collaboration<br />
between the University of Sussex, the University of Brighton,<br />
Wired Sussex and the National Centre for Universities and<br />
Business. It’s a three-year research and development project<br />
set up to analyse the growth of Brighton’s successful creative,<br />
digital and information technology cluster.<br />
The Fusebox, a studio space designed specifi cally with<br />
innovators in mind, was launched in 2014. In <strong>2015</strong>, an<br />
innovation centre opened next door, bringing the expertise of<br />
the University of Sussex into the city centre and the heart of the<br />
business community.<br />
The explosive growth of Brighton’s business community has<br />
created infrastructure challenges. When problems emerged<br />
with access to high-speed broadband, the Brighton cando<br />
attitude kicked in and it is now building its own digital<br />
exchange.<br />
The city is also home to well-established e-learning fi rms such<br />
as LEO, as well as promising young startups like MakerClub,<br />
which makes 3D printed robotics for the education market.<br />
Coast to Capital, the local enterprise partnership for the<br />
area, recently won a bid to host one of the government’s<br />
Digital Catapults in Brighton. This R&D centre opened in<br />
<strong>2015</strong>, bringing together small, innovative digital businesses,<br />
corporates like Gatwick Airport and American Express and<br />
university expertise.<br />
TechCityinsider’s TechCities ambassador for Brighton is Phil Jones<br />
from Wired Sussex (www.wiredsussex.com/contact).<br />
“Crunch is the online<br />
accounting and<br />
accountancy firm for<br />
freelancers, contractors<br />
and micro businesses. We<br />
combine software and<br />
accountancy expertise in one<br />
system. It’s the whole service<br />
that people love. Everything<br />
is done, not just part of it.<br />
My gut feeling was that<br />
freelancing, contracting and consulting was going to explode<br />
in growth. Twenty minutes into my pitch, Bebo founder Paul<br />
Birch stopped me to say he was in. In Brighton, we can get<br />
some fantastic people that otherwise have to commute, so<br />
people are buying into this as a lifestyle choice. At 5.30pm<br />
in the summer they can skip down the road to the beach,<br />
sit there and crack open a tinny. It’s a unique place that is<br />
now incredibly strong in digital and we’ve got some fantastic<br />
businesses here.”<br />
Hove-based online accountancy fi rm Crunch offers freelancers,<br />
contractors and micro businesses control of their fi nances with expert<br />
accredited accountants and simple online software. @TeamCrunch<br />
Benita Matofska<br />
Founder and chief crowdfunder<br />
Compare and Share<br />
“Compare and Share is the world’s fi rst marketplace of the<br />
sharing economy. We act as the gateway to that economy,<br />
helping consumers and companies access and exploit the<br />
world’s £3.5tn worth of spare goods without having to trawl<br />
7,500 individual sites. Our vision is to open up the sharing<br />
economy, just as eBay opened up the second-hand goods market<br />
and become the global go-to brand of the sharing economy. One<br />
day I found myself backstage at the One Young World conference<br />
having a conversation with<br />
Desmond Tutu. It was probably one<br />
of the most humbling experiences of<br />
my life. I pledged that the next thing<br />
I would do would be to launch a<br />
campaign, but also a business that<br />
would have an impact on society.”<br />
Compare and Share, a comparison<br />
site for the sharing economy, allows<br />
consumers and companies to search for<br />
accommodation and transport across<br />
many sharing sites in one go. It also<br />
provides a directory of thousands of<br />
asset-sharing economy businesses.<br />
@compareandshare<br />
14
See the full profile interviews at www.techcityinsider.net<br />
Antony Mayfield<br />
Founding partner and chief executive<br />
Brilliant Noise<br />
“There are two types of company in every sector: incumbents and disrupters. Brilliant Noise<br />
helps incumbent brands think like and learn the lessons from disrupters: how to act in an agile<br />
way, how to pilot new ways of working and how to anticipate where the next consumer need<br />
might be coming from. We’re also talking to brands that have recently been disrupters and need<br />
to still be able to act nimbly and create new ideas and innovation. In Brighton’s digital sector, we<br />
have people here who have been working in dotcom startups or in agencies since Web 1.0. We<br />
have a lot of people with a lot of experience and a big talent pool of people, and of course it’s an<br />
exciting city culturally. There’s fantastic diversity in quite a small space.”<br />
Brighton-based strategic digital agency Brilliant Noise works to create fast change with lasting impact. It<br />
works in four critical connected areas: experience, brand, content and culture. @brilliantnoise<br />
Giles Palmer<br />
Chief executive<br />
Brandwatch<br />
“Brandwatch came out of a tech agency I started with<br />
three other people. We built websites but pivoted into a<br />
product company. Brandwatch is about using data tools<br />
to understand online conversations. Say a TV advert went<br />
out at 3pm. A brand can find out what happened to the<br />
online conversation and break it down by minute, country,<br />
author, site. We also do sentiment analysis and look at the<br />
tone of voice people use when they talk about a product<br />
or how influential are they. For a content marketer, it is an<br />
essential tool to understand how their messages are received<br />
online. Brighton is well resourced with artists and front-end<br />
creatives, so I don’t think we’ll ever run out of talent.”<br />
Brandwatch is a social media monitoring and analytics tool that helps<br />
brands make better decisions. It creates smart software solutions that help<br />
marketers capture, analyse and share insights from social data. In October<br />
<strong>2015</strong> it closed a $33m series C investment round. @Brandwatch<br />
Andy Peck<br />
Founder and chief<br />
executive<br />
Trusted Housesitters<br />
“Trusted Housesitters is<br />
an online service that<br />
enables homeowners<br />
to find pet sitters who will<br />
look after a home free of<br />
charge in exchange for a<br />
place to stay. I discovered<br />
housesitting and spoke to<br />
the owners of a beautiful<br />
house in Spain. They said<br />
that when they went away<br />
they were always concerned<br />
about who was going to<br />
look after their home and<br />
their pets. Homeowners<br />
create a listing that is sent<br />
to registered sitters. They<br />
communicate via the site<br />
and homeowners can check<br />
sitters’ references and<br />
reviews. They make their<br />
own arrangements. Brighton<br />
is a very altruistic place. It’s<br />
a fantastic burgeoning area<br />
for tech expertise.”<br />
Trusted Housesitters connects<br />
home and pet owners on every<br />
continent who need a sitter when<br />
they go away with trustworthy<br />
people who sit for free. It is the<br />
world’s largest house and petsitting<br />
network. @Housesitting<br />
15
<strong>TechNation200</strong> <strong>Almanac</strong> <strong>2015</strong>/<strong>16</strong> | Bristol & Bath<br />
Paul Archer<br />
Founder and<br />
managing director<br />
Daredevil Project<br />
Bristol & Bath is one of the UK’s fastestgrowing<br />
tech clusters. A key player in Silicon<br />
Gorge is university-backed SETsquared<br />
incubator, based in Brunel’s Engine Shed.<br />
From the Roman Baths to Brunel’s Clifton suspension<br />
bridge, the cities of Bristol and Bath have a rich history of<br />
engineering, creativity and innovation.<br />
The cities are often collectively referred to as Silicon Gorge<br />
– refl ecting the growth of the region’s tech sector. With a<br />
high quality of life, a skilled workforce and a diverse range of<br />
connected industries, it is no wonder businesses, from startups<br />
to multinationals, are drawn to the South West.<br />
The region has long attracted successful businesses,<br />
with tech giants HP, Toshiba, IBM, Orange and aerospace<br />
specialists Airbus, GKN, Rolls Royce and BAE all based there.<br />
Just 12 miles apart and boasting 1,100 tech companies<br />
between them, the two cities have formed a partnership<br />
to support technology startups in the area. This includes<br />
two incubators of the SETsquared Partnership, supported<br />
by fi ve southern English universities: Bath, Bristol, Exeter,<br />
Southampton and Surrey.<br />
Entrepreneurs and startups can also benefi t from the<br />
partnership’s mentor programme and co-working spaces<br />
through the new Engine Shed initiative. Located in one of<br />
Brunel’s original buildings, the Engine Shed is based next to<br />
Bristol’s train station, providing fast connections to London.<br />
Other important facilities include the Bristol and Bath<br />
Science Park, a lively business community designed to actively<br />
create opportunities to share expertise, and the TechSPARK<br />
networking events.<br />
In 2014 Just Eat opened a specialist innovation hub in<br />
Bristol to take advantage of the region’s dynamic technology<br />
talent pool. This followed Huawei, which opened a further UK<br />
offi ce and £125m R&D centre in Bristol. The expertise of such<br />
companies trickles down to all parts of the ecosystem.<br />
The Bath & Bristol cluster houses a wide selection of<br />
startups, including Wriggle, making on-the-day offers;<br />
Maplebird, developing very small fl apping-wing UAVs; and<br />
Potato, which builds complex and scalable web applications.<br />
Some startups are already succeeding in their markets,<br />
such as Bristol-grown YourWealth, acquired by Momentum<br />
in 2014, and Coull, also born in Bristol, which has attracted<br />
$12.2m from angel investors to fund its US expansion.<br />
Industrial Phycology, Zynstra and Smart Antennas are all Bath<br />
businesses on the up.<br />
TechCityinsider’s TechCities ambassador for Bristol & Bath is Nick<br />
Sturge from SETsquared (www.setsquared.co.uk)<br />
“At Daredevil we make apps<br />
and games. One, Duel, is a<br />
photo-duelling game built<br />
around the idea of two images<br />
that you choose between. They<br />
can be formed as one image,<br />
which acts as a challenge that<br />
I can send to my friends. They<br />
need to respond with another image and our friends will<br />
decide which one is better. Or there can be two images that<br />
can act as a question. Should I have tea or coffee? Should<br />
I go for an adventure here, or there? Bristol is a great place<br />
to startup and we are based at Pervasive Media Studio, which<br />
is a phenomenal hub for arts and technology. It’s very quirky<br />
and arty with lots of things going on around music and art,<br />
which is great for the creativity that a startup requires to<br />
be successful.”<br />
Archer set up mobile-social games startup Daredevil after returning from<br />
breaking the world record for the longest-ever taxi journey. Duel.me, a<br />
photo-pairing, challenging and decisioning app, is its fl agship project.<br />
@daredevproject<br />
Bonnie Dean<br />
Chief executive<br />
Bristol & Bath Science Park<br />
“Bristol and Bath Science Park is a place for people to come<br />
together to cluster, collaborate and take new ideas and<br />
new technologies to market. The fact that you have different<br />
parties – like corporates, small businesses, entrepreneurs and<br />
academia – clustering and collaborating de-risks it for all parties.<br />
There is a lot of support for very early-stage startups, fi rst-time<br />
entrepreneurs and founders in the region, but there’s a lack<br />
of space to scale and grow. Once companies have passed<br />
through the early and incubation<br />
stages, they need space to<br />
grow and places where they can<br />
collaborate with new partners<br />
and stakeholders. The Science<br />
Park offers that. The role of the<br />
park is to stay one step ahead of<br />
the growth of the companies that<br />
are here.”<br />
Bristol and Bath Science Park<br />
brings together corporates, small<br />
businesses, entrepreneurs and<br />
academia. The technology hub<br />
opened in 2011 following a joint<br />
venture by Quantum Property<br />
Partnerships and the government.<br />
@bbsciencepark<br />
<strong>16</strong>
See the full profile interviews at www.techcityinsider.net<br />
Tom Carter<br />
Co-founder and chief technology officer<br />
Ultrahaptics<br />
“Ultrahaptics makes a technology that lets you feel<br />
without touching. We use ultrasound und to gently<br />
vibrate your skin so that you can control your<br />
devices without touching and get feeling eling onto<br />
your hand for what you’re doing or feel things<br />
that aren’t there: virtual objects, shapes,<br />
textures in virtual reality. I started work<br />
on what eventually became Ultrahaptics tics<br />
as part of my computer science<br />
undergraduate degree at Bristol University.<br />
I worked for six months with a supervisor<br />
who had this idea that you could feel things<br />
in mid-air without touching. I thought t that<br />
sounded really cool so I jumped on the<br />
project. I didn’t get it fully working but made<br />
progress. At the end of the degree I thought,<br />
‘This could be really useful in the real world.’”<br />
Ultrasound platform Ultrahaptics enables users to interact<br />
with and ‘feel’ virtual objects using air sensations. sations. It aims<br />
to revolutionise how people interact with computers,<br />
automobiles and consumer goods.<br />
@ultrahaptics<br />
Nick Davies<br />
Founder and chief<br />
executive<br />
Neighbourly<br />
“National brands<br />
report that, as they<br />
increasingly go global,<br />
they are losing touch<br />
with local communities.<br />
Their declining relevance<br />
was massively amplified<br />
by the the financial<br />
crash, and subsequent<br />
scandals. At the same<br />
time, local communities<br />
are increasingly saying<br />
they need help. With<br />
Neighbourly, we help big<br />
business to get involved at a local level. It’s very much like the Big Society. If Neighbourly<br />
had been around five years ago, we could have helped Mr Cameron. It is a tool. It’s a digital<br />
marketplace that says to communities, ‘Come and set up your project, tell your story, and get<br />
your friends and neighbours involved by sharing socially.’ You can do all that for free on our<br />
platform and choose tags to describe what your project needs.”<br />
Neighbourly connects local community causes and projects with businesses that can help by contributing time<br />
or funding. Its two-way platform benefi ts both business and the community. @nbrlyuk<br />
Ben Trewhella<br />
Chief executive<br />
Opposable Group<br />
“We use games<br />
technology in nontraditional<br />
avenues. We<br />
have built a game that helps<br />
children with mental health<br />
concerns such as OCD and<br />
anxiety. We’ve worked with<br />
Handaxe, which has created<br />
a game design that allows<br />
a standardised cognitive<br />
behaviour therapy to<br />
educate children alongside<br />
therapists. Children can<br />
meet characters within<br />
the construct of a video<br />
game and learn how their<br />
thoughts, feelings and<br />
behaviours affect their<br />
mental health. We also build<br />
our own video games. We<br />
have some specialised<br />
technology that allows<br />
Androids, iPhones, PCs and<br />
Macs to connect to each<br />
other. We use that to create<br />
unique multiplayer games<br />
or single-player games<br />
that work across multiple<br />
screens and have introduced<br />
a virtual-reality mode.”<br />
Opposable is an award-winning<br />
Bristol-based virtual-reality,<br />
games and mobile business,<br />
with a studio at its heart creating<br />
connected games for mobile, PC<br />
and console. @OpposableGroup<br />
17
<strong>TechNation200</strong> <strong>Almanac</strong> <strong>2015</strong>/<strong>16</strong> | Cambridge<br />
Hermann Hauser<br />
Partner<br />
Amadeus Capital Partners<br />
Cambridge is home to some of the UK’s most<br />
innovative technology startups – supported<br />
by the infrastructure of its university, big tech<br />
business and a well-established investor<br />
community.<br />
Over the past 60 years, a technology cluster regarded as<br />
one of the most mature and innovative in Europe has<br />
developed around Cambridge University.<br />
Once dominated by agriculture, Cambridge has become a<br />
world-class centre of innovation credited with matching Silicon<br />
Valley in terms of intellectual property generation, despite being<br />
dwarfed in terms of scale.<br />
A recent Cambridge University report suggested the city<br />
boasts 18% of the world’s games market and, based on recent<br />
estimates, the sector employs around 4,000 people.<br />
Life sciences has recently outstripped high-tech in terms of<br />
job and wealth creation. That was underlined when pharma giant<br />
AstraZeneca moved its corporate HQ and R&D hothouse to the<br />
city, with the fi rm expecting to create 2,000 jobs by 20<strong>16</strong>.<br />
Digital Cambridge is also contributing to the UK’s<br />
endeavours to improve the quality of healthcare. A growing<br />
battery of software-based life-science companies are providing<br />
digital solutions to help fi ght disease, especially neurological<br />
conditions and cancer.<br />
The other major growth area in the Cambridge cluster is<br />
cyber security, with several companies now advising global<br />
governments on protecting their systems from hackers.<br />
Cambridge has a strong support network, principally<br />
underpinned by serial entrepreneurs who have grown worldleading<br />
science and technology fi rms before exiting and then reinvesting<br />
in local startups – mainly university spinouts. They have<br />
formed Cambridge Angels, which provides cash and ongoing<br />
mentorship. The angels typically inject short-term capital but are<br />
increasingly investing alongside international venture backers.<br />
Cambridge is also blessed with networks that engage<br />
with international infl uencers. Cambridge Network fulfi ls the<br />
global engagement function for businesses of all sizes and<br />
sectors; Cambridge Wireless, Cambridge Cleantech and the<br />
life science members’ organisation One Nucleus do the same<br />
for their own sectors. Cambridge Ahead engages with major<br />
corporate players locally to take their views and needs on<br />
infrastructure to local and central government.<br />
The arrival in Cambridge of AstraZeneca and Apple adds<br />
to the cluster’s credentials and will aid the fi ght for new<br />
recruits by highlighting the city’s pulling power.With superchip<br />
designer ARM, US heavyweight Qualcomm and Chinese ICT<br />
powerhouse Huawei leading Cambridge’s growing internetof-things<br />
capability, prospects for the cluster have never been<br />
brighter.<br />
TechCityinsider’s TechCities ambassador for Cambridge is Tony<br />
Quested of Business Weekly (www.businessweekly.co.uk).<br />
“For a cluster to really work well, you have to have a worldclass<br />
university at its centre, and Cambridge has that. But<br />
it’s very important that you have the entire ecosystem,<br />
so you need lawyers who understand how to work with<br />
early-stage companies, the<br />
accountants for companies<br />
that often don’t have any<br />
revenues and the real-estate<br />
infrastructure of science<br />
parks. Very importantly, you<br />
need to have a high enough<br />
concentration of companies<br />
in the same sector so that<br />
they can feed off each other.<br />
The sense of collaboration in<br />
Cambridge is strong and that’s<br />
one of the distinguishing<br />
features of the city. We’re still very small compared with<br />
Silicon Valley, but we’re not negligible anymore. We have<br />
1,500 companies, we employ 57,000 people and we have<br />
a combined revenue of more than £13bn. So we’re finally<br />
making a mark in the world.”<br />
Hermann Hauser is one of the true giants of the UK technology scene.<br />
In 1978, he set up Acorn Computers and, as founder of ARM, he<br />
helped create the processors that today sit in our iPhones and more. For<br />
18 years he’s invested in others through Amadeus Capital.<br />
@hermannhauser<br />
Barnaby Perks<br />
Chief executive<br />
Ieso Digital Health<br />
“There is a major problem in<br />
the NHS with the supply of<br />
mental health therapy, with<br />
long waiting times because of<br />
scarce resources. We use the<br />
internet to connect patients with<br />
therapists. Patients can attend<br />
therapy at a time and place in<br />
which they are comfortable. A lot of people really struggle with the<br />
embarrassment of attending therapy, and mental health is often a<br />
diffi cult thing for people to deal with. This method enables them to<br />
do it in a way that is very low stigma and also incredibly effective.<br />
We ran a clinical trial of our method back in 2007, published in<br />
The Lancet in 2009. Without the inter-social baggage of face-toface<br />
therapy, people tend to get to the point and deal with their<br />
issues more quickly.”<br />
Ieso provides behavioural therapy services to NHS and private patients.<br />
The patients, who are dealing with depression and anxiety issues,<br />
are treated one-to-one by accredited therapists over a secure online<br />
connection. @Ieso_Health<br />
18
See the full profile interviews at www.techcityinsider.net<br />
Dave Palmer<br />
Director of technology<br />
Darktrace<br />
“We've been really inspired<br />
by the human immune<br />
system. If we encounter<br />
germs, viruses or bugs that<br />
we've never had before, our<br />
bodies can spot it, respond<br />
to it and deal with it. Our<br />
bodies do that by knowing<br />
what it uniquely means to be<br />
me as Dave and every single<br />
different part of my body. They<br />
know how to tell us when<br />
something is going awry.<br />
That's exactly what we want to<br />
do with our advanced machine<br />
learning and mathematics.<br />
No matter how complicated<br />
a business, whether it’s a<br />
train operator or a chocolate<br />
factory, we enable it to regain<br />
the knowledge of everything<br />
that goes on. This allows the<br />
business technology itself to tell you that something has changed, something is different or<br />
someone is behaving differently and may present a risk to the organisation.”<br />
Rapid-rising cybersecurity business Darktrace draws on biological principles to create ‘enterprise immune<br />
systems’ for its clients. It learns usual patterns of behaviour of devices and users and flags up suspicious<br />
variations in these patterns. @DarktraceNews<br />
Steve Marsh<br />
Founder and chief executive<br />
GeoSpock<br />
“GeoSpock is a real-time scalable database for big data,<br />
with an initial focus on location information. The internet<br />
of things is a growing market; there’s going to be a tidal<br />
wave of data coming our way and that needs to go somewhere.<br />
We provide real-time access to both current and historical<br />
data. We have some clever encoding mechanisms using bigdata<br />
processing techniques. We’re helping tech companies<br />
to organise data to actually make sense of the world around<br />
them. Cambridge has a fantastic ecosystem. You have a<br />
concentration of highly intelligent people, it’s very mature as far<br />
as entrepreneurship goes and the university has some of the<br />
best student-run societies in Europe. There is also access to<br />
serial entrepreneurs who really want to give back and push the<br />
next generation forward.”<br />
Marsh was reading for his PhD at Cambridge University, where he was<br />
developing a real-time super computer simulating human brain function,<br />
when he conceived the idea for big-data management startup GeoSpock.<br />
@GeoSpock<br />
Toby Norman<br />
Chief executive<br />
SimPrints<br />
“Our low-cost rugged<br />
fingerprint scanner can<br />
link and sync wirelessly<br />
or through USB to mobile<br />
phones. We’re building and<br />
designing this for low-energy,<br />
low-power and, in some<br />
cases, very resource-poor<br />
settings. More and more<br />
work in health is shifting<br />
to mobile, so people are<br />
keeping electronic medical<br />
records on mobile phones<br />
and moving diagnostic<br />
decisions to phones. This<br />
is allowing health workers<br />
in really remote parts of the<br />
world to give better clinical<br />
care, better clinical support,<br />
and to create and track better<br />
data over time. One real<br />
bottleneck to unlocking the<br />
potential of this is the lack<br />
of identification. It makes it<br />
really hard to deliver quality<br />
care when every time you<br />
see a patient, it’s like the<br />
first time. We’re hoping our<br />
mobile fingerprint scanner<br />
can help.”<br />
SimPrints is a social enterprise<br />
committed to improving the lives<br />
of the poor. It is working to create<br />
a cheap mobile biometric scanner<br />
that will allow medical charities<br />
to identify patients in slums and<br />
other challenging places.<br />
@SimPrintsTech<br />
19
<strong>TechNation200</strong> <strong>Almanac</strong> <strong>2015</strong>/<strong>16</strong> | Dundee<br />
Chris van der<br />
Kuyl<br />
Chair<br />
4J Studios<br />
Dundee is a city steeped in the history of<br />
computer gaming, as the birthplace of global<br />
giants like Grand Theft Auto and continuing<br />
work on Minecraft. But the city also has<br />
strengths in life sciences and data.<br />
Dundee, Scotland’s sunniest city, is historically known for<br />
its ‘three Js’ – jute, jam and journalism.<br />
The past generation has seen a new and inwardly<br />
driven force rebuild the post-industrial landscape of the city into<br />
a technology powerhouse spanning disparate sectors.<br />
Journalism lives on in the still-thriving publishing giant that is<br />
DC Thomson, creator and publisher of classics like the Beano<br />
and Dandy, as well as a catalogue of historically signifi cant and<br />
modern publications across dozens of household brands.<br />
The city’s Timex Factory shut down in 1993 after a series of<br />
bitter strikes and NCR closed its main PCB production plant in<br />
2009, leaving an R&D facility behind. The legacy left by these<br />
technological giants resonates on today.<br />
The Timex factory was, it turns out, also famous for the<br />
Sinclair ZX-81 and ZX-Spectrum computers, many of which<br />
wound up through various means in the hands of enterprising<br />
young children in Dundee. Some of these Dundee children<br />
eventually grow their passions into fl edgling businesses like<br />
DMA Design and VIS.<br />
The early and marked success of these companies with<br />
titles like Lemmings, Grand Theft Auto, State of Emergency<br />
and H.E.D.Z. created a sense of legitimacy around the video<br />
games industry, and paved the way for the foundation of the<br />
world’s fi rst degree in computer games technology at Abertay<br />
University in the city.<br />
Around 3,000 people work in technology, generating a<br />
turnover of more than £200m, but sadly much of the rest of the<br />
city does not fi nancially reap the rewards of this effort.<br />
Many in Dundee’s STEM community are working hard<br />
to ensure that children growing up within the city learn the<br />
appropriate skills and will have the opportunity to work within<br />
and grow these sectors.<br />
The free nationwide champion of kids coding, Code Club,<br />
saw its fi rst club in Scotland founded in Dundee, growing to<br />
more than 90% of primary schools in Dundee now hosting<br />
clubs for 9-11s, driven and guided by Dundee Science Centre.<br />
TechCityinsider’s TechCities Ambassador for Dundee is Kenny Lowe<br />
from Brightsolid and Dundee Meet-Up (www.brightsolid.com).<br />
“We wanted to create a<br />
business that focused on<br />
quality over quantity. For<br />
our first five years, we took<br />
on very interesting, very technically challenging development<br />
work with a variety of games publishers, then for the last<br />
couple of years it was Microsoft pretty much exclusively for<br />
Xbox 360. The reputation we built up then led Microsoft to<br />
the team up in Sweden at Mojang, who’d created Minecraft.<br />
They had a game that was doing really well on PC, tablets<br />
and mobiles, so decided it was the right time to bring it to<br />
games consoles. Microsoft recommended us, talking about<br />
the reputation of Scottish developers and our understanding<br />
of how consoles work. We struck a deal that was a revenue<br />
share. We thought that if the game sold two million copies on<br />
consoles it would be a runaway success. We have now sold<br />
well over 20 million copies.”<br />
Award-winning games studio 4J created Minecraft on Xbox 360 with<br />
Mojang and Microsoft, and is now also working on all Playstation and<br />
XboxOne versions. Dundee-based Van der Kuyl, one of the UK’s leading<br />
games developers, chairs the Entrepreneurial Exchange representing<br />
more than 400 Scottish entrepreneurs. @4JStudios<br />
Piers Duplock<br />
Producer<br />
eeGeo<br />
“We specialise in making<br />
beautiful interactive 3D<br />
maps. We came from<br />
Realtime Worlds, a huge<br />
and well-respected games<br />
company based in Dundee,<br />
which developed games like<br />
APB and Crackdown. When<br />
that sadly folded, we bought<br />
the rights to Project MyWorld,<br />
which Realtime Worlds<br />
was developing. Now it has<br />
fl ourished into our mobile mapping platform. The platform is self<br />
sustainable and we are solely focused on that. We have to pick<br />
our locations because not everywhere gives us the data we need,<br />
like ground data, 3D buildings, topography and road networks.<br />
We select our locations, fi nd our data then build from that. We<br />
bring it all into our old games engine and we build our cities<br />
based on that.”<br />
eeGeo is on a mission to enable its customers to create intuitive and<br />
engaging experiences, by delivering a new approach to mapping. It<br />
offers free access to its software development kit. @eeGeo<br />
20
See the full profile interviews at www.techcityinsider.net<br />
Jason Swedlow<br />
Professor, University of Dundee<br />
Open Microscopy Environment<br />
“Images are everywhere. Everywhere you go, you see<br />
people trying to do things with images, whether that’s<br />
taking a selfie, or using social media and including<br />
images, sequences or time-lapse e videos as ways of<br />
communicating. That same kind of trend in using<br />
images across many different domains and<br />
applications is certainly going on in the life<br />
and biomedical sciences. So all biological,<br />
biomedical research and clinical practice<br />
uses images heavily and increasingly ingly<br />
so. The trajectory is going up and up.<br />
The big difference is the pixel values.<br />
In research we use all kinds of<br />
microscopy tools to measure the<br />
concentration and the dynamics and<br />
the movement and the interactions ns<br />
between molecules at very high<br />
resolution. To you and me they are<br />
all pictures, but in science they all<br />
hold measurements.”<br />
The Open Microscopy Environment is an<br />
open-source software project delivering tools<br />
for accessing, managing, sharing, and publishing<br />
bioimage datasets. The project spans the world, but<br />
is founded and managed in Dundee.<br />
@openmicroscopy<br />
Steve Parkes<br />
Managing director<br />
Star Dundee<br />
“We’ve been working for the European Space Agency over<br />
a number of years on a technology called SpaceWire. Just<br />
like a USB is used to connect a hard drive to a computer,<br />
and maybe some sensors like a webcam or mouse, Spacewire<br />
connects the onboard instruments – like telescopes, radar<br />
or other sensors – to the onboard data-handling network<br />
and its mass memory. It then takes it out for processing and<br />
compression, before sending that information down to Earth<br />
over a radio link. The main challenge for communication in<br />
space is the environment. In space there’s a lot of radiation,<br />
so things have to be radiation-hard. And if something fails you<br />
can’t just go in and repair it. It has to be almost self-healing. We<br />
have redundant links in a network, so that if one fails you can<br />
use another.”<br />
Parkes, also professor of spacecraft electronics at the University<br />
of Dundee, spun out Star Dundee from the university in 2002. Its<br />
SpaceWire technology, connecting spacecraft with Earth, is designed<br />
with the harsh environment of space in mind. @dundeeuni<br />
Kenny Lowe<br />
Head of emerging<br />
technologies<br />
Brightsolid<br />
“Eighteen years ago<br />
Scotland Online was<br />
set up as one of<br />
Scotland’s first internet<br />
service providers. It moved<br />
first into the genealogy<br />
space and started hosting<br />
the Scotland’s People<br />
website. It realised that a<br />
whole business could be<br />
created from hosting data<br />
for other people. Scotland<br />
Online became Brightsolid<br />
and bought sites including<br />
FindMyPast and Friends<br />
Reunited, eventually<br />
amalgamating them under<br />
one brand. This spun out<br />
into its own businesses,<br />
while Brightsolid built up its<br />
hosting business, securely<br />
holding important data for<br />
financial businesses, the<br />
government, the NHS and<br />
local authorities.”<br />
Cloud and application hosting<br />
specialist Brightsolid owns<br />
and operates data centres in<br />
Dundee and Aberdeen, delivering<br />
technical innovation backed by<br />
personal service. It is owned<br />
by Dundee family publishing<br />
business DC Thomson.<br />
@KennyLowe<br />
21
<strong>TechNation200</strong> <strong>Almanac</strong> <strong>2015</strong>/<strong>16</strong> | Edinburgh<br />
Nigel Eccles<br />
Co-founder and chief<br />
executive<br />
FanDuel<br />
Edinburgh has steadily built a role as a<br />
technology centre of excellence. A key<br />
player is tech incubator CodeBase – now<br />
the UK’s largest.<br />
Edinburgh and CodeBase are at the heart of Scotland’s<br />
entrepreneurial activity. CodeBase, one of the largest<br />
tech incubators in Europe, was hosting 63 companies by<br />
November <strong>2015</strong> and was looking to grow to 80.<br />
The companies are mostly b2b fi rms building for enterprise<br />
across sectors including health and education. One is<br />
RelayMed, which specialises in electronic health records.<br />
Stipso, an infographics creator for people who can’t code, and<br />
Makeworks, an online marketplace of Scottish manufacturers,<br />
are also examples of Scottish software bridges, spanning tech<br />
and creativity.<br />
Edinburgh has a wealth of talent from its three local<br />
universities, and it is both easier and cheaper to set up a<br />
business in the city than it is in most other major UK cities.<br />
There’s already a gravitational pull towards Edinburgh that<br />
means it attracts some of the best talent in Scotland. Dundee’s<br />
strength in gaming has meant a large infl ux of creative talent to<br />
the capital in the last few years.<br />
There is also some good support available for startups<br />
from the likes of Informatics Ventures, which specialises in<br />
encouraging collaboration between industry experts and<br />
entrepreneurs; Interact Scotland, which brokers deals with big<br />
companies for startups and SMEs; and Scottish Enterprise,<br />
which offers grants to help start businesses.There is strong<br />
evidence that these support organisations are generating real<br />
success stories, such as Skyscanner and fantasy sports fi rm<br />
FanDuel, which recently raised US$275m in funding.<br />
The city has also benefi ted from the presence of some of the<br />
world’s leading technology companies. Amazon established<br />
a development centre in the area 10 years ago and has been<br />
joined by Cisco, Oracle, Microsoft and IBM. These businesses<br />
have helped to attract and retain talent and investment for the<br />
area.<br />
Edinburgh is now creating tech jobs faster than it can fi ll<br />
them. To help create more homegrown talent, CodeBase is<br />
now running kids’ clubs and adult courses. It is also creating<br />
a much more serious, year-long course, run by in collaboration<br />
with local businesses and startups. It’s based around mutual<br />
benefi t, as the individuals receive training and the companies<br />
create the talent they need.<br />
Another challenge is ensuring startups have access to the<br />
funding they require to grow and scale. Although more than<br />
£1tn in investment funds is available in Edinburgh, a lot of this<br />
is old-fashioned and ill-suited to tech startups.<br />
TechCityinsider’s TechCities ambassador for Edinburgh is Jamie<br />
Coleman of CodeBase.<br />
“Part of building a successful<br />
company is learning from<br />
your mistakes. While there<br />
isn’t anything fundamental I<br />
would do differently, we could<br />
probably have adopted more<br />
of an aggressive approach to<br />
marketing and acquisitions in<br />
2011 after our second round<br />
of funding. My single piece<br />
of advice to others starting<br />
up in technology would be:<br />
don’t give up. If you have a<br />
product you really believe in,<br />
keep going. We were turned<br />
down by 85 investors before<br />
we secured our first round<br />
of funding. Although we<br />
have grown significantly, our<br />
mission is still to make sports<br />
more exciting and to develop<br />
products that enhance our<br />
users’ experience.”<br />
Fantasy sports gaming platform FanDuel is one of Edinburgh’s great<br />
tech startup success stories, with huge US popularity. In <strong>2015</strong> it closed<br />
a massive $275m investment round. @FanDuel<br />
Colin Hewitt<br />
Founder and chief executive<br />
Float<br />
“Float’s mission is to make it<br />
simple for business owners<br />
to manage and predict their<br />
cashfl ow. Often it’s something<br />
that people never really get round<br />
to. We want to make it easy for<br />
people to ask ‘what if’ questions<br />
and have accurate, up-to-date<br />
information about what that’s<br />
going to mean for the business<br />
fi nances. We show you when you<br />
need the money, and accurately<br />
predict how long you need it for.”<br />
Float helps businesses manage their<br />
cashfl ow in the cloud, integrating<br />
with leading online accounting<br />
packages like FreeAgent and Xero.<br />
Hewitt previously ran brand agency<br />
IfLooksCouldKill for a decade.<br />
@Floatapp<br />
22
See the full profile interviews at www.techcityinsider.net<br />
John Peebles<br />
Chief executive<br />
Administrate<br />
“It’s a very crowded market. The most recent survey revealed there were more than 650<br />
learning management systems out there, which is the typical nomenclature you hear in the<br />
edtech market. We like that. We feel that’s a good smokescreen for our market. We are quite<br />
a bit different from everything that’s out there. The traditional LMS focuses on the student<br />
experience. We care about students too, but we focus on the administrator’s experience and<br />
make sure all the reporting, workflow, analytics and things that go on behind and around are<br />
front and centre and it makes it easy for them to become strategic with their training.”<br />
Online training platform Administrate helps organisations all over the world manage and deliver education.<br />
Peebles, an American in Edinburgh, works from the CodeBase incubator space. @Adm1nistrate<br />
Gareth Williams<br />
Chief executive<br />
Skyscanner<br />
“When we started out in<br />
2003, we focused on<br />
flights. These days, we<br />
provide flight, hotel and car<br />
hire comparison, and we’re<br />
a global company with<br />
millions of users across the<br />
world. We’ve also created<br />
Skyscanner for Business,<br />
to deliver data-led tools to the travel industry. As a result, the non-flights contribution to overall<br />
revenues increased by 47% in 2014. Lastly, we’ve adopted a mobile-first attitude – last year we<br />
saw a 77% increase in mobile visitors alone, and we believe the tendency towards mobile will<br />
continue. Our primary focus is the people who use our product. What do they want? How can<br />
we make this process even easier?”<br />
Skyscanner, ‘the world’s travel search engine’, is one of the UK’s great tech startup success stories, with 40<br />
million monthly users and backing from Sequioa helping it to achieve mythical unicorn status. The company<br />
remains resolutely Edinburgh-based. @Skyscanner<br />
Ed Molyneux<br />
Chief executive<br />
FreeAgent<br />
“There are about 5.2<br />
million businesses in<br />
the UK and 95% of<br />
them have fewer than 10<br />
employees – and 75% have<br />
no employees at all. So the<br />
vast majority are one- and<br />
two-person businesses.<br />
In our last survey, we<br />
found most were using<br />
spreadsheets or just paper<br />
to manage their finances.<br />
What they were getting from<br />
software companies was<br />
the typical small business<br />
accounting package, but with<br />
all the interesting features<br />
taken out. We wanted to<br />
do something about that.<br />
Because we focus on<br />
these small businesses,<br />
we do a lot more around<br />
tax compliance, income-tax<br />
returns and payroll that tiny<br />
businesses need.”<br />
FreeAgent is the UK’s leading<br />
online accounting software for<br />
freelancers and micro-businesses.<br />
Molyneux previously served for<br />
a decade as a Harrier pilot in the<br />
RAF. @freeagent<br />
23
<strong>TechNation200</strong> <strong>Almanac</strong> <strong>2015</strong>/<strong>16</strong> | Glasgow<br />
Vicky Brock<br />
Co-founder and chief<br />
executive<br />
Clear Returns<br />
Often overlooked in favour of Edinburgh or<br />
Dundee, Glasgow’s tech startup community is<br />
emerging from the city’s heavy industrial past<br />
to offer an optimistic digital future.<br />
Glasgow has a vibrant and exciting tech community.<br />
From startups to corporates, the city has a range<br />
of companies working in diverse industries such as<br />
fi nance, insurance, space and education. Until <strong>2015</strong>, though,<br />
the community lacked a home.<br />
That all changed with the opening of the RookieOven coworking<br />
space. RookieOven is in the Fairfi eld Shipyard Offi ces<br />
at Govan’s famous shipyard. The building was opened in 1890<br />
when Fairfi eld was one of the biggest shipyards in the world. It<br />
was a centre of engineering excellence at the forefront of the<br />
industrial revolution.<br />
RookieOven, based in the former ship drawing offi ce, has<br />
3,500 sq ft of space and all of the stuff a tech startup would<br />
need: a blazing-fast internet connection, pool table, meeting<br />
space, a glorious Victorian boardroom, Sonos, Xbox, Scalextric,<br />
locally roasted coffee and a well-stocked beer fridge.<br />
The space is home to some of the most talented developers,<br />
designers and digital marketers in the community, including<br />
Ashley Baxter from Insurance By Jack, Aaron Bassett from<br />
Rawtech and Michael Hayes from Add Jam. Software engineers<br />
like John Hamelink, Paul Dragoonis and Stuart Ashworth also<br />
use the space.<br />
Outside RookieOven, Glasgow has an abundance of talent.<br />
The city has three highly regarded universities in Glasgow<br />
University, the University of Strathclyde and Glasgow<br />
Caledonian University, plus the world-renowned Glasgow<br />
School of Art.<br />
Throughout the city exciting young companies work in tech.<br />
Adimo, which eases the process of shopping, Wooju, helping<br />
folk make decisions, School Cloud Systems, a business<br />
bootstrapped to 10 employees, Twig World, producing and<br />
distributing educational video, and Alba Orbital making nanosatellites<br />
from their offi ce in The Whisky Bond.<br />
The city also has great initiatives that help the tech<br />
community. Creative Clyde promotes creative tech companies,<br />
holds regular high-quality events and offers advice and support.<br />
And, over at the country’s fi rst Entrepreneurial Spark, tech<br />
businesses are accelerating thanks to corporate support and<br />
the philanthropy of Glasgow City Refrigeration founder Lord<br />
Haughey.<br />
TechCityinsider’s ambassador for Glasgow is Michael Hayes of<br />
Rookie Oven (www.rookieoven.com).<br />
“I founded this company<br />
to change the way we<br />
looked at retail data.<br />
We take the underlying<br />
premise that a sale isn’t<br />
a sale until the shopper<br />
decides to keep it. I know<br />
from my own shopping<br />
behaviour that I return<br />
between 70% and 80%<br />
of what I buy. At Clear<br />
Returns we pull the data in<br />
and we do a lot of probability analysis, maths, statistics and<br />
good business analysis. We do a lot of heavy lifting and turn<br />
it into a series of cloud-based services that the retailers use.<br />
They receive reports and see their trends over time. They can<br />
also have daily alerts into their CRM system and into their<br />
trading tools that gives them alerts on problem products and<br />
customers they need to respond to.”<br />
Clear Returns uses sophisticated data analysis as well as product and<br />
customer modeling to identify the reasons why customers return items<br />
to online retailers and the customers who are most likely to do so.<br />
@clearreturns<br />
Tracey Eker<br />
Founder and chief executive<br />
Flexiworkforce<br />
“I fi nd Scotland very embracing of those who are looking to<br />
make a mark, mash it all up and make a fuss. That’s what most<br />
of the businesses in eSpark are doing. I hope to be the one<br />
who does it the most! Glasgow is very gritty, unlike Edinburgh,<br />
which is much more established and refi ned. In Glasgow, they<br />
get down and dirty, so all ideas fl ow and no one is too scared to<br />
start something up tech-wise and let it fall on its arse. They don’t<br />
care about that – they just try and see what happens. Glasgow is<br />
sometimes overlooked when it shouldn’t be. Everyone sees it as<br />
the rough end of Scotland, the<br />
manufacturing end. And it’s not.<br />
It’s quite an inspiring and ballsy<br />
place. And I like it.”<br />
Flexiworkforce stakes a claim as the<br />
only UK-wide job site specialising<br />
in all forms of fl exible working.<br />
Aussie-turned Glaswegian Eker set<br />
up the business frustrated trying<br />
to fi nd part-time work to fi t her<br />
childcare commitments. Working out<br />
of Glasgow’s Entrepreneurial Spark<br />
accelerator, she’s a true evangelist<br />
for the city. @flexiworkforce<br />
24
See the full profile interviews at www.techcityinsider.net<br />
Mark Gracey<br />
Principal<br />
Scottish Equity Partners<br />
“Skyscanner is a business we’ve been invested in for a number of years and it’s growing very<br />
strongly. We have been working closely with them through their international expansion and it’s<br />
been a very good partnership. They’ve done very well. Recently there has been huge growth in<br />
the number of very big technology businesses. I still fi nd it incredibly exciting and interesting to see<br />
technologies emerge and to see the operational side of things where people are going out,<br />
knocking on doors, breaking into markets and creating new products. Customer relationship<br />
management and marketing automation is becoming huge. It would be good if people moved away<br />
from talking about bubbles to understanding that a lot of these businesses are really solid and are<br />
growing incredibly well.”<br />
Scottish Equity Partners invests in innovative and high-growth companies with world-class potential in the<br />
technology, healthcare and energy sectors. It manages primary and secondary venture capital funds and has<br />
Skyscanner and SocialBro in its portfolio. @SEPinvestment<br />
Michael Hayes<br />
Founder<br />
RookieOven<br />
“RookieOven is trying to make a better startup community<br />
in Glasgow and across Scotland. It started as a meetup<br />
and a blog about Scottish technology. Our Edinburgh<br />
neighbours had tech hubs CodeBase and TechCube and<br />
Glasgow had nothing. I viewed different offices and lucked<br />
up on Govan Workspace, which owns the Fairfield Shipyard.<br />
It’s a fantastic building, steeped in history: it was the biggest<br />
shipyard in the world. We got our first businesses in February<br />
<strong>2015</strong> and we want to push on and grow RookieOven into<br />
being the real heart of the Glasgow tech community.”<br />
Co-working space RookieOven aims to grow the startup community in<br />
Scotland and increase the number of successful tech companies based<br />
in the country. Its website offers tips, advice and reviews, while the<br />
co-working space is based in historic Fairfi eld Shipyard. @RookieOven<br />
Louis Schena<br />
Founder and chief<br />
operating officer<br />
Swipii<br />
“My co-founder Chitresh<br />
Sharma and I realised we<br />
could build a business<br />
to help with customer<br />
retention for every type of<br />
business. The idea behind<br />
Swipii is to do what Tesco<br />
does with its Clubcard to<br />
small independent retail<br />
shops, because your local<br />
business owner doesn’t have<br />
the money, time or expertise<br />
to have an advanced loyalty<br />
programme. We bring<br />
that power of analytics to<br />
local businesses. The<br />
consumer can pick up a<br />
card or a keychain at each<br />
participating location or use<br />
the phone app. When they<br />
scan those cards on an iPad<br />
at participating businesses,<br />
they can collect points and<br />
redeem them at all Swipii<br />
locations.”<br />
Swipii’s loyalty programme allows<br />
independent retail stores to offer<br />
rewards like free private cookery<br />
classes. Customers collect points<br />
on an iOS or Android app, a<br />
keychain or Swipii card when<br />
they make purchases.<br />
@Swipiicard<br />
25
<strong>TechNation200</strong> <strong>Almanac</strong> <strong>2015</strong>/<strong>16</strong> | Hull<br />
In <strong>2015</strong>, the Centre for Digital Innovation<br />
opened a new £15m technology campus in<br />
Hull, backed by developers. It’s a major boost<br />
for the area’s growing technology cluster.<br />
There has been a thriving tech ecosystem in the Hull and<br />
Humber region for years. But the truth is that no one<br />
outside of the area knew about it.<br />
That started to change when Wykeland, a local property<br />
development company, pulled together a team, including<br />
from KC (the local telecoms company), the University of<br />
Hull, Sonoco Trident (a large tech company), Hull Digital<br />
(the 800-strong digital community) and representatives from<br />
startups and local businesses.<br />
C4DI helps big industry innovate and grow, by providing<br />
opportunities for people to form startups in those industry<br />
niches. Those startups then have access to industry mentors,<br />
and supply chains to help accelerate those businesses in a way<br />
that wouldn’t happen elsewhere.<br />
The development of those relationships, and the development<br />
of the membership of C4DI, gave Wykeland confi dence to<br />
progress its plans, and in October <strong>2015</strong> C4DI moved into<br />
phase one of a new £15m technology campus.<br />
Hull and East Yorkshire’s communications provider, KC, is<br />
investing tens of millions of pounds in the deployment of its<br />
state-of-the-art fi bre broadband service, KC Lightstream, to<br />
create a best-in-class digital network. This level of infrastructure<br />
helps local businesses scale and there are some great<br />
examples of that.<br />
Founded in Hull 20 years ago, Sonoco Trident is the world’s<br />
fastest-growing and most innovative digital brand management<br />
business.<br />
One of the most extraordinary success stories of the UK’s<br />
digital media industry, Summit, started in 2000 at Wolds Prison<br />
in East Yorkshire, providing businesses with highly effective<br />
online marketing services supported by a pioneering training<br />
and rehabilitation scheme for prisoners leading to employment<br />
upon release.<br />
The Humber’s economy is set to benefi t from a series of<br />
transformational developments, including the £310m Siemens<br />
wind turbine manufacturing and assembly facilities at Alexandra<br />
Dock in Hull; the Able Marine Energy Park on the south bank;<br />
investments driven by Hull’s status as the 2017 UK City of<br />
Culture; and global health and hygiene giant RB’s plans for a<br />
£100m Centre for Scientifi c Excellence in Hull.<br />
TechCityinsider’s TechCities ambassador for Hull is John Connolly of<br />
C4DI (www.c4di.net).<br />
Matt Abbott<br />
Co-founder and director<br />
Label Worx<br />
“I’ve been into music since I was a teenager. Co-founder<br />
Chris Chambers and I were both DJs. We were both booked<br />
to play a gig at the same venue. We got chatting and set up<br />
Alter Ego Records in 2003 to release our music. Independent<br />
record companies weren’t massively represented back then,<br />
so we struggled to get our content to the right stores and<br />
platforms. At the time there was the transition from physical to<br />
digital in the dance music scene. We developed cloud software<br />
specifically for running a record label. We moved into the C4DI<br />
in Hull when it opened two years ago and since then it’s been<br />
great. There is a lot of collaboration, a lot of idea sharing – and<br />
really superfast internet.”<br />
Label Worx, a service provider tailored to the needs of independent<br />
record companies, has become a go-to company for the dance music<br />
industry. It provides services like worldwide distribution, pre-release<br />
promo campaign tools and royalty management software. @labelworx<br />
Thom Davy<br />
Co-founder<br />
Stashboard<br />
“My co-founder Al Spiers and I did the same graphic design<br />
course at university and we’ve been best buddies since<br />
then. He works in advertising agencies and I work in design.<br />
It’s very hard to run projects because they involve such a wide<br />
scope of processes. Stashboard covers each part of the creative<br />
process, from the initial brief to delivery. It helps you keep all<br />
your fi les organised and collaborate with team members, clients,<br />
suppliers and printers. Having our UK base in Hull is awesome, as<br />
C4DI is leading the way when it comes to innovation. It’s a brand<br />
new, state-of-the-art building and has the fastest web connection<br />
I have ever experienced.”<br />
Stashboard is a creative workspace<br />
and collaboration platform. It<br />
allows people working in creative<br />
industries to manage their projects.<br />
It gives them a place to store,<br />
present and get feedback on their<br />
fi les. Stashboard has 3,500 users in<br />
76 countries. @stashboardapp<br />
26
See the full profile interviews at www.techcityinsider.net<br />
Salma Conway<br />
Co-founder<br />
MrLista<br />
David Keel<br />
Joint managing director<br />
Sonoco Trident<br />
“When I have to buy gifts, I<br />
agonise over what to get and<br />
never get it right. Absolutely<br />
anyone can sign up to MrLista<br />
and add any product from any<br />
website. We went for a very<br />
slick look and a simple interface<br />
that anybody could use. The<br />
system works so that when<br />
people receive the gift list and<br />
buy an item, they can mark it<br />
as purchased and nobody else<br />
will buy it. The person who sent<br />
the list can’t see what people<br />
are buying so it is still a surprise<br />
when they get it. We wanted<br />
all our website content to have<br />
an editorial slant. We create<br />
featured lists with our team of<br />
contributors so there<br />
is shareable content that<br />
interests people.”<br />
Web app MrLista helps users create<br />
and share online gift lists and wish<br />
lists, allowing people to add items<br />
to a list. The site hosts featured lists<br />
compiled by contributors. In October<br />
<strong>2015</strong> MrLista won best digital<br />
startup at a Hull Centre for Digital<br />
Innovation event. @mrlista<br />
“We create the artwork for global brands like Procter &<br />
Gamble, L’Oreal and Unilever. We manage the graphics for<br />
the packaging of their brands. Let’s say a customer has a<br />
new shampoo coming out. We take the design concept for that<br />
shampoo and manage it on bottles, cartons, tubes and aerosols.<br />
Trident creates more than 300,000 digital artworks every year<br />
and works with 2,000 printers across the world to ensure that<br />
specifics, especially colour, are consistent. We’ve always had<br />
a good tech base in Hull. The problem is we didn’t know it<br />
until C4DI gave us a beacon to focus on. There’s a real tech<br />
infrastructure here already and all we have to do is get firms<br />
talking to each other. When people talk to each other, much<br />
more comes out of it.”<br />
Hull-based Sonoco Trident creates the digital artwork images seen on the packaging of some of the most<br />
recognised brands in the world. David Keel is also the chair of the C4DI tech startup hub. @C4DIhull<br />
Alex Youden<br />
Managing director<br />
NFire Labs<br />
“The first 3D printer I<br />
bought came without<br />
any instructions. I knew<br />
roughly where things<br />
were supposed to go but I<br />
thought ‘this could be better’.<br />
If you were to go out and<br />
buy a normal 3D printer, in<br />
a couple of years’ time it<br />
may not be the fastest or<br />
the most accurate so you’d<br />
have to buy a new one. With<br />
this one you just upgrade<br />
the part and you’ve got one<br />
that’s as good as the best<br />
one that you can buy at the<br />
time. You can just upgrade it<br />
by clicking things together.<br />
When I was coming up with<br />
this, one of the key things<br />
I wanted to do was keep<br />
it as local as possible, so<br />
two-thirds of the printer<br />
actually comes from within a<br />
two-mile radius of where I’m<br />
based in Hull.”<br />
NFire Labs designs and builds<br />
modular 3D printers. A Kickstarter<br />
campaign to raise £30,000 for<br />
the continuous development of<br />
updates and add-ons was fully<br />
funded in September <strong>2015</strong>.<br />
Youden, 19, runs the business<br />
out of the C4DI hub.<br />
@nfirelabs<br />
27
<strong>TechNation200</strong> <strong>Almanac</strong> <strong>2015</strong>/<strong>16</strong> | Leeds<br />
Mark Barrett<br />
Director of data<br />
innovation, Hebe Works<br />
Leeds Data Mill<br />
Leeds is building a reputation as a centre for<br />
technology for health, fintech, data and more.<br />
With a new innovation centre funded, startup<br />
culture is looking good too.<br />
Leeds has a proud history of innovation in tech, with large<br />
dotcom successes like Freeserve and Ananova in the<br />
1980s and 90s.<br />
Today, the city has a strong digital technology sector – the<br />
fourth largest outside of London – with particular cluster<br />
specialisms in health analytics, fi ntech and data science and<br />
boasting some truly exceptional infrastructure.<br />
With a low cost of living, easy access to London, two worldclass<br />
universities (and an equally world-class nightlife), it’s easy<br />
to see why Leeds is a preferred location for many.<br />
According to Tech City UK’s <strong>2015</strong> Tech Nation report, Leeds<br />
employs almost 45,000 people in the digital sector.<br />
The digital operations of major corporates such as Sky and<br />
SkyBet, Asda, William Hill, CallCredit and Rockstar Games<br />
dominate the employment numbers.<br />
But innovative and disruptive technology-based SMEs are<br />
emerging, including BJSS, Pharmacy2u and innovative alarm<br />
business Cocoon.<br />
Leeds is home to the largest concentration of health data<br />
assets in the UK, with one of the highest concentrations of<br />
health informatics professionals globally, including the NHS<br />
Data Spine and HSCIC.<br />
The city is also a major centre for fi nancial services, the home<br />
of internet bank First Direct and the back offi ce operations of<br />
many of the banks and building societies means the city is well<br />
placed to take advantage of opportunities in fi ntech.<br />
IXLeeds is the only UK internet exchange based outside of<br />
London. It gives a real strength to the city as an ideal location<br />
to give infrastructure resilience.<br />
In data science, the Leeds Institute for Data Analytics (LIDA)<br />
houses the National Consumer Data Research Centre at the<br />
University of Leeds, with the Leeds Data Mill and the Open<br />
Data Institute Node contributing to the specialism in data.<br />
The Leeds startup community is still fl edgling and quite<br />
dispersed, but initiatives like Silicon Drinkabout Leeds and the<br />
26 meetups in the city, such as Agile Yorkshire, Northern UX<br />
and Forefront, regularly draw decent attendance and speakers.<br />
A new Entrepreneurial Spark facility, The Hatchery, is now<br />
home to a number of fl edgling startups.<br />
Tech startups are based at the Yorkshire Post building<br />
and a major new startup facility, at the forthcoming 56,000<br />
sq ft FutureLabs tech hub, will be sited at the former police<br />
headquarters.<br />
TechCityinsider’s TechCities ambassador for Leeds is Steve<br />
Wainwright, an independent advisor and the lead for FutureLabs.<br />
“Leeds Data Mill is a place<br />
where organisations<br />
can submit data in open<br />
formats, so that citizens,<br />
developers and interested<br />
people can look at the data and<br />
get an understanding of things<br />
they’ve not been able to see<br />
before. The data is all about<br />
the city, so it’s hyperlocal rather<br />
than national as with data.<br />
gov.uk. What we do is go right<br />
down to street level, without anything that’s identifiable. All<br />
information and governance protocols are followed but it really<br />
gives us insights we’ve never had before. We’ve started to use<br />
more and more of the data and have found that there’s loads<br />
of interesting things contained within it.”<br />
Leeds Data Mill, a pioneering project led by Leeds City Council in<br />
partnership with Hebe, is helping the Yorkshire city to become smarter<br />
by harnessing, interpreting and presenting open data on the city’s waste,<br />
air quality, footfall and much more, in an effort to help decision-makers<br />
and consumers change for the better. @LeedsDataMill<br />
Royd Brayshay<br />
Co-founder, NewRedo<br />
Organiser, Agile Yorkshire<br />
“There’s defi nitely a community of startup businesses in Leeds.<br />
Unfortunately they’re not very visible because, as well as being<br />
very busy, they are distributed around. Leeds doesn’t yet have<br />
the kind of physical community space that, say, Manchester does.<br />
Leeds City Council is changing its approach but perhaps its focus<br />
had been elsewhere until recent times. TechNation has helped<br />
it refocus. I’m constantly meeting new people doing new things,<br />
but there’s an awful lot of squirrelling away on kitchen tables.<br />
Hopefully there will be more when we start to see some more<br />
success stories. Physical proximity to your team doesn’t matter<br />
so much, but it starts to matter<br />
when you are talking about<br />
community or investment. They<br />
need visibility to attract investors.<br />
Let’s hope it happens sooner<br />
rather than later.”<br />
As well as running software<br />
provider and training business<br />
NewRedo, Leeds-based Brayshay<br />
runs the city’s leading developer<br />
networking events, including<br />
AgileYorkshire and LeanStartupYks.<br />
@RoydBrayshay<br />
28
See the full profile interviews at www.techcityinsider.net<br />
Sanjay Parekh<br />
Co-founder<br />
Cocoon<br />
“Cocoon is a smart-home security system that can protect an<br />
entire home via a single device. It has a high-defi nition<br />
camera and uses s something called sub-sound to detect<br />
movements through walls and ceilings. Sub-sound<br />
monitors the sounds s humans can’t hear, which tends to<br />
be sound waves that are very long, called infrasounds.<br />
We take and fi ngerprint those sounds and pass them<br />
through a learning algorithm so that we can understand<br />
what’s normal and what isn’t for your home. The<br />
primary driver for starting up the business was that<br />
we’d all had pretty poor experiences with our own<br />
home alarms. Many of us had them installed but<br />
weren’t using them because they were a pain to set.<br />
It really hit home when one of my co-founders had an<br />
alarm go off at work. There was no way of switching it<br />
off without getting up on a chair and smashing the<br />
alarm.”<br />
Cocoon is looking to disrupt the home security<br />
market with its smart home device, which<br />
combines camera, motion detector<br />
and ‘sub sound’ technology to<br />
detect – and learn from –<br />
activity in the home, then alert<br />
the user to any unusual ual<br />
activity. The startup<br />
raised US$234,000 via<br />
Indiegogo in 2014.<br />
@cocoon<br />
Adam Beaumont<br />
Founder and chief executive, aql<br />
Founder, NorthInvest<br />
“We call ourselves a wholesale integrated communications<br />
provider. If you’ve ever had a text message from a school,<br />
when you’ve had a parcel delivered or when you’ve<br />
used a home broadband phone service, it’s likely we were<br />
somewhere in your delivery chain. We’re based in the Salem<br />
Chapel building, a former non-conformist chapel dating back<br />
to 1791. It’s probably not the normal choice of office space<br />
for a tech company or a data centre operator. The reason that<br />
we chose this space was all about location. It’s right next to<br />
where all the fibre passes into this city, in duct work in the<br />
roads. By building a data centre here we have a very good<br />
business case for all those different fibre operators to break<br />
their network out into our building.”<br />
Beaumont is a Leeds tech champion wearing several hats. In addition<br />
to founding and running aql’s impressive data centre operation in an<br />
extraordinary converted chapel, he is a mentor, angel investor and<br />
founder of the new NorthInvest agency promoting equitable investment<br />
in the North. @aqldotcom<br />
Daniel Rajkumar<br />
Managing director<br />
Rebuilding Society<br />
“Rebuilding Society was<br />
born out of the financial<br />
crisis. It was set up to<br />
help businesses looking<br />
for access to finance with<br />
investors looking for a better<br />
return on their savings. The<br />
internet is a huge enabler.<br />
It’s disintermediated so<br />
many industries, from<br />
airlines to the music<br />
industry and books. The<br />
finance industry has taken<br />
longer to innovate with new<br />
technologies. Rebuilding<br />
Society was about taking<br />
the ethos of the crowd,<br />
akin to original building<br />
societies, and taking this<br />
online. So, bringing together<br />
the interests of the crowd<br />
community and aligning<br />
them with the financial needs<br />
of SMEs to help grow the<br />
economy. We haven’t gone<br />
down the VC route yet. We<br />
are trying an approach that’s<br />
bootstrapped and creating a<br />
sense of community between<br />
investors.”<br />
Rebuilding Society is looking<br />
to help small business bypass<br />
the banks and deal directly with<br />
each other. Rajkumar hopes a<br />
community-led approach will<br />
see it offer something different<br />
compared with the likes of<br />
Funding Circle. @danrajkumar<br />
29
<strong>TechNation200</strong> <strong>Almanac</strong> <strong>2015</strong>/<strong>16</strong> | Liverpool<br />
Chris Barker<br />
Director<br />
Draw+Code<br />
Liverpool is the UK’s second fastest-growing<br />
digital business cluster. What was once a portdominated<br />
local economy is now dominated<br />
by services – including a rising startup sector.<br />
Liverpool has seen a huge physical transformation, but there<br />
is also more confi dence in the growing business base in<br />
the city, with increasing interest from inward investors.<br />
Liverpool offers a good quality of life, a low cost base, three<br />
well-regarded universities and a strong talent pipeline. Tech<br />
North, representing Liverpool as one of seven northern cities,<br />
will help the city add to this.<br />
Tech City UK’s Tech Nation report revealed Liverpool had<br />
the UK’s second fastest rate of growth. Over the last two<br />
years, there has been a growing sense of a city and a cluster<br />
gathering momentum.<br />
The clustering of tech businesses in Liverpool’s Baltic<br />
Triangle – a historic dockside area on the edge of the city<br />
centre made up of old warehouses and industrial sheds – has<br />
provided a focus for sector activity and attracted interest from<br />
across the world.<br />
Community interest company Baltic Creative CIC now<br />
owns 40,000 square feet of property in the area on behalf of<br />
the sector. The Elevator warehouse space was developed by<br />
private landlords at the same time, and others have followed.<br />
All available space in the area is full and the landlords in the<br />
area have waiting lists.<br />
The Baltic Creative Campus houses co-working space<br />
Basecamp, home to many tech startups.<br />
Elsewhere, DoES Liverpool is a diverse community of makers<br />
and entrepreneurs and offers a co-working space, access to<br />
kit, regular events and more.<br />
In 2014 Santander chose Liverpool for its fi rst-ever UK<br />
incubator, while <strong>2015</strong> saw Launch 22 open its fi rst incubator<br />
outside of London. There are tech businesses in both the<br />
Innovation Park and Liverpool Science Park.<br />
The city has been responsible for some of the most famous<br />
games ever produced. Much of the talent behind these games<br />
has been retained, despite the closures of Bizarre Games and<br />
the development studio at Sony.<br />
Outside of gaming, other fi rms making waves include<br />
Sentric Music (music publishing), Draw & Code (immersive<br />
technology), Elite Sports Technology, LivingLens (video search)<br />
and Focus Innovation (helping cities across the UK to market<br />
themselves).<br />
TechCityinsider’s TechCities ambassador for Liverpool is Kevin<br />
McManus of Invest Liverpool at Liverpool Vision<br />
(www.liverpoolvision.co.uk/invest).<br />
“We have an equal interest in function and aesthetics, so<br />
there are two halves to what we do. We make work that<br />
is beautiful to look at and experience but we also want<br />
to make things that are genuinely useful. We have some<br />
fantastic coders here who can do some incredible stuff. So<br />
much immersive technology<br />
is perhaps a little gimmicky<br />
or slightly frivolous, but we’re<br />
hell-bent on creating software<br />
that is actually going to solve<br />
a problem or make something<br />
better in the real world. Our<br />
ideal project would be one in<br />
which we deliver something<br />
that is functionally terrific and<br />
does exactly what is sets out<br />
to do maybe in a very new way,<br />
but also it looks and sounds<br />
fantastic while it’s doing it.”<br />
Digital design agency Draw+Code<br />
has built a reputation for high-quality creative innovation, with work in<br />
frontier fi elds like virtual and augmented reality and projection mapping.<br />
@DrawAndCode<br />
Gavin Sherratt<br />
Co-founder and managing director<br />
Studio Mashbo<br />
“We’re very focused on<br />
values. The original concept<br />
of Studio Mashbo was<br />
originally to work solely in the<br />
third sector with charities.<br />
We’re an agency for good,<br />
focused on doing good things.<br />
We’re working with a fostering<br />
care charity, getting young<br />
people from disadvantaged<br />
backgrounds into careers in<br />
the fi nancial sector, but by<br />
leveraging sport as the conduit to get them into education. On<br />
the corporate side, we released a project for NBCUniversal.<br />
We’ve created a back-offi ce app for its HR department, helping<br />
it track staff moving around the world and making sure the right<br />
paperwork is in place. We were given a challenge. They said,<br />
‘You’re the experts, this is our problem. Can you solve it?’”<br />
One of Liverpool’s most respected digital agencies, Mashbo started<br />
with a mission to develop for charities, but most of its business is now<br />
in the corporate sector. Sherratt embraces the collaborative nature of<br />
Liverpool’s digital sector – between businesses and with other tech<br />
clusters. @StudioMashbo<br />
30
See the full profile interviews at www.techcityinsider.net<br />
Leo Cubbin<br />
Managing director<br />
Ripstone<br />
“We find some stuff that's risky and edgy and we have other stuff like our Pure brand – Pure<br />
Chess, Pure Pool, Pure Hold’em – which is more mainstream. We try to be fair with our<br />
deals and empower the people we work with. We look for people who are passionate about<br />
what they’re doing and we support them. They haven't just got a game idea – they want to<br />
make a game that tells a story they are really passionate about. Liverpool is a fun city and the<br />
type of people who make games want to have interesting lives as well. We’re not that far from<br />
the Lake District, the Wirral or Wales so the good outdoor life is available. And it’s also a very<br />
vibrant city. It's just a great place to be.”<br />
Games publisher Ripstone is one of the second generation of gaming businesses to have emerged from the<br />
legacy of Sony’s presence in the city. In six years as a fi erce independent, it has built a reputation as the ‘Stiff<br />
records of gaming’. @RipstoneGames<br />
Martin Kenwright<br />
Founder<br />
Starship Group<br />
“After 20 years of successes, I decided to ‘retire’ from the<br />
industry. But, after a couple of years, I got a whole new<br />
outlook. I was in a unique position with time, energy, money<br />
and resource to go back and have one more play. I was very<br />
excited about the advent of new technologies. Also, I saw what<br />
was going on in the city. When I left the industry, Liverpool was<br />
at the top, with some of the best games development studios<br />
on the planet. To see they’d all left the area was sad. I thought<br />
I could offer something that was more than just a games<br />
development studio – something with a broader vision about<br />
where tech could go, how we could fund it, how we could make<br />
it and how we could develop it.”<br />
Kenwright is one of the UK’s most senior video game developers. At<br />
Starship Group, he’s applying gaming technology to wider uses like<br />
food and health and in <strong>2015</strong> launched new virtual-reality social network<br />
technology vTime. @Starship_Group<br />
Carl Wong<br />
Co-founder and chief<br />
executive<br />
LivingLens<br />
“The world of market<br />
insight creates an<br />
incredible amount<br />
of video content every<br />
year. A typical large<br />
multinational brand will<br />
create thousands of hours<br />
of video content through its<br />
market research projects.<br />
LivingLens is Google for<br />
your organisation’s video<br />
content – we enable you to<br />
search specifically and for<br />
exact meaningful moments.<br />
You search for a word or a<br />
phrase, you navigate to that<br />
exact mention within video<br />
content and we give you the<br />
power to grab clips, merge<br />
those clips together and<br />
then share those clips with<br />
others. We turn video into<br />
something searchable. We’re<br />
turning video into data. We<br />
are at the start of a journey<br />
with that. It’s not just exciting<br />
times for us; there’s a new<br />
technology emerging that’s<br />
going to make video more<br />
accessible and more useful<br />
and valuable for everybody.”<br />
LivingLens helps its market<br />
research and brand customers to<br />
extract data and insights from the<br />
world’s fastest-growing medium –<br />
video. After emerging from London<br />
madtech accelerator Collider, in<br />
<strong>2015</strong> LivingLens closed a £1m<br />
funding round.@Livinglenstv<br />
31
<strong>TechNation200</strong> <strong>Almanac</strong> <strong>2015</strong> | London<br />
Despite the impressive growth of tech cities UK wide, London still<br />
dominates the technology startup economy. That’s why 100 of the 200<br />
people profiled in this almanac are based in the capital city.<br />
With its raw ingredients of talented developers, funding and world-changing ideas, London<br />
is a catalyst for tech business growth. The reactions that have been taking place in the UK<br />
capital have resulted in innovative businesses that are making their mark on the world stage.<br />
GP Bullhound reports that Europe is home to 40 tech unicorns – companies valued at US$1bn<br />
or more – and of those, 13 are based in London. There are four in the rest of the UK. Funding Circle,<br />
a peer-to-peer lending platform that raised a £100m series E round in May <strong>2015</strong>, is one London<br />
unicorn. Read our profi le of founder Samir Desai on page 36.<br />
London remains the nexus of activity for digital businesses, outperforming its regional urban<br />
competitors by some distance. According to Tech City UK, inner London’s 12 boroughs are home to<br />
26% of the UK’s digital businesses and 252,000 are employed in the digital economy.<br />
Talent is drawn to London from around the country and – visas permitting – around the world.<br />
According to Stack Overfl ow, the capital has more than 70,000 professional developers – more than<br />
any other European city.<br />
Digitally minded entrepreneurs and computer scientists graduate from London’s world-class<br />
educational institutions, like<br />
Imperial College, UCL and City<br />
University London. Many of these<br />
support the entrepreneurial<br />
endeavors of their students and<br />
alumni.<br />
Unsurprisingly for a global city<br />
that is often billed as the fi nancial<br />
capital of the world, London is<br />
a magnet for investment, both<br />
nationally and internationally. It<br />
is taking a sizeable chunk of the<br />
UK’s tech funding.<br />
According to London &<br />
Partners, the UK technology<br />
sector secured US$2.2bn of<br />
investment in the fi rst nine months<br />
of <strong>2015</strong>. Of that, London-based tech fi rms took US$1.6bn – around 75% of the national total.<br />
London’s magnetism as an investment superhub is one reason why so many non-London UK<br />
businesses also choose to have a presence in the capital.<br />
Ideas come from the any and everywhere, perhaps solving a problem or pooling collective skills.<br />
And, as our list shows, the entrepreneurs come from everywhere, too.<br />
Taiwanese ShaoLan Hsueh started Chineasy wanting to make it easier for her British-born children<br />
to understand Chinese. Palestinian Jordanian Mutaz Qubbaj set up Squirrel to help people manage<br />
their fi nances better. There are any number of arrivals from the US who have chosen to make the UK<br />
their home and business base.<br />
The list of international tech entrepreneurs is undeniably impressive. Many are drawn to London by<br />
the favourable investment climate and state incentives.<br />
Sharing of knowledge is facilitated by the proximity that would-be entrepreneurs have to each<br />
other when working in the capital’s growing number of co-working spaces. The Mayor of London<br />
has counted at least 55 geared towards digital startups. And these ideas can develop and fl ourish in<br />
the city’s accelerator programmes, such as TechStars and Startup Bootcamp Fintech. According to<br />
Wayra, there are 24 others in London, with nine in the rest of the UK.<br />
The Shoreditch-Old Street area contains London’s biggest concentration of tech businesses, but<br />
others are emerging in places like Kentish Town, Croydon and Bermondsey. Combined, they make<br />
London one gigantic technology cluster.<br />
London has seen an explosion in the number of digital companies incorporated in recent years,<br />
with an increase of 92% between 2010 and 2013. The number of tech companies in the capital is<br />
set to rise to 51,500 by 2025.<br />
Have your safety goggles at the ready – there’ll be plenty more exciting reactions to come.<br />
Laurence<br />
Aderemi<br />
Co-founder and chief<br />
executive<br />
Moni<br />
“What we’re trying to do<br />
is create a platform that<br />
enables direct economic<br />
stimulation. Being a fi rstgeneration<br />
immigrant, I know<br />
the pain that Africans and<br />
other immigrants go through<br />
when they need to send<br />
money to their loved ones. I<br />
thought that if you could send<br />
money to a bank or mobile<br />
money account you wouldn’t<br />
need a middleman and you<br />
could pass on the saving<br />
directly to the people who<br />
need it most. What happens<br />
with Moni is that there is a<br />
reconciliation between your<br />
bank and its subsidiary in<br />
the country to which you are<br />
sending money. This takes<br />
place 24 hours after a user<br />
has sent the funds. The money<br />
never moves; that’s the clever<br />
tech. It’s simple but it’s clever.”<br />
*Money transfer app Moni allows<br />
people to send money abroad<br />
from smartphones. It can be sent<br />
to a mobile number instantly or to<br />
a bank account within 48 hours.<br />
The sender can track the progress<br />
of the transfer within the app or<br />
via SMS. @monimobile<br />
32
See the full profile interviews at www.techcityinsider.net<br />
Tushar Agarwal<br />
Co-founder and chief executive<br />
Hubble<br />
“I noticed that a lot of large corporates had vast amounts of vacant commercial property.<br />
I thought there must be a solution to make use of the space. I would congratulate<br />
successful founders who had just fundraised, and ask, ‘What next?’ Most would say, ‘We<br />
can’t find an office.’ This struck me as very bizarre. So we started a very, very simple portal for<br />
startups. We’ve standardised the licenc e agreement that landlords can use. And we’ve got a<br />
payments platform, which means that with the click of a few buttons they can start receiving<br />
rent on a monthly basis. Traditionally it could take between three and six months to get into a<br />
property, but with Hubble, a startup could start searching on Friday and move in on Monday.”<br />
Hubble is an online marketplace that allows startups to rent workspace on a fl exible basis. It matches up those<br />
looking to rent space with those who have it. Hubble focuses on co-working spaces, shared offi ces and private<br />
serviced offi ces. @HubbleHQ<br />
Ross Bailey<br />
Founder and chief executive<br />
Appear Here<br />
“I had a little shop just off Carnaby Street for the Queen’s<br />
diamond jubilee. I convinced the landlord to let me borrow the<br />
store for a week and it went incredibly well. In 2012 there was<br />
a huge amount in the press about empty shops and how Airbnb<br />
was taking off. I put two and two together. The way brands and<br />
retailers want space has changed massively, yet the way people<br />
rent space hasn’t. The average deal takes six months to complete,<br />
but at Appear Here we’re closing deals in fewer than fi ve days,<br />
with our quickest deal taking half an hour.”<br />
Appear Here connects landlords’ vacant retail spaces with people<br />
with great ideas, all online. It has a vision to create a global network<br />
of spaces so that people can make their ideas travel. High-profile retail<br />
spaces included in the startup’s portfolio are Old Street Underground<br />
station and Boxpark in Shoreditch . @appearhere<br />
Rebecca Bright<br />
Co-founder and<br />
director<br />
Therapy Box<br />
“I first came up with<br />
the idea of using<br />
apps for people with<br />
communication disabilities<br />
while working as a speech<br />
and language therapist. In<br />
2011 we launched our first<br />
app, Predictable. It was<br />
designed for people who<br />
have little or no speech,<br />
such as those with motor<br />
n eurone disease or cerebral<br />
palsy who are able to<br />
type and spell but cannot<br />
communicate verbally. The<br />
app allows them to input a<br />
message and have it played<br />
out loud. After we launched<br />
our own range of apps,<br />
people in our sector started<br />
coming to us and asking us<br />
to build apps for them.”<br />
Healthcare and education startup<br />
Therapy Box offers iOS-based<br />
communications apps to help<br />
people with disabilities or injuries.<br />
In 2014 Therapy Box picked up a<br />
Queen’s Award for Enterprise for<br />
innovation.<br />
@TherapyBox<br />
33
<strong>TechNation200</strong> <strong>Almanac</strong> <strong>2015</strong>/<strong>16</strong> | London<br />
George Burgess<br />
Founder and chief<br />
executive<br />
Gojimo<br />
“When I was studying<br />
for my A-levels in 2009,<br />
I couldn’t find anything<br />
in the app store to help me<br />
prepare for my exams. I<br />
thought this was a business<br />
opportunity and decided<br />
to solve the problem. Later<br />
that year we launched our<br />
first app, for geography. It<br />
did well enough for me to<br />
want to go on to build apps<br />
for other subjects. I came<br />
up with this idea of building<br />
a platform and a brand with<br />
one app that a student – no<br />
matter where they are in the<br />
world, no matter what they’re<br />
studying – could use to find<br />
useful exam preparation<br />
resources in a mobilefriendly<br />
format.”<br />
Education software start-up<br />
Gojimo helps students revise<br />
for common entrance, GCSE,<br />
SAT, A-Level and undergraduate<br />
exams, using a gamified approach<br />
through quizzes across subjects.<br />
Burgess has secured seed<br />
investment from Index Ventures<br />
and JamJar. @GojimoApp<br />
Lucy Burnford<br />
Founder<br />
Automyze (formerly Motoriety)<br />
“I bought a second-hand car with a full service history. After three months, something went wrong<br />
that cost £3,500 to fi x. It was ludicrous that, in this digital age, data relating to the car didn’t<br />
transfer with the vehicle. I thought that if you could combine the issue of not having access to<br />
the data of the car with an automated central portal to manage everything to do with car ownership<br />
it would be a really great proposition for motorists. Through our platform, you book your car into a<br />
garage, then the garage digitally stamps what it has done on your Automyze account. That way you<br />
have a digital service history that’s fully verifi ed and validated. You can then transfer it with the car<br />
when you sell it.”<br />
<strong>2015</strong> was a pivotal year for Motoriety, when the business was acquired by the AA to become Automyze. Its<br />
free tool manages everything to do with car ownership: MOT, tax, insurance, breakdown cover and warranty.<br />
@Motoriety_UK<br />
Faisal Butt<br />
Founder and chief executive<br />
Pi Labs<br />
“We’re searching the globe for<br />
management teams that we believe will<br />
be the next generation of innovators in<br />
property-related sectors. We’re looking to<br />
back potential billion-dollar businesses like<br />
Zoopla, Airbnb and Nest, which are changing<br />
the way people interact with spaces. Property<br />
is being transformed by digital innovation.<br />
There’s a lot of investment going into the step-by-step process of selling a house, from the<br />
moment a vendor has the thought right through to completion. It’s easy to put property all in<br />
one box but actually it’s very broad and is probably more than one industry. We thought it made<br />
sense to create a platform to allow these different businesses to talk to one another.”<br />
Pi Labs (Property Innovation labs) is Europe’s fi rst property innovation-focused accelerator. Venture capitalist<br />
Butt founded the business in partnership with Cushman & Wakefi eld. Its 13-week mentor-led programme, out<br />
of London’s Second Home, aims to build a community of like-minded fi rms with global aspirations. @PiLabs<br />
34
See the full profile interviews at www.techcityinsider.net<br />
Vanessa Butz<br />
Managing director<br />
Interchange<br />
“I got involved in the tech startup scene when I was studying engineering. I did my last year<br />
in Berlin, working on due diligence at a venture capital company. That’s what introduced<br />
me to the startup scene, VC and tech generally. It got me uber-excited about the whole<br />
industry. About a year ago I met with staff at Market Tech, which owns about 14 acres of land<br />
around Camden in London. It made an internal decision to give three of its buildings that it<br />
owns to a co-working startup space. The thing that makes the space unique as a project is<br />
definitely Camden Market. We have two buildings that sit right on top of the market and the<br />
spaces are absolutely stunning and very premium, but also alternative and edgy.”<br />
Interchange is a new space for entrepreneurs, startups and creatives in the heart of Camden in north London.<br />
Spread over three sites, with its primary Atrium and Triangle locations in Camden Market and Utopia in nearby<br />
Primrose Hill, it provides a larger offi ce space for growing and established companies. @InterchangeLDN<br />
Susanne Chishti<br />
Founder and chief executive<br />
Fintech Circle Innovate<br />
“I studied and then worked for a fi ntech company in Silicon<br />
Valley in 1995. At that time fi ntech didn’t exist as a term, yet<br />
I’ve got the same feeling in London now with fi ntech as I had<br />
back then. I set up Fintech Circle in 2014. The idea was born<br />
out of the fact that I had lots of colleagues across my c ircle of<br />
friends in banking who all were interested in investing in fi ntech<br />
companies and who said they would like to invest in the next<br />
Paypal, but they just didn’t know where or who they were. At the<br />
same time, I was connected to lots of fi ntech startup founders<br />
who said, ‘We want knowledge and expertise from people in<br />
banking or insurance who can invest smart money in our fi rms.’”<br />
European angel network Fintech Circle focuses on fi ntech opportunities,<br />
working with innovative and disruptive brands in fi nancial technology<br />
and connecting them with senior thought leaders and fi nanciers in<br />
London’s Square Mile and Canary Wharf. @FINTECHcircle<br />
Matt Chocqueel-<br />
Mangan<br />
Founder<br />
Vote for Policies<br />
“Vote for Policies serves<br />
up policies in the words<br />
of political parties but<br />
without displaying which<br />
party they belong to.<br />
Users are able to compare<br />
policies of the five or six<br />
largest parties on issues<br />
such as health, education,<br />
the environment and<br />
immigration. It’s a powerful<br />
way of engaging with<br />
the actual policies and,<br />
secondly, of removing all<br />
the bias that comes from<br />
not just the media but also<br />
our own preconceptions.<br />
We’re creatures of habit in<br />
respect to voting, but it’s<br />
really important to make a<br />
call on which party actually<br />
supports your own beliefs.”<br />
Independent and voluntary notfor-profi<br />
t Vote for Policies is on a<br />
mission to increase participation<br />
in elections and make policies<br />
the focus over personalities in<br />
people’s voting decisions. Its<br />
platform aims to give everyone<br />
the chance to make an informed<br />
and unbiased decision.<br />
@voteforpolicies<br />
35
<strong>TechNation200</strong> <strong>Almanac</strong> <strong>2015</strong>/<strong>16</strong> | London<br />
Simon Cook<br />
Co-founder and chief<br />
executive<br />
Draper Esprit<br />
Claire<br />
Cockerton<br />
Founder and chief<br />
executive<br />
Innovate Finance<br />
“Innovate Finance is an<br />
industry organisation that is<br />
dedicated to accelerating<br />
and supporting technologyled<br />
fi nancial services fi rms<br />
in the UK. We work with<br />
big corporations that are<br />
interested in adopting new<br />
technologies and being<br />
innovative. We also work<br />
with people in the SME and<br />
entrepreneurial sector who<br />
are bringing new technologies<br />
and new business models<br />
to the marketplace to make<br />
it competitive, diverse<br />
and resilient as a sector.<br />
Infrastructure is one of the<br />
reasons why London is this<br />
wonderful, bustling hub. We’ve<br />
got nice spaces, well designed<br />
for introverts and extroverts<br />
and designers and engineers.<br />
We cater to a diverse group<br />
of people, so infrastructure is<br />
incredibly important.”<br />
Independent not-for-profi t<br />
membership organisation<br />
Innovate Finance aims to<br />
accelerate the UK’s position as<br />
the leading global fi ntech hub by<br />
supporting the next generation of<br />
innovators and entrepreneurs, and<br />
lobbying on their behalf. @InnFin<br />
“Venture capital combined with crowd<br />
funding is accelerating the ability<br />
of entrepreneurs to raise capital<br />
and get to market before a competitor<br />
launches with the same idea. So we’re<br />
very big proponents of the whole crowd<br />
scene. The companies I invest in have<br />
aspirations for world domination. The<br />
secret to building really successful<br />
firms that are overnight successes is<br />
the seven, eight, nine or 10 years before<br />
that. Patience is the number one thing<br />
I’ve learned. I want to be the go-to guy<br />
for the entrepreneur. Maybe someone<br />
is going to pitch to me next week about<br />
how to build the next jumbo jet as a<br />
startup. Why not? There’s no reason why<br />
we can’t have the startup mentality in<br />
any industry.”<br />
London-based early-stage investment fi rm<br />
Draper Esprit is on a mission to back Europe’s<br />
most ambitious entrepreneurs. The company<br />
invests in growing businesses but will also<br />
do direct secondary deals and put money into<br />
later-stage fi rms. Lyst and Graze are both in the<br />
Draper Esprit portfolio. @draperesprit<br />
Julian David<br />
Chief executive<br />
techUK<br />
“We are the industry body, a private<br />
sector commercial organisation supplying<br />
digital technology across the UK. Our<br />
members employ more than 750,000 people.<br />
Government does listen. Sometimes you have<br />
to check what it has said, but it does listen and<br />
it comes out talking to us. This government and<br />
the last one have, more or less, got a lot of the<br />
policy areas right. We would like it to focus<br />
on continuity and scale. The biggest issue we<br />
have in the UK is that the opportunity is there<br />
– we need to make sure we are operating at a<br />
global level and that we have the scale, focus,<br />
investment and support that is needed for the<br />
industry.”<br />
TechUK represents the companies and technologies<br />
that are defi ning today the world that we will live in<br />
tomorrow. More than 850 companies are members<br />
of techUK, with the majority small- and mediumsized<br />
businesses. @techUK<br />
36
See the full profile interviews at www.techcityinsider.net<br />
Josh Davidson<br />
Founder and managing director<br />
Night Zookeeper<br />
“I was in Melbourne, Australia, when I heard that the zoo was open at night. I’d never heard<br />
of something so miraculous and I came up with a story about strange magical animals<br />
that you would encounter in this curious night zoo. This was back in the time of blogs and<br />
wikis. I saw interesting things were happening in science fiction in various forums and thought<br />
it would be interesting if I made Night Zookeeper a collaborative story. In this age of so many<br />
distractions, the fact that kids are still going home and writing stories is so fantastic. Kids are<br />
actually incredibly creative, and that really helps drive a platform like Night Zookeeper.”<br />
Edtech platform Night Zookeeper offers a set of inspiring learning resources and games that develop reading,<br />
writing and creativity. It is based around a series of magical storybooks that introduce children to a world of<br />
possibilities. Davidson has secured more than US $1m in investment to date. @nightzookeeper<br />
Samir Desai<br />
Co-founder and chief executive<br />
Funding Circle<br />
“Funding Circle is, at heart, a very simple business. It’s an online<br />
marketplace that allows individuals, businesses, government,<br />
institutions – basically anyone – to lend money directly to small<br />
businesses, effectively cutting out the banks. What that means<br />
is investors get a better return on their money and businesses<br />
get access to fast, lower-cost loans, and hopefully together that<br />
grows the economy. The biggest challenge we have is increasing<br />
awareness. We’ve got a decent amount of money now, so hopefully<br />
that’s something we can start to address quickly. We want Funding<br />
Circle to be part of the fi nancial infrastructure.”<br />
Peer-to-peer lending platform Funding Circle offers an online marketplace<br />
for lending to small businesses, using technology to match accredited<br />
and institutional investors to UK and US small businesses looking for<br />
fi nance. In April <strong>2015</strong> it secured a mega US$150m series E round.<br />
@FundingCircleUK<br />
Becky Downing<br />
Chief executive<br />
Buzzmove<br />
“The removals industry<br />
was in dire need of<br />
improvement. There<br />
had to be a way of setting<br />
up an online booking site<br />
that provided instant and<br />
exact prices to stop people<br />
from getting stung by a<br />
big bill at the end of the<br />
move. Buzzmove became<br />
Europe’s fi rst online pricecomparison<br />
and booking<br />
platform for moving, so you<br />
could instantly book your home<br />
move on our website. The<br />
original business model was<br />
entirely b2c. But we changed<br />
it to b2b in the sense that<br />
now our algorithm matches<br />
our customers to the fi ve most<br />
appropriate businesses”<br />
Buzzmove is the UK’s fi rst pricecomparison<br />
and instant booking<br />
platform for moving-related<br />
services. It works with industryaccredited<br />
removal companies to<br />
make the moving process easy<br />
and convenient. Former lawyer<br />
Downing set up the business in<br />
2013, fulfi lling a long-held desire<br />
to be an entrepreneur.<br />
@BuzzmoveHQ<br />
37
<strong>TechNation200</strong> <strong>Almanac</strong> <strong>2015</strong>/<strong>16</strong> | London<br />
Matt Drozdzynski<br />
Founder and chief executive<br />
Pilot<br />
Sarah<br />
Drinkwater<br />
Head<br />
Google Campus<br />
London<br />
“My job is really a lot of<br />
cheerleading. That means<br />
everything from partner<br />
management and programme<br />
management to physically<br />
running the space day in, day<br />
out and a lot of talking about<br />
what we’re doing. What’s<br />
really had a massive impact<br />
over the past couple of years<br />
with the whole idea of Tech<br />
City is visibility on the scene,<br />
visibility of what these earlystage<br />
entrepreneurs are doing.<br />
When you come to a place<br />
like this, you don’t come for<br />
the building, you come for the<br />
people – for the minds and for<br />
the hearts. Somebody recently<br />
said to me, ‘Campus is like<br />
the gateway to becoming an<br />
entrepreneur.’ I was fl attered<br />
and proud to hear that.”<br />
Campus London, a seven-storey<br />
building in the east of the city<br />
that opened in 2012, helps<br />
entrepreneurs grow great ideas.<br />
Drinkwater, with a background<br />
in community building, took over<br />
from founding head Eze Vidra.<br />
Campus works with partners<br />
like Seedcamp and TechHub<br />
to offer events, education and<br />
mentoring to young businesses.<br />
@sarahdrinkwater<br />
“Pilot is a design and development studio<br />
that I founded in 2009, and we’ve been<br />
helping companies build great products,<br />
predominantly online, since then. The idea<br />
started back in 2005 when I was doing<br />
freelance work for various companies, mostly<br />
programming gigs. I started the company after<br />
my first year of reading computer science at<br />
Cambridge to consolidate the freelance work I<br />
was doing. It didn’t feel like starting a business<br />
– there wasn’t a moment of brainstorming in<br />
trying to come up with something to do. It<br />
was literally, ‘I guess I’m doing these<br />
things so I might as well call<br />
it a business and form a<br />
company.’”<br />
Design studio Pilot allows<br />
companies to hire developers<br />
and designers by the day,<br />
week or month, drawing<br />
on its talent pool of vetted<br />
engineers and designers<br />
located around the globe.<br />
Pilot can be used to<br />
develop a minimum<br />
viable product or<br />
supplement an existing<br />
team. @usepilot<br />
Julia Elliott<br />
Brown<br />
Chief executive and<br />
co-founder<br />
Upper Street<br />
“I started Upper Street with my<br />
sister Katie. The idea for the<br />
business came about when she<br />
was looking for some shoes for her<br />
wedding and couldn’t fi nd any that<br />
she liked. So she designed her own.<br />
I always went shopping for shoes<br />
that existed in my head. Both of us<br />
wanted to design our own shoes<br />
online without paying a fortune.<br />
That was the premise for the business. Most of our customers are women in their 30s and 40s who<br />
know their own sense of style. We use technology to be able to market and sell our shoes, but more<br />
importantly, the 3D shoe designer is what really allows our customers to visualise the creation they<br />
have in mind.”<br />
Upper Street is a made-to-order luxury shoe label that allows customers to design their own shoes. The fi rm<br />
has experienced double-digit revenue growth every year since its launch and now has ambitious plans to scale<br />
the business to become the UK’s most loved footwear brand. @UpperStreetShoe<br />
38
See the full profile interviews at www.techcityinsider.net<br />
Alain Falys<br />
Co-founder and chief executive<br />
Yoyo Wallet<br />
Anthony<br />
Fletcher<br />
Chief executive<br />
Graze<br />
“Yoyo is a mobile platform that seamlessly<br />
combines payment, loyalty and discovery.<br />
It allows you to pay with your phone,<br />
but more importantly, to receive rewards<br />
targeted at your preferences. For the retailer,<br />
Yoyo is integrated into their point-of-sale<br />
terminal and is able to accept a sale via just<br />
a scanner – the scanner you use to scan<br />
a can of C oke is the same one you use to<br />
scan the Yoyo app. The space in which we’re<br />
operating is noisy but relatively open. There<br />
have been attempts, by very large companies<br />
like Google, Visa and Squared in the US,<br />
to try to make payment relevant for mobile<br />
alone. We realised this doesn’t work and<br />
have taken a different tack by trying to make<br />
mobile relevant for retail.”<br />
Mobile-wallet start-up Yoyo Wallet promises<br />
‘more than just payment’, by allowing users to use<br />
smartphones to make payments easier and faster,<br />
but also more rewarding. Following success at Pitch<br />
at the Palace, in April <strong>2015</strong> Yoyo closed a £6.5m<br />
series A investment round. @yoyowallet<br />
“One of the advantages<br />
Graze has over the traditional<br />
shopping experience is the<br />
idea of curation or surprise.<br />
We’ve had to get very good at<br />
using our data to decide what<br />
products to send the customer.<br />
We send a selection of four or<br />
fi ve snacks depending on their<br />
taste profi le. Some will appeal<br />
only to people with a really bold<br />
palate – our algorithm knows not<br />
to send somebody anything with<br />
wasabi in it unless we’ve received<br />
several clues that they might<br />
be open to spicy food. Every<br />
business is going to become a<br />
technology business to some<br />
extent. It’s about how you deploy that technology, how you embrace it within your organisation and<br />
how you talk to your customers.”<br />
Food subscription service Graze offers healthy treats and delivers them to the doormats of its customers.<br />
Following a £1m funding round, the London-based company expanded into the US and now sells snacks on<br />
the UK high street. @grazedotcom<br />
Ian Fordham<br />
Chief executive<br />
Edtech UK<br />
“We felt there wasn’t a<br />
strategic body for edtech,<br />
so we set it up ourselves.<br />
We are focusing our energy on<br />
a couple of core things first. At<br />
the start, Edtech UK is about<br />
defining the size and the scale<br />
of the sector. We want to give<br />
the companies that we have the<br />
opportunity to export and go<br />
around the world. We are trying<br />
to put the spotlight on edtech<br />
in the same way that fintech is<br />
getting a lot of attention at the<br />
moment. We are trying to put<br />
edtech alongside that sector.<br />
We have a number of members<br />
who are founding members<br />
and, going forward, we will have<br />
members who will be scaleup<br />
and growth organisations – but<br />
we don’t exclude anybody.”<br />
Edtech UK was launched in<br />
October <strong>2015</strong> to help accelerate<br />
the growth of the UK’s edtech<br />
sector both in Britain and globally.<br />
It was founded by Fordham with<br />
Ty Goddard, his partner at the<br />
cross-party, cross-sector think<br />
tank The Education Foundation,<br />
and is supported by the mayor<br />
of London and others.<br />
@EdtechukHQ<br />
39
<strong>TechNation200</strong> <strong>Almanac</strong> <strong>2015</strong>/<strong>16</strong> | London<br />
Rosemary Forsyth<br />
Founder<br />
Forsyth Group<br />
“We are a boutique and we’ve always kept our<br />
entrepreneurial edge by working very closely with<br />
entrepreneurs, founders and investors and being aligned<br />
to their goals. It’s<br />
not just about<br />
skillset matching;<br />
so much is about<br />
understanding<br />
the cultural team<br />
dynamics, and we<br />
do that really well.<br />
We agree on the<br />
skillset required<br />
and how far and<br />
wide we need to<br />
look to find it. I’m as<br />
passionate now as I<br />
was at the start and<br />
I have been all the<br />
way through. It’s just<br />
electrifying seeing<br />
all these technology<br />
and paradigm shifts<br />
that have happened.”<br />
Forsyth set up<br />
Forsyth Group,<br />
which helps IT and<br />
emerging technology startups to fi nd and recruit senior executive<br />
and management teams, in 1981. She is also a founding member<br />
and investment partner in venture capital fi rm AngelLab, as well as a<br />
Seedcamp mentor. @forsythgroup<br />
Matt Fox<br />
Co-founder and chief executive<br />
Snaptrip<br />
“Snaptrip focuses on last-minute discounted inventory. I knew<br />
from running my previous business that owners and managers<br />
of holiday rental properties were happy to offer compelling<br />
discounts on a lastminute<br />
bas is as opposed<br />
to leaving a property<br />
empty. It works and it’s<br />
great but by April <strong>2015</strong><br />
it encompassed 26,000<br />
properties across 20<br />
different brands, such as<br />
Cottages4you, and trying<br />
to keep all the information<br />
accurate requires<br />
constant assessment.<br />
Our competitors are<br />
the cottage brands<br />
themselves but their<br />
bread and butter is<br />
peak bookings at peak<br />
prices, made two to three<br />
months in advance. Our<br />
bread and butter is two<br />
weeks in advance – 70%<br />
to 80% of our bookings<br />
are made within 10 days<br />
of the stay.”<br />
Snaptrip is a platform that offers last-minute discounted holiday breaks<br />
in self-catered cottage accommodation. It promises guaranteed savings<br />
with compelling discounts for guest users while members enjoy<br />
exclusive rates. @snaptripuk<br />
Lorenzo Franzi<br />
Co-founder and managing<br />
director<br />
Zipjet<br />
“Zipjet picks up and delivers dry cleaning and<br />
laundry in London and Berlin. No one else<br />
is as advanced as we are. We’re committed<br />
to a 24-hour turnaround and 30-minute pick-up<br />
and drop-off slots, which none of our competitors<br />
provide. So we believe we’re being extremely<br />
convenient for our customers. People don’t want<br />
to go to stores any more, they want to be able<br />
to use technology to have services come to their<br />
homes. There is a real shift where the mobile<br />
device is becoming the gateway to starting a<br />
transaction. I saw what was happening in the<br />
grocery and taxi industry and thought the laundry industry could benefi t from changing the way people consume the service.”<br />
Rocket Internet-backed Zipjet offers Londoners a convenient app-based laundry and dry-cleaning service. Customers can choose their<br />
30-minute pick-up and drop-off timeslots using Zipjet’s iOS or Android app or on the web. The service is available throughout central and west<br />
London. @zipjetuk<br />
40
See the full profile interviews at www.techcityinsider.net<br />
Emi Gal<br />
Founder<br />
Brainient<br />
“Brainient is a technology<br />
startup that works with big<br />
broadcasters like ITV and<br />
Channel 4 and helps them<br />
better monetise their video<br />
content on their digital platforms.<br />
Whenever you watch ITV and<br />
you see interactive ads, those<br />
are powered by Brainient – and<br />
that’s the same with Channel<br />
4, Channel 5, Fox – 90% of the<br />
broadcasters in the UK and 50%<br />
of the broadcasters in Europe.<br />
We’re making video ads more<br />
engaging for viewers. So, rather<br />
than just having a viewer watch<br />
an ad for 30 seconds, we enable<br />
the client to add interactivity. If<br />
it is an ad for a car, for instance,<br />
the viewer can book a test drive<br />
while they are watching the ad.”<br />
Brainient is one the UK’s brightest and<br />
fastest-growing adtech startups, with<br />
an impressive roster including virtually<br />
all of the UK’s major TV channels. It<br />
creates interactive videos that work<br />
across devices. @brainient<br />
Ande Gregson<br />
Co-founder<br />
Fab Lab<br />
“With Fab Lab you<br />
can create value for<br />
yourself. It’s not just<br />
about the triangle with the<br />
means of production at<br />
the top and normal people<br />
at the bottom. This has<br />
been inverted completely.<br />
Anybody can use a Fab<br />
Lab. We can train you in<br />
the basic mechanics of the<br />
machines, the software,<br />
the tools, the philosophies<br />
and the designs, and you<br />
can create something for<br />
yourself. We opened in 2014 and we’ve seen a steady footfall through the door of all age ranges,<br />
from six to 86. All of them are looking to fi nd out what 3D printing can do for them.”<br />
Social enterprise Fab Lab London sits in the heart of the City of London, supporting people and businesses<br />
wanting to manufacture products and do physical prototyping using digital tec hnologies like 3D printing<br />
alongside traditional methods. The space is fast building a reputation for can-do innovation. @fablab<br />
Julia Groves<br />
Chief executive<br />
Trillion Fund<br />
“We’re a growing<br />
population using increasing<br />
amounts of power and<br />
we need local, sustainable,<br />
cost-effective sources of<br />
electricity. For a lot of people,<br />
it’s ab out energy security and<br />
the price they have to pay, and<br />
the big electricity companies<br />
are charging whatever they<br />
want for electricity. Unless we<br />
introduce more competition<br />
into the energy market, we<br />
aren’t going to see the prices<br />
coming down. What Trillion is<br />
doing at this stage is focusing<br />
on loans, lending money to<br />
wind and solar projects that<br />
are already built. Somebody<br />
else has taken all the risk of<br />
constructing a project and<br />
we’re lending up to 70% of the<br />
value so that the company can<br />
go and do it again.”<br />
Crowdfunding platform<br />
Trillion Fund raises money<br />
for environmental and social<br />
projects. In its fi rst three years,<br />
it connected more than 5,000<br />
backers to profit-generating<br />
projects that support people and<br />
the planet, and also completed<br />
120 successful raises. Dame<br />
Vivienne Westwood is a major<br />
backer. @TrillionFund<br />
41
<strong>TechNation200</strong> <strong>Almanac</strong> <strong>2015</strong>/<strong>16</strong> | London<br />
Bridget Harris<br />
Chief executive<br />
YouCanBookMe<br />
Luke Hakes<br />
Investment director<br />
Octopus Investments<br />
“As a VC, I see the<br />
intersection of multiple<br />
sectors as where you<br />
get the best business ideas.<br />
We work with the best<br />
entrepreneurs because they<br />
can take an average idea and<br />
turn it into a fantastic business.<br />
It’s not like we’re investing in<br />
a business and we need to<br />
be out in four or fi ve years. If<br />
it takes eight or nine years to<br />
build a substantial enterprise<br />
then we have the appetite and<br />
the capacity to do that, which<br />
is pretty rare. In helping the<br />
small companies that we have<br />
invested in over the last seven<br />
years, we’ve actually built our<br />
own business. I have been part<br />
of a startup and I’ve helped<br />
another 60. That has been a<br />
fantastic opportunity and<br />
really fun.”<br />
Octopus Investments manages<br />
nearly £5bn for more than<br />
50,000 customers and offers<br />
straightforward products that<br />
solve problems faced by real<br />
people. It works with some<br />
of the UK’s most successful<br />
entrepreneurs to finance<br />
companies capable of creating,<br />
transforming or dominating<br />
markets. @Octopus_UK<br />
“My husband Keith and I have<br />
always tried to solve problems<br />
that exist in the offline world.<br />
The problem with scheduling<br />
is that people can’t find a time<br />
to meet or they have too many<br />
back-and-forth emails to schedule<br />
their meetings. There are all these<br />
people who are running their own<br />
business with booking as a central<br />
condition for them to secure work.<br />
If they get a good booking system,<br />
they get more work. Our growth<br />
rate is over 100% every year and<br />
the volume is going up all the<br />
time. Without us really knowing<br />
or realising, we’ve actually built a<br />
product that gives us this return<br />
on viral growth, which we needed<br />
because we didn’t have any money<br />
or resources for marketing.”<br />
Scheduling software YouCanBookMe<br />
integrates with Google Calendar<br />
or iCalendar, displaying a person’s<br />
availability and allowing others to block<br />
out a time slot in that person’s diary.<br />
High-profi le clients include Netfl ix, TED<br />
and Uber. @YouCanBookMe<br />
Cassandra Harris<br />
Co-founder and managing director<br />
Venturespring<br />
“With Venturespring the proposition is very much<br />
focused on helping corporate organisations, specifi cally<br />
the venture divisions – corporate incubators and<br />
accelerators – to grow and scale products, systems<br />
and solutions. We assist them in varying degrees, right<br />
through from helping them to understand the opportunity<br />
to what kind of areas they should be looking to innovate<br />
within or incubate. We work with all kinds of organisations,<br />
regardless of their stage of innovation. We look after a<br />
number of the startups within the Vodafone xone portfolio.<br />
Some of them are incredibly far advanced in terms of<br />
innovation and incubation, whereas other organisations<br />
are just starting out. We work with some from a build<br />
perspective, helping to build up prototypes and ‘pretotypes’.<br />
We like to call it co-creation.”<br />
Venture development studio Venturespring bridges the gap<br />
between the corporate and startup worlds, working with brands<br />
to develop products, systems and services. Its vision is to create<br />
valuable connections between brands, startups and young talent,<br />
to build game-changing products. @venturespringWW<br />
42
See the full profile interviews at www.techcityinsider.net<br />
Tom Hatton<br />
Chief executive<br />
RefME<br />
“I felt that technology should automate the referencing process. There were tools that could<br />
help in creating references but the quality of output was either poor or incorrect. I knew<br />
that, if I built a tool that was easy to use and produced high-quality output, I’d be winning.<br />
The goal is to build the best product while also growing as quickly as possible by hiring the<br />
best team. We can deliver the growth as long as we get the product right. Due to the way that<br />
RefME is set up and the information we collect, we believe that in two to three years we’ll be<br />
positioned to validate information that you see anywhere, and that’s something we’re really<br />
working towards.”<br />
RefME automatically generates a bibliographic reference from a book’s barcode or a URL. Its Android and iOS<br />
apps work by scanning that barcode and sending a request to an external database. In April <strong>2015</strong> it secured<br />
US$5m in seed investment from Gems Education. @GetRefMe<br />
Josefine Hedlund<br />
Director and chief operations officer<br />
GeekGirl Meetup UK<br />
“I met Heidi Harman, the founder of GeekGirl Sweden, at a<br />
meetup there. The company puts on a big annual conference<br />
with more than 200 people. We both moved to London and<br />
one day we were hanging out and decided to set up GeekGirl<br />
here. We started in 2011 with a conference at Google Campus.<br />
It was amazing; we got 100 people. I’m at the core of it as project<br />
manager. I am constantly keeping track of speakers, venues,<br />
sponsors and the website. We don’t do GeekGirl to get rich –<br />
we just want to have enough money to cover our expenses. Role<br />
models are so important bec ause if you don’t see people doing<br />
things you might like to do, it’s hard to imagine yourself doing it.”<br />
GeekGirl Meetup UK is a network of women and girls interested in all<br />
things related to tech, design and startups. Its mission is to highlight<br />
female role models in the industry and to create a network for the<br />
exchange of knowledge, mentoring and the sharing of ideas. @ggmUK<br />
Bruce Hellman<br />
Chief executive<br />
uMotif<br />
“We can bank online,<br />
shop online, book<br />
flights online. So it is<br />
unbelievable and astounding<br />
that in <strong>2015</strong> you can get<br />
discharged from hospital<br />
with no digital journey. That’s<br />
the gap we’re hoping to fill.<br />
The unique uMotif interface<br />
is bright and visual and<br />
allows you to score yourself<br />
subjectively on aspects<br />
of daily health. Every year<br />
in Europe 100,000 people<br />
die due to not taking their<br />
meds, and the financial<br />
costs are huge. Giving<br />
people reminders can help<br />
them with that. The thing<br />
that’s exciting for us is<br />
that you start from people<br />
solving real problems for<br />
real people. We’re making a<br />
difference to people’s lives.”<br />
uMotif’s software platform tackles<br />
increasingly unaffordable health<br />
systems by engaging patients in<br />
self-management of long-term<br />
conditions, such as diabetes and<br />
Parkinson’s, and post-operative<br />
recovery. uMotif strengthens<br />
the patient-clinician relationship<br />
through digital tech. @uMotif<br />
43
<strong>TechNation200</strong> <strong>Almanac</strong> <strong>2015</strong>/<strong>16</strong> | London<br />
James Hind<br />
Founder and chief executive<br />
Carwow<br />
“If you’re thinking about buying a new car, sign up for<br />
Carwow and dealers will send you their best offers.<br />
You will see who the dealer is, where it is and how well<br />
rated it is. Then you go forward and contact the dealer and<br />
buy the car directly from<br />
it. You have all these ‘geek<br />
speak’ car magazines that<br />
aren’t very accessible, but<br />
people use them to try to<br />
work out whether a car<br />
is good. We thought we’d<br />
read all that content and<br />
summarise it. People can<br />
make an informed decision<br />
on which car to buy through<br />
reading just one source. I<br />
always thought that to start<br />
a business you had to be 40<br />
and look like a businessman.<br />
I didn’t realise just how easy<br />
it is, how low-risk it is and<br />
how little capital you need, so I just jumped into it.”<br />
Reviews and deals site Carwow presents new-car buyers with offers<br />
from dealers that could save them thousands of pounds. The platform<br />
allows buyers to compare and buy directly from dealers. The idea was<br />
inspired by the Rotten Tomatoes fi lm review site. @carwowuk<br />
Michael-George Hemus<br />
Co-founder and managing director<br />
Plumen<br />
“My business partner Nic Roope had the initial idea for<br />
Plumen in 2007. He bought a low-energy light bulb and<br />
hated it. There were only two designs: one that looked<br />
like an ice cream whip and one that looked like a radiator.<br />
It seemed crazy to us that there’s this product that saves<br />
you energy and money, yet you need massive government<br />
legislation and subsidies to get people to use it. For us, that<br />
was a big failure in terms of a product solution. The reception<br />
of our first product, 001, was amazing. The 002 is an energyefficient<br />
alternative to beautiful filament bulbs that you see<br />
in bars and restaurants. The challenge is to make something<br />
equally as beautiful wi th a light that is equally as nice and at a<br />
price point that people can afford.”<br />
Plumen creates desirable and attractive low-energy light bulbs designed<br />
to be put on show. It invests in design, research and high-quality<br />
components to get the best out of new lighting technologies. Its latest<br />
product is starting to address the impact of lighting in smart homes.<br />
@PLUMEN<br />
Mads Holmen<br />
Co-founder<br />
Bibblio<br />
“Bibblio is a marketplace<br />
for educational content.<br />
We try to source the<br />
best educational learning<br />
resources both from<br />
established institutional<br />
players, which could be<br />
the BBC or the Open<br />
University, and from<br />
what we like to call the<br />
new players: teachers,<br />
professors on YouTube,<br />
bloggers, SoundCloud<br />
users, people on<br />
SlideShare. There are many fragmented islands of knowledge lying<br />
around on the internet and it’s our vision that no one has really<br />
made a conscious effort to fi lter and curate all the best of those<br />
and put them in one place.”<br />
Edtech startup Bibblio has created a marketplace for video content. It<br />
sources the best content from established providers and new players<br />
alike on YouTube, SoundCloud, the blogosphere and more, and puts<br />
them in one place. @Bibblio_org<br />
44
See the full profile interviews at www.techcityinsider.net<br />
“Launch 22 was<br />
established with the<br />
charitable purpose of<br />
promoting entrepreneurship<br />
and supporting<br />
entrepreneurs. We provide<br />
30% of our spaces for free to<br />
people from disadvantaged<br />
backgrounds. That is funded<br />
by 70% of our members<br />
paying to be here, but they<br />
pay significantly lower than<br />
market rate. Over the next 12<br />
months we want to open between three and five new centres,<br />
all outside of London. If you’re a member in Liverpool, you’ll<br />
also be a member in Belfast, London and everywhere else.<br />
It’ll mean you’ve always got somewhere to work, wherever<br />
you are in the country. That should reduce barriers to doing<br />
business at a regional or national level.”<br />
Launch 22 is a co-working space that supports entrepreneurs rather<br />
than the businesses they create. Teams of volunteers run a branch in<br />
London and in Liverpool with the support of two full-time staff members.<br />
The ‘stage agnostic’ and ‘sector agnostic’ centres hold between 15 and<br />
20 events each month, including Entrepreneurs Anonymous.<br />
@Launch22uk<br />
Alex Hoye<br />
Co-founder<br />
Runway East<br />
Eddie Holmes<br />
Founder and chief<br />
executive<br />
Launch 22<br />
“The first time I came to<br />
Shoreditch was in 1999. I<br />
needed cheap space that I<br />
could rent on a very short-term<br />
basis because I had no idea what<br />
my runway was going to look<br />
like. The nice thing is that, during<br />
those 15 years, I have managed<br />
to build a lot of great relationships<br />
with the dynamic people you find<br />
in this neighbourhood. I wanted to<br />
surround myself and my company<br />
with those kinds of people, so we found a lot of like minds<br />
who wanted to work together. I love the fact that on a Sunday<br />
there’s quite a few people here cranking away, and it feels<br />
a lot better when you know you’re in the same revolution<br />
together, making things happen.”<br />
Runway East is a vibrant community for ambitious tech businesses.<br />
It provides a platform for exceptional entrepreneurs to accelerate and<br />
collaborate. It helps its members share knowledge and support each<br />
other to grow businesses that are redefi ning how great products are<br />
designed, made and sold worldwide. @RunwayEastLDN<br />
ShaoLan Hsueh<br />
Founder<br />
Chineasy<br />
“The Chineasy book is just a little taste of what Chineasy is<br />
about. Most of our followers follow us through the website,<br />
through our Facebook daily teachings, and sometimes we<br />
even teach on Twitter. Instead of creating our own technology,<br />
we use other people’s platforms and we want to make sure<br />
that the way to communicate with our followers is low cost and<br />
effective in terms of their learning outcomes. It’s a labour of love<br />
and an art project. I would love for all these illustrations to last a<br />
long time. It’s my legacy; a piece of artwork I can leave behind<br />
and be proud of.”<br />
Chineasy’s visual system allows people to understand and read<br />
Chinese quickly and easily by transforming simple Chinese characters<br />
into memorable illustrations. Hsueh spent years looking for a fun and<br />
easy way to teach her own children and when she couldn’t find one,<br />
she developed her own system. @Hello_Chineasy<br />
45
<strong>TechNation200</strong> <strong>Almanac</strong> <strong>2015</strong>/<strong>16</strong> | London<br />
Pete Jaco<br />
Founder and chief executive<br />
Puckily<br />
Anne-Marie<br />
Huby<br />
Co-founder and<br />
managing director<br />
JustGiving<br />
“We enable anyone who<br />
cares passionately about<br />
a cause to visit the site,<br />
create an appeal and raise<br />
tons of money for a charity or<br />
a project. Fifteen years ago it<br />
was clear that the web would<br />
change the way people give.<br />
At the time, I was running the<br />
UK arm of Médecins Sans<br />
Frontières. I was astonished<br />
that I couldn’t fi nd a platform<br />
that would enable us to raise<br />
money online. It was really<br />
hard, expensive and tough.<br />
When [co-founder] Zarine<br />
Kharas and I met, we thought<br />
there was a real need in the<br />
market to enable charities to<br />
be effective at receiving funds.<br />
So we went out to build it.”<br />
JustGiving is a fundraising<br />
platform for good causes. It is<br />
the world’s leading social giving<br />
platform, with a mission to<br />
connect the world’s causes with<br />
people who care about them.<br />
Since it was founded in 2001 it<br />
has helped delivered more than<br />
US$3bn to good causes.<br />
@JustGiving<br />
“Within the next 10 years, almost everything in your<br />
house – from your toaster to your fish tank – will<br />
have internet connectivity. Right now you need<br />
different apps to run different systems. With Puckily, you<br />
have one device that could control everything in your<br />
home. We’ve created something that can add internetof-things<br />
intelligence to any environment where there<br />
isn’t an internet-of-things infrastructure. We don’t think<br />
of ourselves as a software or hardware company; we are<br />
an integration company, so our challenge is making the<br />
hardware work with the software and open standards.<br />
There was a gap in the internet-of-things market for a<br />
gateway device that gathered intelligence from buildings<br />
and allowed people to use that data.”<br />
Puckily is an intelligent control centre for connected-home<br />
devices. It works with and can control dozens of different internetof-things<br />
technologies, offering users a central overview of their<br />
home’s smart devices and the data they generate. It allows users<br />
to adjust settings and set up alerts. @puckily<br />
Clare Johnston<br />
Founder and chief<br />
executive<br />
The Up Group<br />
“Our network provides a conduit<br />
between startups, growth<br />
companies and corporates in<br />
the digital sector. We host events<br />
that bring these very senior people<br />
together. Basically, we put lots of<br />
people in one room and help them<br />
to connect. I love digital, I love the<br />
growth space and I love people<br />
and trying to add value. I wanted<br />
to build an outstanding global<br />
network of talent that we could use<br />
to inject great people into these<br />
businesses. I’m passionate about<br />
the entrepreneurial scene and about<br />
helping businesses and people to<br />
grow.”<br />
Networking and executive search<br />
business The Up Group focuses on the<br />
digital, mobile and technology sectors.<br />
Its growing roster of events brings<br />
together tech entrepreneurs, investors<br />
and others to collaborate and innovate.<br />
Its <strong>2015</strong> executive salary survey found<br />
women were earning 90% of male<br />
salaries. @TheUpGroup<br />
46
See the full profile interviews at www.techcityinsider.net<br />
Ivailo Jordanov<br />
Co-founder and director<br />
23snaps<br />
Hussein Kanji<br />
Founder and analyst<br />
Hoxton Ventures<br />
“We don’t specialise. We look for<br />
companies that we think can turn out to<br />
be billion-dollar companies. Rob Kniaz<br />
and I are software-driven because we’re both<br />
software guys. We have a cloud security<br />
company, an enterprise security company,<br />
a travel analytics company and we’re about<br />
to do a fi ntech investment. For us, it’s a<br />
question of where the new market is and if<br />
the company is driven by software at the end<br />
of the day. We’re geographically agnostic.<br />
It’s nice to see London succeed, but we<br />
care as much about Stockholm or Berlin.<br />
There’s nothing that prevents us from doing<br />
something in Scotland or Manchester. Pick a<br />
city; it doesn’t make that much of a difference<br />
to us.”<br />
Hoxton Ventures is a US$40m early stage<br />
European venture capital fi rm. Its sweet spot is<br />
internet, mobile and software startup investing. By<br />
summer <strong>2015</strong> it had a portfolio of 17 companies<br />
– including Yieldify and DarkTrace – and had<br />
backed 37 founders. @HoxtonVentures<br />
“For some people, there is no such<br />
thing as too many baby pictures,<br />
even though others would say you<br />
are over-sharing. Around every child,<br />
there are probably five to 10 people<br />
who just can’t get enough updates.<br />
Today we have users that have children<br />
who have their own phones, so it’s<br />
migrating from a digital baby book to<br />
showing how a family grows. I love<br />
what I’m doing. Every day I get these<br />
messages from families using the<br />
system, saying how thankful they are<br />
to us for offering this ability to be<br />
connected to their children. That’s an<br />
incredibly strong drive to ensure that<br />
you just want to do better all the time.”<br />
Private photo-sh aring app 23Snaps is<br />
designed with new parents in mind, so they<br />
can securely share pictures of their children<br />
with friends and family. The simple-to-use<br />
online family album allows people to share<br />
photos, videos, updates and multimedia<br />
packages combining words and images.<br />
@23Snaps<br />
Axel Katalan<br />
Co-founder and chief<br />
marketing officer<br />
Pointr Labs<br />
“Pointr is a software<br />
company that provides<br />
indoor positioning and<br />
navigation technology<br />
for large venues. Think<br />
about it like Google Maps<br />
for department stores,<br />
exhibition spaces and<br />
networking events. It’s an<br />
SDK [software development<br />
kit] that we provide to<br />
either the agency that is<br />
working with the venue or<br />
the venue itself. There are<br />
two elements to the tech:<br />
the software is what we<br />
create and the hardware is<br />
from third parties. These<br />
Bluetooth beacon devices<br />
have a sticky back. We stick<br />
them to the ceiling and they<br />
push out Bluetooth signals.<br />
We built software that picks<br />
up these signals and, along<br />
with machine learning and<br />
other smart programs, we<br />
can understand the position<br />
to one-metre accuracy.”<br />
Pointr Labs has created indoor<br />
navigation software that helps<br />
people to fi nd products or<br />
locations within a closed space.<br />
The startup’s tech team created<br />
an SDK that plugs into a venue’s<br />
software and opens when a<br />
user enters the client’s app. The<br />
technology th en shows them<br />
a map of their location and<br />
destination across multiple floors.<br />
@PointrLabs<br />
47
<strong>TechNation200</strong> <strong>Almanac</strong> <strong>2015</strong>/<strong>16</strong> | London<br />
Tom Kihl<br />
Director<br />
London Belongs to Me<br />
(The Kentishtowner)<br />
Nick Katz<br />
Co-founder and chief<br />
executive<br />
Splittable<br />
“Property is in my blood.<br />
I’m basically completely<br />
obsessed with real estate.<br />
Once you’re actually in a<br />
property, there aren’t very<br />
many solutions for you as an<br />
individual to connect to your<br />
home digitally and manage it<br />
on a daily or a weekly basis.<br />
You download the app,<br />
sign up to it and you can<br />
immediately create placeholder<br />
housemates for the people that<br />
you live with and start splitting<br />
the costs. You enter a cost into<br />
the app manually and decide<br />
what everyone’s exposure is<br />
to that cost. There’s a space<br />
to build a company that is<br />
global in the next three years<br />
that helps housemates in every<br />
city in the world manage their<br />
expenditure and live better<br />
together.”<br />
Splittable is an app, available on<br />
Android, iOS and the web, that<br />
makes shared living simpler. It<br />
makes it easy to track and manage<br />
shared costs and recurring<br />
utility bills and household living<br />
expenses. In October it secured<br />
US$1.2m in investment, includi ng<br />
from Seedcamp and the London<br />
Co-Investment Fund.<br />
@SplittableApp<br />
“Because the genesis of the project<br />
was a blog, we’ve never wanted to<br />
be the local papers. We’re not doing<br />
local news and quite a lot of people find<br />
that quite hard to understand. It makes<br />
perfect sense for us because we’re not<br />
news journalists, we’re arts journalists<br />
and that’s how it came about. The way<br />
we would describe our relationship with<br />
traditional local or hyperlocal news is that<br />
we are the colour supplement and they’re<br />
the front page. We secured funding from<br />
NESTA in 2012 to explore digital hyperlocal<br />
models and, as part of that we did a<br />
lot of work with geolocation. The model<br />
in Kentish Town is working so we have<br />
expanded.”<br />
Award-winning Kentishtowner is a daily cultural<br />
guide for north London, with 55,000 uniques<br />
monthly online, subsidised by advertising for 20,000 in its print edition. Established in 2010, it covers food<br />
and drink, lifestyle, the arts, travel and people. The Kentishtowner hyper-local model has rolled out to three<br />
sister publications: Below the River, Gasholder and Leytonstoner. @kentishtowner<br />
Alex Klein<br />
Co-founder and chief<br />
product officer<br />
Kano<br />
“If you want to get your kids ready for<br />
the future, Kano is a simple and fun way<br />
to do it. I showed the tiny Raspberry Pi<br />
computer to my six-year-old cousin Mica and<br />
he said, ‘I want to make my own computer<br />
that is as simple and fun as Lego.’ Yonatan<br />
[Raz-Fridman] primarily focused on the<br />
manufacturing and fulfi lment side and I<br />
started writing a step-by-step book. In 2013<br />
we hand-folded 200 white boxes and put<br />
inside cables, the Pi and some storybooks<br />
for the Kickstarter campaign. Then we did a<br />
workshop at a school. By the end of the hour<br />
the students had made the computer. One<br />
child told me, ‘We’re like superchildren.’”<br />
Kano is a computer and coding kit for all ages,<br />
built on Raspberry Pi. Kids and adults can use<br />
the Kano kit to build a computer with plug-andplay<br />
pieces, customise it, make music with code,<br />
create games like Pong and Snake and build<br />
radios, servers and website. It was founded by<br />
Klein, Raz-Fridman and Saul Klein. @teamkano<br />
48
See the full profile interviews at www.techcityinsider.net<br />
Nidhima Kohli<br />
Founder and chief<br />
executive<br />
My Beauty Matches<br />
“We’re very much focused<br />
on person alisation and<br />
that’s been identified as<br />
one of the top retail trends for<br />
<strong>2015</strong> up to 2018. My Beauty<br />
Matches was born from my<br />
own pain. I was trying to find<br />
the right beauty products for<br />
me. In the media it was all<br />
about the latest products.<br />
With My Beauty Matches<br />
people fill in a profile – we<br />
ask you lots of questions<br />
about skincare, haircare and<br />
lifestyle choices – and we<br />
help match you to the right<br />
beauty products just for you.<br />
We also provide an extra<br />
service where we compare<br />
the prices of the products.”<br />
My Beauty Matches is a platform<br />
that enables users to discover the<br />
right beauty products for them.<br />
It also collects data that enables<br />
brands to make better decisions<br />
in terms of marketing. Kohli, an<br />
accredited beautician and makeup artist – and former investment banking strategist - launched the site in<br />
2014. @MyBeautyMatches<br />
Aleks Krotoski<br />
Broadcaster and academic<br />
“Being an academic is about<br />
picking apart broad, sweeping<br />
generalisations, and being a<br />
journalist means making those<br />
generalisations. So shifting the voices<br />
especially when I was writing up my<br />
thesis was quite diffi cult. But it was<br />
also quite refreshing because it’s too<br />
easy to go down the rabbit hole of<br />
one or the other. It’s nice to have the<br />
critical eye in the journalism, it’s very<br />
valuable but it’s also nice to be able<br />
to communicate the academic work.<br />
More than anything I hope that people<br />
stop viewing technology as magic because if they do then they think it is responsible for who we are<br />
and how we are. And that’s BS, frankly.”<br />
Tech academic and journalist Krotoski wrote her thesis on the relationship between social networks and social<br />
infl uence in the diffusion of information. Today she presents The Digital Human on BBC Radio 4 and until<br />
earlier this year was the host of The Guardian’s Tech Weekly podcast. @aleksk<br />
Simon Lee<br />
Founder and chief<br />
executive<br />
Locassa<br />
“One of the nice things<br />
about this business is<br />
every single product we<br />
do is unique to the client<br />
and we love every single<br />
one of them. We work with<br />
the big brands but we also<br />
work with startups and<br />
individuals. We get between<br />
five and 10 new product<br />
enquiries a day, which is<br />
exceptional particularly<br />
for a small team. We did<br />
some really nice work with<br />
the Ministry of Defence for<br />
the sending of letters to<br />
forces overseas, so from a<br />
feel-good factor that was<br />
a really nice one. We’re not<br />
just about producing apps,<br />
we’re about producing<br />
amazing beautiful apps and<br />
that takes a certain type of<br />
person.”<br />
Specialist mobile app design<br />
and development agency<br />
Locassa provides backend<br />
services to support the mobile<br />
apps it creates, as well as client<br />
workshops on marketing and<br />
monetisation. Developer Lee set<br />
up the service in 2009.<br />
@locassa<br />
49
<strong>TechNation200</strong> <strong>Almanac</strong> <strong>2015</strong>/<strong>16</strong> | London<br />
Guy Levin<br />
Executive director<br />
Coadec<br />
Marjorie<br />
Leonidas<br />
Managing director<br />
Taggstar<br />
“Taggstar is a SaaS model<br />
for digital marketing and<br />
persuasive messaging<br />
technology. Put simply,<br />
social proof marketing<br />
enables customers to see<br />
transparently how many<br />
people are looking at a<br />
particular item. We provide<br />
people with a sense of<br />
excitement when they are<br />
online, that they aren’t<br />
shopping by themselves.<br />
I feel I have hit a new<br />
threshold in terms of where<br />
I want to be in technology<br />
and what I want to be<br />
doing, and that is leading<br />
companies in innovative<br />
spaces, particularly in cloudhosted<br />
SaaS models. It’s<br />
a huge growth area at the<br />
moment as more people are<br />
outsourcing what they do.”<br />
Taggstar aims to convert online<br />
browsers into buyers. Messages<br />
powered by its ‘social proof<br />
engine’ tell the customers of<br />
online retailers what other<br />
shoppers have bought, increasing<br />
engagement and conversion<br />
rates. @taggstartalk<br />
“We set out our ideas in the Coadec<br />
Startup Manifesto and it was great<br />
that Chuka Umunna, the [then]<br />
Labour shadow business secretary, as<br />
well as a minister on the Conservative<br />
side welcomed it. So there is interest on<br />
all sides and we would like to see that<br />
continued. Digital technology is apolitical<br />
and even those coming from different<br />
political traditions should be able to agree<br />
on that. One of the best things David<br />
Cameron and George Osborne have<br />
done has been to listen to and engage<br />
with the startup community. They created<br />
a structure and a framework through<br />
which government could engage with the<br />
digital sector.”<br />
Coadec, the coalition for a digital economy,<br />
aims to be the policy voice for technology<br />
startups. The non-partisan non-profi t works<br />
with digital entrepreneurs and policymakers<br />
to create better policy for the digital economy<br />
and helps startups connect better with<br />
government. @coadec<br />
Rhydian Lewis<br />
Chief executive<br />
RateSetter<br />
“We came to the market with a<br />
fundamentally different alternative<br />
that involved something called the<br />
RateSetter provision fund, which is<br />
designed to make peer-to-peer lending<br />
simple and safe. That’s allowed us to<br />
be very popular with everyday savers.<br />
On average they are aged 55, affl uent<br />
without being wealthy, in control of their<br />
own fi nances, have some savings and<br />
care a lot about the return they get on<br />
them. They are willing to try new things.<br />
The borrowers are on average in their late<br />
30s with an income of £35,000 and they<br />
borrow for large purchases like cars and<br />
home improvements. We concentrate<br />
on our customers and our customer<br />
proposition and doing the best job we can<br />
for them. If what we do has value then people will keep signing up to RateSetter.”<br />
The UK’s largest peer-to-peer lending platform, by summer <strong>2015</strong> Ratesetter was matching £40m in loans<br />
every month. It also had 27,000 active investors, 147,000 active personal and commercial borrowers and over<br />
a million registered users. RateSetter has partnered with mobile network giffgaff, allowing its customers to<br />
purchase SIM-free phones with a loan . @RateSetter<br />
50
See the full profile interviews at www.techcityinsider.net<br />
Rose Lewis<br />
Co-founder<br />
Collider<br />
“At Collider, we support startups in their first year of<br />
growth by giving them cash and advice. The main thing is<br />
connections to brands and agencies, because our focus<br />
is on marketing and<br />
advertising tech. My<br />
two co-founders and<br />
I had backgrounds in<br />
marketing, advertising<br />
and startups. We<br />
felt that London<br />
was a great place to<br />
launch a very focused<br />
accelerator, given our<br />
skills, experience and<br />
credibility in marketing<br />
and advertising globally.<br />
We invest some cash<br />
in startups and that<br />
cash is very smart. All<br />
of our investors come<br />
from a marketing and<br />
advertising background.<br />
That way they can offer<br />
expert advice but also<br />
amazing connections.”<br />
Collider is an accelerator<br />
for startups in adtech and<br />
madtech. It invests capital in<br />
the startups, coaches them through a highly structured programme and<br />
connects them to potential corporate customers and investors. Its aim is<br />
to help the companies become sustainable and fast-growing businesses.<br />
@ColliderGB<br />
Julia Macmillan<br />
Founder<br />
Raddiso<br />
“I have always loved the idea of very creative food and the<br />
nexus between art and food. It’s evolved from just doing<br />
pop-ups. We started getting food and drink companies<br />
asking us to do digital,<br />
text or video content for<br />
them. Other companies<br />
were asking us to arrange<br />
pop-ups for them. Now<br />
we’re getting asked to<br />
come up with creative<br />
ideas for launches. Our<br />
site has a database and<br />
the whole point is that it<br />
should stimulate ideas<br />
between people so they<br />
can contact each other<br />
if they want to. They can<br />
comment on events and<br />
get discussions going<br />
– so for that, tech is<br />
actually quite important.<br />
People come up with<br />
suggestions, so it’s a lot<br />
more interactive than it<br />
might seem.”<br />
Raddiso is a free platform<br />
to enable people to create<br />
exciting food- and drink-related<br />
events. It facilitates connections between independent food producers,<br />
up-and-coming chefs, designers, artists and people with spaces where<br />
events could be hosted. Macmillan previously ran cougar and toyboy<br />
dating site Toyboy Warehouse. @RadicalDining<br />
Roberta Lucca<br />
Chief executive and co-founder<br />
WonderLuk<br />
“There are so many talented designers creating beautiful<br />
products and they don’t have any place to sell those products<br />
to people. WonderLuk is a platform where they can go and<br />
sell direct to consumers. The way we allow customisation to work<br />
is by using the magic of 3D printing. Nowadays you can 3D print<br />
something plastic, titanium, silver or gold and we connect to a<br />
lot of amazing suppliers across the globe, who are able to make<br />
those products happen. Nothing is produced without someone<br />
wanting it. You can go to WonderLuk.com and choose a piece<br />
that you love, which can be a ring, a pair of earrings or a necklace<br />
and you can customise it the way that you want.”<br />
3D printing marketplace WonderLuk offers buyers and designers of<br />
unique, 3D-printed fashion accessories and jewelry a platform to buy<br />
and sell, with the motto ‘Don’t blend in. Ever.’ Customers can buy<br />
bracelets, earrings, necklaces and rings, iPhone cases and more.<br />
@WonderLuk<br />
51
<strong>TechNation200</strong> <strong>Almanac</strong> <strong>2015</strong>/<strong>16</strong> | London<br />
Jan Matern<br />
Co-founder and chief<br />
executive<br />
Emerge Venture Lab<br />
“There weren’t any<br />
specialised accelerators or<br />
incubators for education<br />
technology companies,<br />
which we thought was an<br />
obvious gap. There was no<br />
single space for them to<br />
channel their expertise and<br />
knowledge towards new<br />
founders and they are really<br />
excited to be able to do that now. We knew that if we built a<br />
great network of experts, investors, publishers and partners<br />
around the space that we could then attract some of the best<br />
entrepreneurs around the world. We bring in mentors, people<br />
from schools and universities and the education sector to<br />
give them advice. We have 250 schools happy to beta test<br />
new products. The idea was to create a space in which we<br />
bring together innovators in the education space and help<br />
them riff off each other.”<br />
The fl agship programme of Emerge Venture Lab is the Shoreditchbased<br />
Emerge Education, a three-month accelerator programme for<br />
startups looking to improve educational outcomes worldwide.<br />
@emergelab<br />
Ivan Mazour<br />
Chief executive and co-founder<br />
Ometria<br />
Tina Mashaalahi<br />
Co-founder and chief operating officer<br />
KweekWeek<br />
“I came across a problem. How could I find events<br />
and receive a ticket there and then through my phone<br />
and just show up at the door? [A service that had]<br />
consumers and organisers in one place, on one platform,<br />
didn’t exist. KweekWeek is a marketplace for events, bringing<br />
organisers and consumers together in a one-stop shop.<br />
We’re developing and refining an algorithm that picks up on<br />
behavioural patterns that will slowly adapt to consumers<br />
over a period of time and suggest the most relevant things<br />
to them. The organisers are able to track their regular<br />
customers. And it makes their lives a lot easier as they don’t<br />
have to spend so much time marketing.”<br />
Events discovery and ticketing management platform KweekWeek lets<br />
attendees discover and book events and receive suggestions and their<br />
tickets directly in the app. It also benefi ts hosts, allowing them to build a<br />
following, target audiences and track sales in real time. @kweekweek<br />
“We are a software platform that provides customer and<br />
marketing automation for retailers. We help them understand<br />
their customer but also act on the understanding to improve<br />
their engagement and improve<br />
revenues. We want to make sure that<br />
retailers are sending messages to the<br />
consumers that are personalised and<br />
relevant. That increases engagement<br />
levels to a very high extent, reducing<br />
unsubscribe levels. There is a big<br />
transformational shift here, moving<br />
away from the concept of marketing<br />
campaigns. In the future there are<br />
going to be 10 to 15 channels we<br />
haven’t come across yet. There<br />
will be no way to do it without<br />
having a machine take charge and<br />
personalising all of them.”<br />
Ometria combines predictive software<br />
and e-commerce marketing to help retailers acquire and retain<br />
customers through the clever use of data. Clients include high-end<br />
makeup brand Charlotte Tilbury and 232-year-old knitwear brand John<br />
Smedley. @OmetriaData<br />
52
See the full profile interviews at www.techcityinsider.net<br />
Ian Merricks<br />
Founder and investor<br />
Accelerator Academy<br />
“I had struggled to find, in any one<br />
programme, the kind of support I<br />
would have found useful when I<br />
was building my businesses. I ended<br />
up creating a syllabus. I had input for<br />
the syllabus from London Business<br />
School, Cass Business School,<br />
Manchester Business School and UCL.<br />
It was structured around the theme<br />
of delivering high-growth training in<br />
short, sharp bursts, with very specific<br />
training around not how do you do<br />
it but how do you do it better. And<br />
then rather than have it delivered by<br />
academics we had it delivered by<br />
people who had actually been there.<br />
Our mentors are technology, media<br />
and telecoms entrepreneurs.”<br />
Accelerator Academy is an established<br />
12-week high-growth, training and<br />
mentoring programme for ambitious<br />
digital entrepreneurs looking to grow their<br />
businesses. Between 10 and 12 startups<br />
and early-stage businesses with high-growth<br />
potential are selected to receive 150 hours<br />
of training, mentoring and support.<br />
@ianmerricks1<br />
Juliette Morgan<br />
Partner, Cushman & Wakefield<br />
Head of property, Tech City UK<br />
“The fundamental challenge for property is that it<br />
relies on long-term contracts for money. Pension<br />
funds buy buildings and buildings have leases,<br />
so those funds can see the leases have X amount of<br />
money that is secure for a number of years. The other<br />
side of that is a burgeoning venture capital-funded tech<br />
scene in London, including many startups that can’t sign<br />
a long lease. So we have a fundamental tension in this<br />
market around the demands of the property industry and<br />
its investment structures and the requirements of the<br />
tech industry. Until a startup becomes financially stable<br />
after flotation, exit or acquisition, the property industry<br />
finds it difficult to give them the space in the shape and<br />
at the price they need. Co-working fixes some problems<br />
and creates others because it absorbs any of the<br />
available space in the market.”<br />
Through her multiple roles, Juliette Morgan is one of London’s<br />
best-informed experts when it comes to property for tech<br />
businesses. She believes that entrepreneurs need protected work<br />
and live spaces, but also that property owners are nervous about<br />
the stability of VC-backed businesses. @Juliettemorgan<br />
Prash Naidu<br />
Founder and chief<br />
executive<br />
Rezonence<br />
“The big difference between<br />
print and digital is that<br />
content is now given away<br />
for free. Publishers are trying<br />
to monetise, with the two<br />
options being to give away<br />
their content using advertising<br />
– which doesn’t really work<br />
because the yields are so<br />
low – or to put up a paywall,<br />
but then you lose over 90% of<br />
your audience. Rezonence is<br />
trying to fi x that by making sure<br />
that the content remains free<br />
and accessible to everyone, so<br />
you can keep the high levels<br />
of users but raise the yields<br />
from free content. We do<br />
that by effectively monetising<br />
engagement. A user’s time<br />
and attention is much more<br />
valuable to the advertiser than<br />
the article is to the audience.<br />
By building engagement we<br />
fi nd we can build a model that<br />
is sustainable for publishers in<br />
the long run.”<br />
Advertising technology startup<br />
Rezonence helps online<br />
publishers pay for their content<br />
and brands secure better<br />
engagement with their adverts.<br />
With the main alternatives lying<br />
in banner ads or subscriptionbased<br />
paywalls, Rezonence’s<br />
trademarked FreeWall<br />
technology offers another way.<br />
@RezonenceHQ<br />
53
<strong>TechNation200</strong> <strong>Almanac</strong> <strong>2015</strong>/<strong>16</strong> | London<br />
Suzanne Noble<br />
Founder and chief executive<br />
Frugl<br />
Melinda Nicci<br />
Founder and chief executive<br />
Baby2Body<br />
“Frugl’s users are highly engaged and really like the<br />
service. I run into people who say, ‘I know and love your<br />
app and use it all the time,’ so that’s great validation for<br />
us. We also have a website. As groovy and sexy as it is to<br />
have an app, a lot of people still browse the web, and nobody<br />
can ignore the web. They can definitely delete you from their<br />
phone. We do see that the future is mobile and every website<br />
has got to be mobile-compatible. Now people have the ability<br />
to add to Frugl events and offers on the fly in a really simple<br />
way. We can react very quickly, so we’ve modified ourselves<br />
to say that we’re a real-time marketplace now for events and<br />
offers.”<br />
Frugl offers real-time access to events in the coming week that cost £10<br />
or less. Aimed at ‘socially mobile’ people aged 18 to 35, Frugl aims to<br />
make it easier for people to create and promote their own events, and<br />
even easier for other people to discover them. @frugl<br />
“The primary proble m is that women want to have a healthy<br />
baby and also want to look after themselves. Most of the<br />
information on websites and in books focuses on the baby<br />
and not the mother. They don’t address the psychological side of<br />
things like emotions, stress, anxiety, sleep, sex or relationships.<br />
We want to innovate the way women experience antenatal<br />
education by giving it to them on their smartphone, through video,<br />
downloadable PDFs and MP3s. Women wanted to know more<br />
about the changes that their bodies were undergoing. I decided<br />
Baby2Body 2.0 needed to be evidence-based, expert-led and<br />
give women information on three things: what is happening to<br />
them, why it is happening and how to fi x it.”<br />
Premium content platform Baby2Body aims to change the way that<br />
women experience pregnancy and motherhood. It offers pregnant<br />
women and new mothers with children up to the age of three advice<br />
and information on their baby, wellbeing, fi tness and food, as well as<br />
fashion and beauty. @baby2body<br />
Emer O’Daly<br />
Co-founder and chief executive<br />
Love & Robots<br />
“Everything on our site is digitally manufactured, which naturally means it’s made from a digital fi le.<br />
3D printing is the most famous but we use different types of digital manufacturing, so also laser<br />
etching and laser cutting. With 3D printing and digital manufacturing there are no economies of<br />
scale, so every product can be different. One of our most popular items is a bowtie with a map on<br />
it and necklaces tend to be very popular as well. We came at this from the idea of co-creating with<br />
customers rather than supplying something that was already made. I started Love & Robots with<br />
my two sisters. I wouldn’t change it for anything. They’re two of my best friends and I trust them<br />
completely.”<br />
Design platform Love & Robots allows customers to tweak and personalise products. Buyers can commission<br />
necklaces, bracelets, earrings, bowties and cuffl inks. The co-founders are the O’Daly sisters, who have<br />
backgrounds in architecture, design and communication. @LoveandRobotsHQ<br />
54
See the full profile interviews at www.techcityinsider.net<br />
Aaron O’Hearn<br />
Co-founder<br />
Startup Institute<br />
“It’s hard for highgrowth<br />
companies<br />
to find great people<br />
directly, but we help to<br />
create those people. The<br />
UK has a big problem<br />
where there is a thriving<br />
tech ecosystem but there<br />
is still a shortage of talent<br />
for these companies.<br />
Startup Institute has<br />
created an educational<br />
experience that transcends<br />
the delivery of content.<br />
It’s about the experience<br />
and engagement with a<br />
community. Our curriculum<br />
takes people through a<br />
focused development<br />
of hard and soft skills<br />
that, when combined,<br />
are a powerful force for<br />
differentiating people<br />
in the jobs market. We<br />
receive a lot of really<br />
incredible applicants.<br />
They’re going to be very hireable.”<br />
Boston-founded Startup Institute offers eight-week full-time courses to give people the skills, mindset and<br />
network to get a job in a startup. Students specialise in technical marketing, web design, web development or<br />
sales and account management. The institute also offers part-time introductory courses in JavaScript, Ruby and<br />
web design. @aaron0<br />
George Olver<br />
Co-founder<br />
Movidiam<br />
“Movidiam is two things: it’s a social network<br />
for fi lmmakers and it’s a project management<br />
tool. When you are crewing up for a fi lm,<br />
where do you start? We have a very clear<br />
search by geography and role. Once you have<br />
a team together we have a project management<br />
dashboard where we have a whole bunch of<br />
features specifi cally designed for fi lmmakers. In<br />
the pre-Movidiam world, the marketing person<br />
rings someone who knows someone who knows<br />
a production company, and the company will ring around its freelancers to fi nd someone who is<br />
available. We want to build visibility among professionals who are doing this with the greatest brands<br />
in the world. There’s a very palpable sense of a new generation of freelancers who are inexpensively<br />
clothing themselves with equipment and produce very high- quality work.”<br />
Movidiam is a new social network and project management platform that is looking to transform the way fi lms<br />
are made. Its network and project management application allows brands, agencies and fi lmmakers to connect,<br />
collaborate and create fi lms, wherever they are. @Movidiam<br />
Rhea<br />
Papanicolaou-<br />
Frangista<br />
Founder<br />
Prettly<br />
“I heard about mobile<br />
beauty professionals<br />
here through the<br />
grapevine. As soon as I had<br />
my nails done, I instantly<br />
felt an urge to recreate<br />
this experience for other<br />
women like myself in the<br />
city. Ultimately, it’s a solution<br />
that makes life easier for<br />
busy women when it comes<br />
to their grooming. It’s for<br />
women who are either<br />
stay-at-home mothers or<br />
professional women who<br />
work during the day. It<br />
literally takes three taps<br />
to book someone and our<br />
review system means that<br />
the customer can select the<br />
professional they want to<br />
have. We understand women<br />
and we are trying to create a<br />
lifestyle brand that will really<br />
inspire them and make their<br />
lives easier.”<br />
Prettly is a startup that allows<br />
women to book mobile beauty<br />
professionals for manicures and<br />
pedicures at home, at work or any<br />
other location within zones one<br />
to three in London. The certifi ed<br />
mobile beauty professionals are<br />
screened and tested before being<br />
sent out to customers.<br />
@PRETTLYbeauty<br />
55
<strong>TechNation200</strong> <strong>Almanac</strong> <strong>2015</strong>/<strong>16</strong> | London<br />
Belinda Parmar<br />
Chief executive<br />
Lady Geek/Little Miss Geek<br />
“Lady Geek is a<br />
consultancy that helps<br />
companies engage<br />
women as customers and<br />
employees. Our whole<br />
platform is around measuring<br />
empathy. We look at empathy<br />
levels within an organisation<br />
and then come up with ideas<br />
and innovations around how<br />
they can speak more to<br />
women. When you start to<br />
talk to girls about how you<br />
can use technology to solve<br />
world problems then they<br />
get excited. I want everyone,<br />
young men and young women,<br />
to be conversant in code. That<br />
is the language of the future<br />
and is the equivalent of learning a foreign language.”<br />
Lady Geek helps some of the world’s biggest companies to become<br />
more appealing to women as customers and employees, to help drive<br />
their growth. Parmar is also founder of Little Miss Geek, set up to inspire<br />
young women to be tech pioneers.<br />
@ladygeek<br />
Rahul Parekh<br />
Co-founder and co-chief executive<br />
Eat First<br />
“We combine great tasting, healthy meals and convenience.<br />
We have a simple app. You see the menu with your two<br />
food options, you see the drink, you can order within a<br />
few clicks and you can track your driver. When they arrive,<br />
you collect your delivery kerbside. We want customers to see<br />
this as a guilt-free experience. For us it’s important that we’re<br />
sustainable in many areas, so we’re trying to move our delivery<br />
fleet to bicycles and make our packaging as eco-friendly as<br />
we can. My ex-colleague knew I was entrepreneurial and made<br />
the introduction to Rocket Internet. I talked to them about the<br />
business idea and they really liked it.”<br />
Healthy food delivery startup Eat First offers London customers lunches<br />
for less than £10, arriving at the side of the road within 15 minutes of<br />
placing their order. Parekh, backed by German startup factory Rocket<br />
Internet, has extended the offering and now Eat First Home provides<br />
dinner delivery. @EatFirstUK<br />
Samiya Parvez<br />
Co-founder and chief operations officer<br />
Andiamo<br />
“An orthosis is any body bracing that you wear on top of<br />
your limbs to keep it in good posture. With a new orthosis,<br />
a child has to wear it and then tell you if it is working or<br />
not. And then you have to create another one as they grow<br />
and compare that one to the one before. My husband Naveed<br />
attended the Monki Gras tech conference, where somebody<br />
was talking about 3D scanning and 3D printing – and<br />
something clicked. People have contacted us online wanting<br />
to be part of the trials as well,<br />
because we’re still in the R&D<br />
phase. We’re starting off with<br />
a one-week turnaround and<br />
ideally 48 hours.”<br />
Husband-and-wife team Naveed and<br />
Samiya Parvez set up healthtech<br />
startup Andiamo after their son<br />
Diamo needed an orthosis. Their<br />
technology harnesses the power of<br />
3D scanning and printing to make<br />
measuring and producing orthoses<br />
faster, more accurately and even<br />
themed to match the interests of the<br />
patient.<br />
@AndiamoHQ<br />
56
See the full profile interviews at www.techcityinsider.net<br />
Alastair Paterson<br />
Chief executive<br />
Digital Shadows<br />
“Our series A round this year was huge for us. We raised US$8m. Up to that<br />
point we’d had US$2m. Scale-wise that was the first big injection of capital that<br />
we’d had. Its primary purpose was to scale up what we had in the UK and open<br />
up in the US market, so it’s enabled us to open a San Francisco office and make<br />
hires in Chicago, New York and Austin. It’s allowed us to drive at the market in a way<br />
that we couldn’t have done just out of London. So it’s a huge, transformational change<br />
for us and we are growing faster than ever right now. We were keen whenever we took<br />
any investment to make sure that it was about more than just the money. Passion Capital<br />
has been very supportive all the way through and we couldn’t have asked for more. We<br />
highly endorse them.”<br />
Digital Shadows provides ‘cyber-situational awareness’ to help its fi nancial services<br />
clients to protect against cyber attacks, loss of intellectual property and more.<br />
The fi rm is now one of London’s fi ntech superstars with 20% month-onmonth<br />
growth. @digitalshadows<br />
Mutaz Qubbaj<br />
Chief executive<br />
Squirrel<br />
“We’ve kept Squirrel as simple and intuitive as possible to<br />
make sure the people who need it the most can use it.<br />
That means people who are in financial distress or those<br />
who have certain saving and budgeting habits and want to<br />
improve how they manage their finances. Users can specify<br />
their commitments across their bills and essentials. They can<br />
also tell us what they want to save for and we can set them<br />
up with the ability to save directly from their pay. If somebody<br />
is saving £500 for Christmas and it’s 10 months away, we will<br />
set aside £50 every month until Christmas and then push that<br />
through to their current account.”<br />
Financial wellbeing platform Squirrel is designed to empower people by<br />
helping them to save, budget and manage their money more effectively<br />
and also save them money on their bills. Employers sign up and offer<br />
Squirrel accounts as a workplace benefi t. @asksquirrel<br />
Steven Renwick<br />
Founder and chief executive<br />
Satago<br />
“We are a general<br />
product for any<br />
SME. We make<br />
the credit control<br />
person more effi cient.<br />
We automate large<br />
parts of the mundane<br />
stuff. There is no<br />
reason why you<br />
should be emailing<br />
your customers<br />
individually to remind<br />
them of payment. We<br />
also automatically<br />
send monthly<br />
statements that show<br />
the status of all the<br />
open invoices and,<br />
at a glance, users<br />
can see the status of<br />
debts owed and how<br />
much is outstanding.<br />
Satago pulls in all your<br />
open invoices and it<br />
checks once a day so<br />
you know what’s open,<br />
what’s been paid and<br />
what needs to be chased. Some companies have said to us, ‘We<br />
were about to go bankrupt until we turned on Satago.’”<br />
Credit control system Satago offers any business a customer<br />
relationship management platform that connects to its existing<br />
accounting software. Renwick grew up seeing his father’s construction<br />
business negatively affected by late payments and decided to do<br />
something about it. @SatagoHQ<br />
57
<strong>TechNation200</strong> <strong>Almanac</strong> <strong>2015</strong>/<strong>16</strong> | London<br />
Anthony Rose<br />
Co-founder<br />
6Tribes<br />
“Pretty much everyone in our<br />
18-25 target audience is on<br />
Facebook, but increasingly<br />
people don’t love Facebook.<br />
The real problem that they have,<br />
particularly as young people,<br />
is that their posts will<br />
not be seen just by their<br />
friends, but we know that<br />
recruiters are increasingly<br />
looking at Facebook, so it<br />
could affect their career.<br />
Because everything you<br />
post is public, it’s raising<br />
the bar, making it harder<br />
for people to want to<br />
post. As a result, people<br />
are opting for closed<br />
networks like Snapchat<br />
or WhatsApp. People<br />
tell us that they want<br />
something in the middle.<br />
We have never really<br />
seen a social network<br />
based on topics rather than<br />
people you went to school<br />
with or celebrities you follow.<br />
Our research indicated a<br />
huge desire for exactly that.”<br />
6Tribes is a new social network brought<br />
to you by the team behind secondscreen<br />
TV app Beamly and the BBC<br />
iPlayer that connects millennials who have<br />
things in common by tapping into their<br />
existing social preferences and music, to<br />
group them into tribes of shared interest.<br />
@anthonyrose<br />
Julia Salasky<br />
Founder<br />
CrowdJustice<br />
“CrowdJustice is a crowdfunding platform for public<br />
interest litigation. Court fees have gone up exponentially,<br />
legal aid has been cut and other changes to legislation<br />
have made it harder to challenge government decisions and<br />
hold the government to account. There was no real way for<br />
people who weren’t directly taking a case that affects lots<br />
of people to get involved and to channel their energy and<br />
financial resources into that case. CrowdJustice enables<br />
people to do that. Often people don’t feel the law is relevant<br />
or accessible to them, but CrowdJustice is aiming to make<br />
the law available to everyone. People are investing in cases<br />
in the sense of investing in a social good rather than for a<br />
financial return.”<br />
CrowdJustice helps claimants bring legal challenges that could set a<br />
precedent or affect a community. It allows a person bringing a case to<br />
raise money from a group that goes directly to an instructed solicitor.<br />
@CrowdJusticeUK<br />
Michael Seres<br />
Founder<br />
11Health<br />
“11Health is the first company to make a sensor device for stoma patients. At the age of 12,<br />
I was diagnosed with an incurable bowel condition called Crohn’s disease. Three years ago<br />
I became the 11th person in the UK to undergo a rare bowel transplant. A procedure took<br />
part of my bowel to the outside of my stomach, collecting bodily waste in a stoma bag. You lose<br />
complete control over going to the toilet. I had a lot of time in hospital. Googling, I bought a few<br />
parts on eBay including a flexible sensor strip from a Nintendo Wii glove, bought a bit of kit and,<br />
thanks to YouTube, built a prototype. The sensor sent a signal from the bag to alert you when it<br />
was filling.”<br />
Medical startup 11Health harnesses mobile and sensor technology to help the 150,000 users of stoma bags in<br />
the UK to have a better quality of life. Smart technology alerts them when their bags need emptying and offers<br />
clinicians a chance to gather data. Seres’s experience made him realise the limits of existing options. @mjseres<br />
58
See the full profile interviews at www.techcityinsider.net<br />
Titus Sharpe<br />
Chief executive<br />
MVF Global<br />
“We have a very international staff.<br />
When people come to London for jobs<br />
they don’t necessarily have a strong<br />
network, so if you can provide them with a<br />
lovely network of friends and bubbly social<br />
life within the workplace it makes them very<br />
loyal. Providing a really great environment is<br />
an important way of keeping great staff. We let<br />
anyone who wants to start a new sport buy the kit,<br />
giving them the budget they need. There’s<br />
a lot of extra-curricular activity. We<br />
are very keen on setting a financial<br />
company goal. Everyone gets<br />
behind it and we all see the<br />
benefit. Last year we hit a major<br />
milestone, so we took 150 staff<br />
to Ibiza. It was an absolute<br />
scream and was one of the best<br />
weekends of my life.”<br />
Marketing technology business<br />
MVF is one of the UK’s fastest<br />
growing tech fi rms, with a focus<br />
on helping corporate clients<br />
across verticals to build their<br />
customer bases. And thanks<br />
to a ‘perkplace’ culture, MVF is<br />
widely regarded as one of the<br />
best companies to work for in<br />
the country. @MVFGlobal<br />
Liv Sibony<br />
Co-founder<br />
Grub Club<br />
“Grub Club enables people to search out and<br />
attend interesting social dining experiences or<br />
fi nd out about creative independent chefs who<br />
cater in unique underused spaces around London.<br />
They showcase their dinners on our platform and<br />
diners can book and then attend the dinners.<br />
We noticed that supper clubs were happening in<br />
pockets but were very diffi cult to fi nd and seemingly<br />
very exclusive, but when you attend them they are<br />
the most welcoming and interesting, fun experiences.<br />
We realised that if we set up a platform to help<br />
people to fi nd these dinners, then London could be<br />
a happier place. The technology is enabling all of this<br />
to happen.”<br />
Private dining platform Grub Club connects food lovers<br />
with the best pop-up restaurants and supper clubs in their<br />
area. The startup – funded by a successful £325,000<br />
Crowdcube raise in <strong>2015</strong> – is harnessing technology to<br />
build a powerful community of foodies. @grub_club<br />
Peter Smith<br />
Co-founder and chief<br />
executive<br />
Blockchain<br />
“I heard about Bitcoin in<br />
2011 from a mailing list.<br />
This was back when there<br />
were really very few services.<br />
If you lost your laptop then<br />
you lost all your bitcoin. We<br />
built software that could be<br />
used on any device and we<br />
have a tokenised encrypted<br />
backup on servers. You get<br />
the convenience of a bitcoin<br />
wallet that can be accessed<br />
from any laptop or any cell<br />
phone. You can set it up in<br />
minutes and you have the<br />
security of not having to<br />
trust someone else with<br />
your bitcoin. No one has<br />
more wallets, no one has<br />
more experience than<br />
Blockchain and I think that<br />
counts for a lot.”<br />
Blockchain is the world’s most<br />
popular bitcoin wallet, allowing<br />
users to access their digital<br />
currency through iOS and<br />
Android wallets. By mid-<strong>2015</strong><br />
it had nearly four million users<br />
and handled more than 50,000<br />
transactions a day. It is widely<br />
regarded as the most trusted<br />
brand in bitcoin. @blockchain<br />
59
<strong>TechNation200</strong> <strong>Almanac</strong> <strong>2015</strong>/<strong>16</strong> | London<br />
John Spindler<br />
Chief executive<br />
Capital Enterprise<br />
George Spencer<br />
Founder<br />
Rentify<br />
“We saw an opportunity<br />
to do the same thing with<br />
letting agents as has<br />
been done with travel agents<br />
and bookstores. The service<br />
is online, so you can be at<br />
home at 10pm using it in your<br />
underpants if you want. You<br />
press a button on our website<br />
and before 9am the next<br />
day someone will turn up at<br />
your property in their Rentify<br />
uniform and with an ID badge.<br />
They will take the keys to your<br />
rental property and will get in<br />
a professional photographer<br />
who is on our staff to take the<br />
photos. They will value the<br />
property and get the advert<br />
live, and they’ll do all that much<br />
faster and much better than a<br />
typical estate agent. And we<br />
have the UK’s most popular<br />
tenancy agreement.”<br />
Rentify is a technology-enabled<br />
letting agent whose service is<br />
used by more than 200,000<br />
landlords. It offers them three<br />
levels of service: let my property,<br />
manage my property or do-ityourself.<br />
Speaking in summer<br />
<strong>2015</strong>, Spencer said 10,000 new<br />
landlords joined the platform<br />
every month. @Rentify<br />
“My job is to run this membership organisation<br />
and represent the members to corporations<br />
and governments, and help them generate<br />
resources and funding so they can offer their<br />
services to tech entrepreneurs. What we try<br />
and do is make it to their advantage to work<br />
together, share knowledge and share intelligence.<br />
The London Co-Investment Fund was set up<br />
to address the funding gap at the seed stage<br />
facing London’s digital, science and technology<br />
startups. It was conceived and managed by<br />
Capital Enterprise in partnership with funding<br />
agency Funding London. It launched with<br />
the aim of investing in London-based digital,<br />
science and technology businesses with six<br />
co-investment partners: Crowdcube, Playfair,<br />
Capital, AngelLab, Firestartr and London Business<br />
Angels.”<br />
Capital Enterprise’s network connects people who<br />
support entrepreneurs, including incubators and accelerators. The non-profi t organisation also counts among<br />
its members universities and colleges, investors and funders, local enterprise agencies and council and<br />
business libraries. @capenterprise<br />
Jason Stockwood<br />
Chief executive<br />
Simply Business<br />
“I’m heavily influenced by what<br />
I’ve done. There’s a model of<br />
digital businesses that has<br />
shrunk the distance between<br />
the company and its customers<br />
down to zero. I believe that the<br />
cultures and businesses that will be<br />
successful represent a value system<br />
that basically values people over<br />
processes, data and technology.<br />
Those values and those capabilities<br />
translate directly into customer<br />
values. When you live and breathe<br />
this type of business, you can<br />
believe that that’s representative<br />
of the UK economy or business<br />
culture. I certainly think there are a<br />
growing number of businesses that<br />
share the same values and modes<br />
of operating, but it’s unclear to me<br />
how much of a minority that is. But I<br />
definitely think it will change. It has<br />
to change.”<br />
The UK’s largest online business insurer, with 300,000 customers and revenues of £30m by summer <strong>2015</strong>,<br />
Simply Business was also named best company to work for in <strong>2015</strong>. Stockwood previously held senior<br />
positions at Match.com and Lastminute.com. @simplybusiness<br />
60
See the full profile interviews at www.techcityinsider.net<br />
Paulina Sygulska Tenner<br />
Co-founder and director<br />
GrantTree<br />
“When Daniel – my partner in business and life – and I set up the company, we wanted to create<br />
a type of business that we would want to work for. The role of so-called management is not to<br />
watch people’s every step and threaten them with consequences if they do something wrong. I<br />
strongly believe in creating and running companies that are the ultimate tool to have an impact on<br />
the world and create something good, both internally and externally. Technology is one of our unique<br />
advantages; it’s essentially the centre of our business. It helps us be much more effi cient and more<br />
transparent. Going forward, it will help us to be more accessible to a wider range of companies.”<br />
GrantTree helps small technology businesses fi nd, apply for and secure government funding, advising them<br />
about grants and applications. It also operates a radical management culture inspired by thinker Frederic<br />
Laloux. @GrantTree<br />
Freddie Talberg<br />
Founder and chief executive<br />
PIE Mapping<br />
“London is a nightmare to drive in. Who wants to drive<br />
a huge truck in the middle of London? Our job is to<br />
make sure that we have all the data and that the drivers’<br />
navigation systems, even if they have to go off-route, navigate<br />
them to avoid bridges and width restrictions. A project we’re<br />
doing for Canary Wharf Group is providing driver navigation<br />
for construction logistics companies. We’re in the process of<br />
negotiating with the CWG to work out how we execute this.<br />
We’re helping construction companies by giving information<br />
and navigation advice to the drivers for a particular time of<br />
day. The key is helping those drivers get to the construction<br />
site as safely as possible.”<br />
PIE Mapping was set up in 2004 producing maps and guides for<br />
motorcyclists and disabled drivers. The company now collects and<br />
processes road network data from local and unitary authorities across<br />
the UK and provides online products like London Lorry Route<br />
Approver and the TfL Freight Journey Planner. @PieMapping<br />
Adizah Tejani<br />
Co-founder,<br />
Filanthrophy<br />
Head of ecosystem<br />
development, Level39<br />
“Filanthropy is a nonprofi<br />
t that engages in<br />
entrepreneurship and<br />
social enterprise. It is a way for<br />
social projects to get that fi rst<br />
bit of pre-seed funding, like<br />
£1,000. It’s a similar format<br />
to a demo day where people<br />
come in and pitch but the<br />
thing that’s different is that<br />
the attendees all pay £10. On<br />
the night, they decide which<br />
project they want to give that<br />
£10 to. I found out about<br />
Level39 when it fi rst started,<br />
and the rest is history. I’m<br />
working with entrepreneurs,<br />
I’m working with techies and<br />
that’s what I love doing. Under<br />
no circumstances am I leaving<br />
unless someone drags me out<br />
of this industry.”<br />
Filanthropy organises events to<br />
stimulate collaboration for social<br />
change. It has raised money<br />
for many deserving projects,<br />
including The Real Junk Food<br />
Project and Touring Local<br />
Cinema. Tejani’s day job is at<br />
Level39 in Canary Wharf.<br />
@Adizah_Tejani<br />
61
<strong>TechNation200</strong> <strong>Almanac</strong> <strong>2015</strong>/<strong>16</strong> | London<br />
Fabio Torlini<br />
Managing director, EMEA<br />
WP Engine<br />
“We effectively take WordPress and optimise it for security, speed, adding a caching layer<br />
and a bunch of tools that allows users to utilise the platform more effectively. The company<br />
was founded by Jason Cohen, a blogger, who wanted people who run WordPress to have<br />
a secure, scaleable solution. It is by far the most popular content management system out<br />
there. Of all websites globally, about 24% run on WordPress. We build tools for developers<br />
and for marketing people. A key customer is Network Rail, along with banks and others from<br />
the startup community, including Digital Shoreditch and Unruly. As a company, we continue to<br />
double in size year-on-year. O ur focus for the next two years is the UK.”<br />
WP Engine is a managed WordPress platform offering users of the world’s dominant content management<br />
system extra security, speed and tools. In <strong>2015</strong> it opened up to the London startup market, following a<br />
US$15m funding investment round. @wpengine<br />
Sarah Turner<br />
Founder<br />
Angel Academe<br />
Daniel va n Binsbergen<br />
Co-founder and chief executive<br />
Lexoo<br />
“I think the statistics are that, although we control more than<br />
half the net wealth in this country, women are only about 6%<br />
or 7% of the angel population. At all the various groups I went<br />
along to, women were very under-represented, so I thought that<br />
was an interesting opportunity. I also noticed that when women<br />
came to pitch to these very male-dominated groups, it wasn’t as<br />
comfortable an experience as it might be. So from that I thought<br />
there was an interesting opportunity to create a group that would<br />
appeal to women founders and women raising money and try<br />
to bring some more women into the ang el market. It was about<br />
giving our entrepreneurs access to these mentors for one-on-one<br />
advice.”<br />
Angel Academe is the UK’s leading angel network for women. Most of<br />
the members are women and it invests in ambitious tech startups with<br />
at least one woman on the founding team. Angel Academe runs regular<br />
pitch events presenting screened investment opportunities to its angel<br />
group. @angelacademe<br />
“I was practising<br />
as a lawyer and<br />
often had friends<br />
in startups and SMEs<br />
asking me for lawyer<br />
recommendations.<br />
So I started to create<br />
a shortlist. I wanted<br />
to replicate what I<br />
was doing for my<br />
friends on a much<br />
larger scale when I<br />
started Lexoo. We<br />
specialise in helping<br />
businesses of any<br />
size easily get and<br />
compare quotes<br />
from prescreened<br />
lawyers. A lot of<br />
clients, especially<br />
small business<br />
owners, have grown<br />
accustomed to<br />
a certain level of<br />
convenience in their<br />
lives. When they<br />
take out insurance,<br />
they do not call up<br />
multiple insurance companies to get their quotes, they go to a<br />
price comparison website. Large parts of the law still operate<br />
that way.”<br />
Lexoo is an online marketplace that enables businesses to tender<br />
out legal work by getting up to four quotes within 24 hours from<br />
prescreened lawyers. Founders of startups or SMEs can post a job on<br />
the site for free, receive the quotes and then have a no-obligation call<br />
with their chosen lawyer. @Lexoo<br />
62
See the full profile interviews at www.techcityinsider.net<br />
Alexandra<br />
Vanthournout<br />
Founder and creative<br />
director<br />
Fashercise<br />
“Fashercise is about having fun<br />
while getting fi t and feeling good<br />
while being active. People come<br />
back to the site over and over, not<br />
because we have new stock, but<br />
because there is something new<br />
to read. With online shops, once<br />
you’ve been on it there’s no reason<br />
for you to come back the next day.<br />
Our customers love it when we write<br />
about the 10 best running shorts,<br />
for example, but if the 10 best are all<br />
ones that we sell, no one is going to take us seriously. Because we use affi liate marketing we end up<br />
earning money on both sides of the story. I’ve always been a big fan of a good mix between editorial<br />
and e-commerce. It’s important to have that synergy.”<br />
One part online luxury sportswear shop and one part fi tness and lifestyle blog, Fashercise is aimed at stylish,<br />
active women. Founded by Vanthournout and Camille Roegiers de Silva, it generates revenue through affi liate<br />
marketing and e-commerce. The founders are also passionate about supporting up-and-coming sportswear<br />
designers. @Fashercise<br />
Aneesh Varma<br />
Founder<br />
Aire<br />
“I am a global nomad and I<br />
moved here eight years ago.<br />
In my mind I had a perfect<br />
fi nancial history but I struggled to<br />
open a bank account. I realised<br />
that there are cracks in the credit<br />
scoring system that didn’t know<br />
how to handle people like me. I<br />
thought, ‘It’s time to take a fresh<br />
look at building credit scores<br />
in the modern era’ – and that<br />
manifested itself into Aire. One<br />
user told me, ‘I have been paying<br />
my Spotify Premium bill for a<br />
year and half. Can I show that<br />
to you as a sign that I have been<br />
making regular payments?’ We<br />
love looking at and accepting<br />
non-standard, non-structured<br />
data and providing a holistic<br />
view about that person. It gives<br />
us the ability to bring in amazing<br />
datasets.”<br />
Aire helps people with no credit history to qualify for essential financial products by giving them an alternative<br />
credit score. Aire can look at things like regular payments to Spotify Premium and Netflix. It is for new<br />
borrowers like students, expats, migrants and even the military. @AireScore<br />
Antony Waldorf<br />
Founder and chief<br />
executive<br />
Virtual Walkthrough<br />
“I’ve always liked building<br />
things. I’ve built and<br />
refurbished houses, but<br />
I was shocked that when I<br />
went to sell or rent a house,<br />
the tech that was there to<br />
do it was quite basic. We<br />
shoot photographs in very<br />
high resolution, the highest<br />
for a professional camera<br />
– and we don’t just shoot<br />
one shot, we shoot five so<br />
that we have a very dynamic<br />
range of light. Then we find<br />
another location and do five<br />
more shots again. We try to<br />
reproduce the experience of<br />
actually walking through a<br />
home, so our camera sits at<br />
head height to give headlevel<br />
perspective. We had<br />
so many meetings where<br />
people stood up, walked<br />
around and said, ‘I’ve never<br />
seen anything like this.’ So<br />
the enthusiasm levels are<br />
really high.”<br />
Software technology Virtual<br />
Walkthrough processes the 35<br />
to 60 high-resolution images<br />
shot by its photographers for<br />
each property and stitches<br />
them together to create several<br />
‘panorama bubbles’ – composites<br />
of a series of pictures shot from<br />
the same vantage point that<br />
give the viewer a 360-degree<br />
perspective. @VWalkthrough<br />
63
<strong>TechNation200</strong> <strong>Almanac</strong> <strong>2015</strong>/<strong>16</strong> | London<br />
Jozef Wallis<br />
Co-founder<br />
Toothpick<br />
“Toothpick is a marketplace.<br />
We’re about making dentistry<br />
a lot more accessible and<br />
consumer friendly. We bring to<br />
the surface all the information<br />
you need to make an informed<br />
choice over which dental<br />
practice to go with: pricing,<br />
reviews, the bios, information<br />
about awards or accreditation,<br />
whether it is NHS or private. We take the marketing burden away<br />
from the practice so that it can spend more time with its patients,<br />
providing good services. Patient education is still very low in<br />
regards to what the NHS is, how it works, how much it costs,<br />
who is eligible and how private or cosmetic appointments can be<br />
booked online. Our challenge is to get the word out there that this<br />
service can provide a lot of value for patients.”<br />
Toothpick allows users to book a dentist online in under 60 seconds.<br />
It was launched in 2013 as a platform for booking emergency medical<br />
procedures in central London, but Wallis and co-founder Sandeep<br />
Senghera realised the problem affected all kinds of dentistry and<br />
presented a business opportunity. @Toothpick<br />
Imogen Wethered<br />
Co-founder and chief executive<br />
Qudini<br />
“We went to a near-field communication-themed hackathon<br />
where we brainstormed a problem that annoyed everyone,<br />
and we came up with queueing. The main reason people<br />
walk out of stores is because waiting is indefinite and<br />
insecure. They don’t like that. We give them an expectation<br />
of when they can be seen. Qudini is for any retailer that is<br />
improving their service offering. With the retail product, it’s<br />
an app the store can use. So a concierge figure at the front<br />
of the store is holding a device that has the Qudini app, then<br />
when a customer comes into the store they can take their<br />
name and their details and Qudini calculates what time the<br />
wait time is for the customer.”<br />
Cloud-based digital queue and appointment management platform<br />
Qudini allows businesses to manage their customers coming into a<br />
store or restaurant and sends them text messages about when they<br />
will be seen. After securing £1m in funding from Wayra, Qudini is now<br />
being used by companies including House of Fraser, O2 and Honest<br />
Burger. @Qudini<br />
Florence<br />
Wilkinson<br />
Founder<br />
Warblr<br />
“Warblr is an application for<br />
learning about the natural<br />
world. People use the<br />
app for the joy of identifying<br />
birds. Every time someone<br />
records a species of bird, we<br />
automatically take the geodata<br />
and build up a repository<br />
of how many species are being<br />
spotted, when and where. I was<br />
working with young people in<br />
Brixton who really are a generation of digital natives but they<br />
struggle to name common plants or birds. We’re losing our<br />
biodiversity at a rate of 1,000 to 10,000 times the natural rate of<br />
extinction, so our environment is in greater need of protection<br />
than ever before. If people aren’t attuned to what’s happening<br />
on their doorstep then how are they possibly going to care<br />
about broader environmental issues?”<br />
Warblr automatically recognises birds by their song and shows the user<br />
images and descriptions of the birds it has identifi ed. It is also a citizen<br />
science project, with the recordings and data collected freely available to<br />
be used for research and conservation purposes. @warblrUK<br />
64
See the full profile interviews at www.techcityinsider.net<br />
Barney Worfolk-Smith<br />
Director<br />
That Lot<br />
“The phrase ’social content company’ didn’t probably exist until a year or so ago. But ultimately<br />
it meets a need, which is that communications across social and interactive platforms between<br />
brands and people are different to how they would have been previously through TV or press. In<br />
a social and digital world, those communications need to be more human and more interactive, and<br />
that’s ultimately what we do. The advertising industry overall is splitting into two. Madtech, which is<br />
programmatic and about reach, is on one side, and on the other is the content that will sit on that<br />
reach mechanism, and that previously would have been called social, content marketing, PR or even<br />
journalism. All of those things are becoming a much more amorphous group of communications. I<br />
enjoy delivering the message in a way that is effective and fun and cuts through.”<br />
Social content startup That Lot connects brands and people better, drawing on a rare combination of knowhow<br />
in social and a talent for comedy. Worfolk-Smith says That Lot adds value compared with today’s mega<br />
social network platforms. @mightybarnski<br />
Will Wynne<br />
Co-founder and managing director<br />
Smart Pension<br />
“I was talking about pensions in 2013 when no one was<br />
talking about pensions. After that we had a budget and<br />
autumn statement that brought in a host of pension<br />
reforms, so it’s become a bit of a hot topic. We’re the<br />
right option for SMEs, be it for the price or the speed or<br />
the security of the service. The platform, which is free for<br />
businesses, reduces to minutes the time it takes for firms<br />
to auto-enrol. It’s going to get super busy and smaller<br />
companies are going to be signing up. They’re going to be<br />
less organised and less prepared. We are super quick, using<br />
technology to make our platform the fastest.”<br />
Smart Pension has developed a system to tackle the challenges posed<br />
by pension auto-enrolment for SMEs. It allows companies to set up<br />
their government-mandated workplace pension scheme in minutes,<br />
with immediate setup confi rmation – and all available at no fee to the<br />
company. @smartpensionuk<br />
Juliana Zarate<br />
Co-founder and chief<br />
executive<br />
Mucho (formerly Cookit)<br />
“I’ve always loved food. I<br />
come from a food-loving<br />
family and have always<br />
been used to problem<br />
solving. I’m also driven by<br />
social issues. My business<br />
partner and I decided that<br />
we wanted to have a go at<br />
trying to solve a big social<br />
issue by creating a company.<br />
We believe the market can<br />
be a source for good. I don’t<br />
believe you should tax food<br />
because I think that’s a<br />
negative incentive. I think<br />
you should reward good<br />
food. Food is a very personal<br />
issue and I believe that the<br />
more personal the issue<br />
is, the bigger the market,<br />
but also the harder it is to<br />
execute. You are getting into<br />
people’s homes and taking<br />
the food to them.”<br />
Mucho is a food delivery service<br />
that helps its users find the<br />
best-quality food for the money<br />
available, offering weekly recipes<br />
that suit users’ budgets . Its clever<br />
‘grandmother’ algorithm dispels<br />
the myth that you always have to<br />
pay more for the best. In <strong>2015</strong><br />
Zarate was selected as a global<br />
female founder in Silicon Valley’s<br />
Blackbox accelerator, supported<br />
by Google for Entrepreneurs.<br />
@JulianaZarate<br />
65
<strong>TechNation200</strong> <strong>Almanac</strong> <strong>2015</strong>/<strong>16</strong> | Malvern<br />
Mike Gogan<br />
Director<br />
Virtual Experience Company<br />
Of all tech clusters, the most surprising is<br />
picturesque and peaceful Malvern. Beneath<br />
this rural exterior are 80-plus companies<br />
focusing primarily on cyber-security.<br />
The key moment in Malvern’s tech history was the<br />
government’s 1939 decision to move the UK’s military<br />
radar research effort to the relative rural isolation of the<br />
town as the Second World War broke out.<br />
The secretive work that followed in the Malvern Hills was<br />
arguably as crucial to the war effort as the code-breaking<br />
activity at Bletchley Park.<br />
After the war ended, defence research continued in Malvern,<br />
leading to the development of advanced radar systems, touchsensitive<br />
display screens, liquid crystal display materials and<br />
passive infra-red detectors.<br />
Today, the defence research organisation has become<br />
QinetiQ, with its Malvern campus still the largest employer in<br />
the town.<br />
Another key player is Malvern Instruments, a materials and<br />
biophysical characterisation company providing equipment<br />
and technical services for particle, protein and macromolecule<br />
characterisation.<br />
A focus for smaller R&D companies to start and grow was<br />
provided in 2000 by the opening of the Malvern Hills Science<br />
Park. The site attracted spin-offs from QinetiQ, but now the mix<br />
includes businesses expanding from other locations.<br />
Entrepreneurs and micro-businesses are further supported by<br />
the Wyche Innovation Centre, which opened in 2012. The lowcost<br />
fl exible terms for small offi ces and hot desks help to get<br />
ventures off the ground and enable businesses to expand more<br />
easily and take on new staff, before they grow in the Malvern<br />
Hills Science Park or Enigma Business Park.<br />
Malvern is a recognised centre for the cyber-security industry,<br />
helping to protect businesses and consumers from the threat<br />
of online crime. This has happened because of QinetiQ and the<br />
close proximity of Malvern to GCHQ in Cheltenham and SAS<br />
training in Herefordshire.<br />
The Malvern Cyber Security Cluster was set up in 2011 to<br />
bring together the small to medium-sized enterprises working<br />
in this sector, often in isolation and so unable to share their<br />
experiences with peers. The UK Cyber Security Forum was<br />
created in Malvern to help coordinate the growth of other<br />
clusters in the sector around the country.<br />
The annual Malvern Festival of Innovation showcases relevant<br />
technological themes and promotes enterprise, for business<br />
professionals and also for school pupils and their families.<br />
The Minerva business angel investor network tends to meet<br />
monthly in Malvern to provide pitching opportunities and<br />
fi nancial support to entrepreneurs looking for equity fi nance.<br />
TechCityinsider’s TechCities ambassador for Malvern is Adrian<br />
Burden of Wyche Innovation (www.wyche-innovation.com).<br />
“We use real-time 3D to enable<br />
people to access historic places<br />
that were hitherto inaccessible to<br />
them. That would mean somewhere<br />
like Shakespeare’s birthplace, where<br />
the upper fl oor of the building is<br />
inaccessible to a disabled person.<br />
Traditionally, the person who couldn’t<br />
go upstairs would be given a video,<br />
book of postcards, a pat on the head and a cup of tea. Essentially<br />
what they would be shown would be something that somebody<br />
else had decided they should see. Using real-time 3D, which<br />
we’ve installed, the person who can’t go upstairs can now wander<br />
around the room. They can spot a piece of furniture, go over and<br />
click on it and spin an object around. They can actually see it in a<br />
way that person who is physically upstairs can’t.”<br />
The Virtual Experience Company uses real-time 3D modelling and<br />
gaming technologies to make historic spaces – from Shakespeare’s<br />
birthplace to Tintern Abbey to the palace of an Omani prince – more<br />
accessible.<br />
Robin King<br />
Chief executive<br />
Deep-Secure<br />
“Deep-Secure is a<br />
specialist software<br />
security business<br />
that has grown out of<br />
previous organisations,<br />
with the sole intention<br />
of building products that<br />
can meet some of the<br />
most onerous challenges<br />
in cyber security. There’s<br />
a particular need where<br />
organisations need to<br />
share highly sensitive<br />
information. It’s been<br />
really exciting because<br />
we’ve brought together people with a variety of specialist<br />
expertise and focused them on building a range of products<br />
centred on that core cyber-security protection mission. Our<br />
provenance is building products that have had great utility in<br />
the defence and intelligence space. The exciting opportunity<br />
now is to take those products and internationalise the<br />
business – and, most importantly, to look at those other<br />
market sectors that are saying, ‘What’s good enough for<br />
defence is good enough for us.’”<br />
Deep-Secure’s cyber-security products offer high security for any<br />
organisation, especially those working in defence and intelligence, that<br />
has to safeguard sensitive data. It builds security products capable of<br />
facing the most advanced and persistent of attackers. @DeepSecureLtd<br />
66
See the full profile interviews at www.techcityinsider.net<br />
Emma Philpott<br />
Founder and managing director,<br />
Malvern Cyber Security Cluster<br />
Chief executive, IASME<br />
Consortium<br />
“Cyber security is everything from just<br />
making sure you change your password<br />
all the way to clever encryption to stop<br />
other countries hacking in to fi nd out your<br />
secrets. The Malvern cluster is a strange<br />
thing. We have GCHQ down the road. We<br />
have the SAS regiment in the same vicinity,<br />
and QinetiQ. This branch of QinetiQ was<br />
brought here in the Second World War to<br />
protect the radar research and has always<br />
done cyber security and secure electronics.<br />
It’s super-interesting to see the number of<br />
small cyber security companies that are<br />
here. You would never have known about them before and they’ve all just emerged. We started off with only about eight and now we<br />
have more than 80 just in this region that are part of the cluster, and it is really exciting.”<br />
Cyber-security scientist Philpott heads the UK cyber security forum, representing businesses in the sector nationwide, and IASME, a body that helps<br />
small businesses to become more secure online. @IASME1<br />
Alastair Shortland<br />
Founder and chief executive<br />
Textlocal<br />
“Textlocal was founded with the vision of taking mobile<br />
messaging to the mass market – every single business, service<br />
and community group. At the time there were large aggregator<br />
companies that would send messages for brands but no one<br />
had ever created anything simple, a one-page simple website<br />
where you could upload your contacts and send a message to<br />
groups of people<br />
in seconds. I saw a<br />
gap in the market<br />
and, rather than<br />
create one piece<br />
of downloadable<br />
software and have to<br />
support thousands<br />
of installations, I<br />
thought it made<br />
sense to make a<br />
website because<br />
it’s only a piece of<br />
software to support.<br />
I learned how to<br />
programme, how to make a website and built one of the fastestgrowing<br />
technology companies in Europe in 2013, according to<br />
the Deloitte Fast Fifty index.”<br />
Textlocal is the UK’s most popular and well-known business SMS<br />
service. With the power of text, the company exploits the native app<br />
on every phone to help the businesses that use it to engage with their<br />
customers. @textlocal<br />
Nick Tudor<br />
Business director<br />
D-RisQ<br />
“The problem<br />
with all software<br />
systems is the cost<br />
of verification and<br />
showing that they do<br />
what you want them to<br />
do. There’s also a real<br />
cost in demonstrating<br />
that they don’t do<br />
what you don’t want<br />
them to, ever. That<br />
cost is massive –<br />
probably round about<br />
80% of the cost of<br />
the development of<br />
a system in the first place. We have numerous examples of<br />
the government’s latest IT initiatives going wrong, mostly<br />
because they didn’t know what they wanted and didn’t have<br />
a system and development process that showed how the<br />
impact of change could be costed. That’s one of the aspects<br />
that we’re developing here and the further you go through the<br />
development process into the development of code, the more<br />
expensive it becomes to actually take account if any of those<br />
requirements change.”<br />
D-RisQ is in the business of ‘trying to chan ge the way the world<br />
develops software’. Critically, it shows its business users the<br />
consequences of software not doing what it is supposed to.<br />
@WycheInnovation<br />
67
<strong>TechNation200</strong> <strong>Almanac</strong> <strong>2015</strong>/<strong>16</strong> | Manchester<br />
Claire<br />
Braithwaite<br />
Head<br />
Tech North<br />
There are an estimated 56,000 jobs in the<br />
Manchester tech economy. With £24m startup<br />
campus Forward Manchester imminent,<br />
the city claims centre stage in the Northern<br />
Powerhouse.<br />
Manchester is small enough to enable collaboration<br />
across the city – but also big enough to be able to<br />
compete globally.<br />
Historically, the city has had a point to prove – that it can do<br />
things differently and make things better. It is where slavery<br />
was abolished, and is the birthplace of the Suffragettes and the<br />
co-operative movement.<br />
Graphene, recently discovered in Manchester, is set to<br />
replace the likes of silicone and be in most products we take<br />
for granted each day.<br />
The city has world-leading biotech companies based at the<br />
Manchester Science Park, and the collaboration between<br />
Manchester Science Partnerships and the city’s universities is<br />
UK-leading.<br />
Manchester is also very strong media-wise. Salford’s Media<br />
City has the BBC and ITV at its heart, and a community<br />
building around it. In east Manchester, the Sharp Project is<br />
leading in digital creation.<br />
The Northern Quarter in the centre of Manchester has been<br />
dubbed the centre of the city’s thriving tech cluster. Now,<br />
Forward – a 100,000-square-foot building, four times the size<br />
of Google Campus – is on the horizon, designed to be the<br />
heart of the UK tech community. Forward will be a charity, with<br />
tenants contributing to a pot to employ a team dedicated to<br />
accelerating Manchester’s tech community.<br />
The UK government backed Forward with £4m in the March<br />
<strong>2015</strong> budget and will help push Manchester towards being<br />
one of Europe’s top-fi ve startup destinations.<br />
The Northern Powerhouse concept, created by the UK<br />
government and championed by chancellor George Osborne,<br />
sees Manchester as the engine of the powerhouse.<br />
Among startups worth keeping an eye on are Juliand Digital,<br />
making supply chains more effi cient, and the UK’s fastestgrowing<br />
internet service provider, Telcom.io. And Wakelet is<br />
making searching more personable.<br />
London is only two hours away but costs around twice<br />
as much to live in as Manchester. With the biggest student<br />
population in Europe, the city is fl ooded with fresh talent each<br />
year. This is vital for the growth of Manchester’s technology<br />
businesses.<br />
TechCityinsider’s ambassador for Manchester is Rob Mulgan of<br />
SpaceportX (spaceportx.com)<br />
“What’s striking to me are<br />
the hopes and ambitions<br />
the tech sector has in the<br />
North at the moment. It’s really<br />
inspired me in our mission<br />
to develop Tech North as<br />
something that looks at the<br />
needs and opportunities in the<br />
North to build an initiative in<br />
response to that. The North is the birthplace of the industrial<br />
revolution – it’s where computing was born and we have<br />
incredible strengths in manufacturing. If we look at today and<br />
the future, it’s about building on those legacies. We have many<br />
strengths. It’s our remit to drive inward investment, build digital<br />
employment, to increase the number of startups and scaleups,<br />
and also to drive more VC and angel investment.”<br />
A key part of the government’s ‘northern powerhouse’ agenda, and<br />
part of Tech City UK, Tech North was created to build and accelerate<br />
the tech economy in the north of England. Entrepreneur and former<br />
consultant Braithwaite also leads TN’s Northern Stars showcase.<br />
@TechNorthHQ<br />
John Kershaw<br />
Founder<br />
Brisltr<br />
“If you have a beard,<br />
we match you with<br />
people who are<br />
looking for a beard to<br />
stroke. And if you don’t<br />
have a beard, we’ll fi nd<br />
you the beard for you<br />
to stroke. So we are a<br />
very niche dating site.<br />
Everyone on the service<br />
is already someone who<br />
you are probably going<br />
to want to go on a date<br />
with. By May <strong>2015</strong> we’d<br />
closed in on a third<br />
of a million matches<br />
between people, matching people in the evening once every 12<br />
seconds. We have highly targeted ads and merchandise, but we<br />
also make money through an in-app purchase tied to the price of<br />
a coffee in a Manchester shop.”<br />
‘Tinder for beards’ describes Bristlr perfectly: a dating app designed for<br />
people looking for romance with people with beards. Hirsute founder<br />
Kershaw started up in Manchester and grew as part of the Ignite100<br />
accelerator. @BristlrApp<br />
68
See the full profile interviews at www.techcityinsider.net<br />
David Levine<br />
Chief executive<br />
Digital Bridge<br />
“The problem we are solving is that of the imagination gap<br />
– our inability to imagine what our wallpaper, carpets,<br />
furniture, laminate or whatever might look like in your<br />
room. With us, you can walk into a room, hold your iPad up,<br />
take a single picture, then the computer vision platform we<br />
have developed automatically recognises the walls, floors,<br />
ceilings and lighting conditions in that room, then allows the<br />
consumer to visualise what things will look like. There are a<br />
number of tools that use augmented reality, but decoration<br />
is a considered purchase. With us you can take your time.”<br />
Retail technology startup Digital Bridge helps home shoppers visualise<br />
what a store’s products will look like in their own homes, with a<br />
simple-to-use computer vision platform that recognises the space.<br />
@DigitalBridgeEU<br />
Eudie Thompson<br />
Founder and chief<br />
executive<br />
Bright Future<br />
Al Mackin<br />
Founder<br />
Formisimo<br />
“There’s a huge problem for every online business – converting website visitors into paying<br />
customers. A critical end point in the online buying or interest process is to fill in a form or a<br />
checkout. The processes are painful, annoying and really frustrating. People hate them. It’s<br />
not that businesses don’t care, it’s that they don’t have the data to show them how to make a<br />
great process. Formisimo’s analytics platform shows our customers what their customers are<br />
doing with online forms and checkouts. We reveal the pain points and show companies how to<br />
make their process awesome and increase online sales.”<br />
Online retailers are losing revenue, and goodwill, because of poorly designed online forms. As many as two in<br />
three forms are abandoned before fi nal payment. Formisimo offers compelling evidence of the need to improve<br />
form design. @formisimo<br />
“We all talk about skill<br />
shortages and every<br />
single business that we<br />
come across talks about<br />
the shortage of IT software<br />
people. We are exporting<br />
IP by having software<br />
developed offshore, due to<br />
companies wrongly thinking<br />
that it’s cheaper. The whole<br />
idea behind Bright Future<br />
is to take a long-term view.<br />
For the first three years,<br />
we developed a number<br />
of apprentices, alongside<br />
strong experienced staff<br />
who monitor and do<br />
programme with them. We<br />
take on 140 apprentices<br />
each year and we are<br />
building what I believe<br />
will become the strongest<br />
technology business in the<br />
country.”<br />
Salford-based software business<br />
Bright Future aims to keep IT<br />
onshore in the face of the tech<br />
skills shortage by drawing heavily<br />
on apprenticeships, with new<br />
young staff coming through from<br />
Manchester schools.<br />
@GetBrightFuture<br />
69
<strong>TechNation200</strong> <strong>Almanac</strong> <strong>2015</strong>/<strong>16</strong> | North East<br />
Jo York<br />
Co-founder<br />
Reframed.tv<br />
With more than 30,000 tech jobs, England’s<br />
North East – including the cities of Newcastle<br />
and Sunderland – is now clearly one of the<br />
UK’s leading technology business clusters.<br />
The North East, once so proud of its shipyards and coal<br />
mines, is now seeking to redefi ne itself as one of the UK’s<br />
fastest-rising technology clusters.<br />
More than 30,000 people are employed in the tech sector<br />
across the North East today – with another 1,500 jobs added<br />
each year. The region has moved fast from coal to data mining.<br />
The existence of world-leading academic institutions – one,<br />
Northumbria University, produced iPhone inventor Jonathan<br />
Ive – is pivotal. A strong and vibrant academic base, with more<br />
than 40,000 students and specialisms in medicine and life<br />
sciences, is generating hundreds of new tech-savvy graduates<br />
every year.<br />
The North East also has a strong native technology business<br />
sector. The sector’s biggest employer is accounting software<br />
giant Sage, which employs 2,500 people across the region and<br />
13,000 worldwide. It remains Europe’s only FTSE 100-listed<br />
software company.<br />
Sage is accompanied by big public sector players, none<br />
bigger than government tax agency HMRC, which feeds<br />
the region’s technology ecosystem by outsourcing work to<br />
medium-sized local software providers.<br />
New not-for-profi t Dynamo is helping to amplify a tech<br />
community that hitherto had no collective voice. It brings the<br />
big players together with the medium-sized businesses and the<br />
startups so they can gel and start to work together.<br />
At the heart of the startup scene is Ignite, Newcastle’s<br />
leading tech startup accelerator, incubator and events space.<br />
Ignite grew from a one-off 14-week programme, tapping into<br />
Newcastle’s strong native tech scene and broadening its work<br />
to become an ongoing incubator and events space.<br />
Among Ignite’s alumni are adtech business Adludio, sports<br />
social platform MatchChat and sound specialist EarSoft.<br />
Launched in 2014, the 10,000 square-foot, Kickstarterfunded<br />
Campus North offers space to 150 startup founders, as<br />
well as a free meetup and events venue.<br />
Startup investment is available through local VC Northstar<br />
Ventures, which has more than £80m under its management.<br />
A £125m pot of fi nance for business in the North East also<br />
comes from the EU’s JEREMIE fund, providing debt and equity<br />
fi nance from £1,000 to £1.25m for fi rms based in or relocating<br />
to the region.<br />
Newcastle City Council is now working with BT on new<br />
superfast broadband technology, with a target of 97% coverage.<br />
TechCityinsider’s TechCities ambassador for the North East is Tristan<br />
Watson of Ignite (www.ignite.io).<br />
“Reframed allows you to<br />
comment, discuss and<br />
share moments of video.<br />
We’ve been described as<br />
‘SoundCloud for video’. Rather<br />
than just allowing people to<br />
comment outside of the video,<br />
we time-stamp comments<br />
from the moment you start<br />
typing, then display it as a<br />
graph over the timeline so you<br />
can skip to the interesting bits<br />
that everyone is talking about.<br />
We display comments next to the video at the moment that<br />
they’re relevant. Reframed is being used during conferences<br />
with live streams. It allows organisers to pull in tweets from<br />
the audience and bring them together. It gives them an<br />
archive of the reactions. Once we’ve got all that data, we can<br />
run things like sentiment analysis. It seems like a really easy<br />
idea but it turns out it’s quite hard.”<br />
Reframed.tv makes video more social by enabling users to make timespecifi<br />
c comments on YouTube, Vimeo and self-hosted video. Its mission<br />
is to be the glue between social media and video. @Reframedtv<br />
Si Brown<br />
Co-founder and chief marketing officer<br />
Skignz<br />
“<br />
Four out of fi ve people can't read maps, and that is the key<br />
idea behind Skignz. People also get lost quite often at large<br />
events or in strange places. We've developed an augmentedreality<br />
platform that pretty much covers the whole globe. Our<br />
product and platform can be used almost by anybody personally<br />
or professionally. We use geolocation. People sign up for a free<br />
account and get three free Skignz. They can place one above the<br />
tent at a festival, they can place one above the car when they've<br />
parked in a fi eld somewhere and they can have one above their<br />
heads so their friends can fi nd them<br />
in<br />
a crowd. We want to become the<br />
browser of choice for augmented<br />
reality content in the sky – so not<br />
digital recognition but geolocated<br />
o ed<br />
information.”<br />
Augmented reality platform Skignz<br />
helps people fi nd their way around<br />
unfamiliar places, using geolocation o to<br />
allow people and brands to add a ‘skign’<br />
– a sign in the sky – above any location,<br />
or person, anywhere. Skignz won<br />
best startup at Thinking<br />
Digital <strong>2015</strong>. @skignz<br />
70
See the full profile interviews at www.techcityinsider.net<br />
Tristan Watson<br />
Programme director, Ignite100<br />
Founder, Campus North<br />
Alasdair Greig<br />
Director<br />
Northstar Ventures<br />
“Ignite100 is a 14-week, mentor-led accelerator programme.<br />
We take 10 teams and invest a small amount of seed<br />
capital into each of them and help them develop their<br />
idea, build a viable business and then look at a long-term<br />
plan to grow and become a significant tech company in the<br />
UK. Newcastle needed an accelerator programme like Ignite<br />
because it already had a rich culture of technical ability and<br />
great design skills that had grown out of the agency culture<br />
from the 80s and 90s, but there wasn’t yet a startup culture<br />
where people were willing to take risks to follow their dreams.<br />
The first programme was in 2011 as a one-off. We now run<br />
three programmes a year.”<br />
Accelerator programme Ignite focuses on pre-seed stage businesses.<br />
In <strong>2015</strong> it expanded its programme from its Newcastle home to London<br />
and Manchester to become a nationwide operator. Back in Newcastle, it<br />
also runs the Campus North incubator. @Ignite100<br />
“We’re a venture capital firm covering the whole North East region. We focus on tech<br />
companies but we do also do non-tech and, increasingly, social investment. Newcastle is<br />
going through a fundamental transformation. I moved here in 2006 when there was very<br />
little equity investment around. There were people with great ideas, and companies spinning<br />
out of the university, but there wasn’t a great track record of turning those ideas into good,<br />
scalable businesses. What’s happened in the past 10 years is a deep change in that. We’ve<br />
got high-net-worth individuals investing in pre-seed and seed stage companies. We have the<br />
Ignite100 programme, Campus North co-working space and Dynamo now focusing on scaleup<br />
business. There’s a lot going on and a lot more people involved.”<br />
Early-stage venture capital firm Northstar backs innovative, high-growth technology businesses – including<br />
software startup Palringo and the Ignite 100 accelerator – alongside social investment activity. @NorthstarVent<br />
David Dunn<br />
Chief executive<br />
Sunderland Software<br />
City<br />
“Everywhere else seems<br />
to focus on cities,<br />
apart from in the North<br />
East, where our focus<br />
is as a broader cluster.<br />
There is an understanding<br />
across Newcastle,<br />
Gateshead, Durham and<br />
Northumberland that acting<br />
as a larger ecosystem<br />
makes much more sense.<br />
It’s more collaborative, it’s<br />
more appealing to investors<br />
and you get a bit more of a<br />
community. You will have<br />
certain niche specialities<br />
occurring in different areas:<br />
Gateshead focusing on<br />
virtual reality and augmented<br />
reality, Sunderland doing<br />
a really good job around<br />
enterprise technology and<br />
some great gaming work<br />
going on in Sunderland and<br />
Newcastle. We have good<br />
companies and strong job<br />
opportunities but people just<br />
don’t know about them. We<br />
need to have somebody at a<br />
higher stratospheric level<br />
saying there are really good<br />
things happening here.”<br />
Sunderland Software City is<br />
a publicly funded support<br />
organisation aimed at increasing<br />
and growing the software industry<br />
right across the North East of<br />
England. Sunderland is the first<br />
UK city to offer blanket superfast<br />
broadband. @SunSoftCity<br />
71
<strong>TechNation200</strong> <strong>Almanac</strong> <strong>2015</strong>/<strong>16</strong> | Norwich<br />
Business leaders in Norwich have worked hard<br />
to get the Norfolk city recognised as one of the<br />
key non-London tech clusters outside London,<br />
with a fast-growing digital sector specialising<br />
in creative media and gaming.<br />
Norwich’s economy was historically based fi rmly on<br />
manufacturing: textiles, shoemaking and mustard – the<br />
city was famously once the home of the Colman’s brand.<br />
Over time, Norwich went through a transition to a more<br />
service-based economy, with an increase in insurance fi rms<br />
and other fi nancial services companies. Aviva (formerly Norwich<br />
Union) is the largest and longest established in the city.<br />
Norwich is also associated with an innovative, creative and<br />
pioneering culture, particularly in art, literature and publishing.<br />
In 2012, it became England’s fi rst UNESCO city of literature.<br />
Today’s emerging digital sector in Norwich is closely linked to<br />
these creative sectors, with strong specialisms in content and<br />
media production and digital marketing, as well as a fast-growing<br />
game development sector. Digital businesses and jobs are part<br />
of Norwich’s strategy for the next wave of strong, high-value<br />
economic growth. Tech City UK’s <strong>2015</strong> Tech Nation report<br />
showed that there was a 21% increase in the number of digital<br />
companies incorporated in Norfolk between 2010 and 2013.<br />
Within Norwich, there are many proactive, grassroots digital<br />
meet-up groups, such as SyncDevelopHER and SyncNorwich,<br />
Norfolk Developers, Norfolk Indie Game Developers, Hot<br />
Source and Norfolk Network.<br />
Norwich has seen considerable recent investment in the<br />
infrastructure of the digital sector. In 2014, White Space was<br />
established in Norwich by Proxama as a co-working space<br />
for dynamic, high-growth digital, creative and technology<br />
businesses. Based in an old textile mill, White Space at<br />
St James Mill (pictured) is now a focal point for the digital,<br />
creative and technology community in the city.<br />
Norwich Research Park is an internationally renowned<br />
science and business community and Europe’s leading centre<br />
for research into food, health and the environment.<br />
In <strong>2015</strong> Norwich University of the Arts (NUA) opened its<br />
Ideas Factory Centre and UX Lab, which offers high-quality<br />
incubation space and support for new digital businesses.<br />
There are some well-established tech businesses like mobile<br />
proximity marketing fi rm Proxama, insurance technology solutions<br />
company Validus, multi-channel customer feedback business<br />
ServiceTick and Liftshare, the UK’s fi rst car-sharing scheme.<br />
Exciting new startups such as Supapass (connecting fans<br />
to artists) and Rainbird (using artifi cial intelligence to automate<br />
knowledge work), add to the mix.<br />
The next step for Norwich is to use its strong local digital<br />
communities and businesses to establish partnerships further<br />
afi eld – both nationally and internationally.<br />
TechCityinsider’s TechCities ambassador for Norwich is Fiona Lettice<br />
from Norwich Business School (www.uea.ac.uk/nbs).<br />
Neil Garner<br />
Founder and chief<br />
executive<br />
Proxama<br />
“We’ve been working on<br />
proximity commerce. It’s<br />
using technologies that are<br />
now in our smartphones – NFC<br />
and Bluetooth – for engaging<br />
with consumers. We cover a<br />
whole portfolio of things –<br />
from marketing, to loyalty, to<br />
payments. We’ve spent the<br />
past 10 years working with<br />
the pioneers in the space. In<br />
order for a new technology<br />
for payments to really come to market, you need a holistic<br />
audience. It’s no good if it only works on Android phones;<br />
it’s got to work on all devices. With the launch of Apple Pay<br />
– Apple was the last organisation to enable the technology<br />
– we’ve got the fundamental building blocks for payments. If<br />
you can use your mobile phone as your payment instrument,<br />
that’s totally groundbreaking because there’s no need to have<br />
a wallet.”<br />
Proxama provides mobile technology to operators and handset makers,<br />
working with card issuers to convert their plastic into mobile wallets, by<br />
harnessing near-fi eld technology and more. @Proxama<br />
James Duez<br />
Co-founder and chair, Rainbird Technologies<br />
Non-exec director, White Space<br />
“Rainbird is a very special project. It is about capturing human<br />
intelligence in software so that large organisations can be<br />
much more effi cient about applying that knowledge in a work<br />
scenario. We’re working with all sorts of interesting projects,<br />
from government and job centres through to large banks, helping<br />
them to be more effi cient and improving customer service by<br />
making software tools much smarter. Norwich has an increasingly<br />
vibrant digital creative community. White Space is a co-working<br />
space with a difference, as it<br />
has a brand. It is aimed at tech<br />
and digital creative companies.<br />
It hasn’t been over managed –<br />
nobody has tried to structure it<br />
too much. It has been allowed<br />
to evolve and it’s become very<br />
strong as a result.”<br />
Rainbird Technologies helps<br />
businesses model the concepts,<br />
relationships and business logic<br />
that drive decision making. White<br />
Space is a dedicated co-working<br />
space in Norwich to grow ideas and<br />
ambitions. @RainBirdAI<br />
72
See the full profile interviews at www.techcityinsider.net<br />
Ali Clabburn<br />
Founder and chief executive<br />
Liftshare<br />
“I was a broke student down in Bristol trying to get home to Norwich at the end of term. I<br />
couldn’t afford the train so I put up a notice in the student union. A guy offered me a lift and<br />
we had great fun. I opened up the notice board to all other students. In my final year, my<br />
friend set up a website so we built Liftshare.com that summer. It was the first sharing economy<br />
site online, and we were a social network before Facebook. Liftshare is different because we<br />
focus on helping all people share all journeys, not just long one-off trips. Startup culture has<br />
been in Norwich forever but it hasn’t been very good at coming together. Norfolk is full of<br />
micro entrepreneurs who work out of barns, sheds and small offices, but never realise that<br />
their next-door neighbour is also doing the same thing.”<br />
Liftshare is the UK’s original car-sharing startup. Founded in 1998 and based in Norwich, the company runs<br />
nearly 700 car-share schemes for corporates, universities and festivals, licensing its white-label product. It is<br />
also the UK’s biggest sharing economy website. @Liftshare<br />
John Fagan<br />
Chief technical officer, Axon Vibe<br />
Co-founder, Sync Norwich<br />
“At Axon Vibe, mapping and location are our core themes.<br />
Right now we’re focusing on our location context platform<br />
and building a consumer-facing product on top of that.<br />
We’re interested in the intelligence you can pull from location<br />
tracks. If you analyse in detail and do the data analytics on<br />
individual location tracks, you can understand a lot about<br />
a user. It’s not really big data – it’s actually small data. We<br />
are looking at how we can reinvent mapping and make it<br />
more social in real time. We’re working with a big transport<br />
company in Switzerland and some credit card suppliers to<br />
see if we can make their apps more relevant to their users,<br />
using contextual solutions.”<br />
Location-based app Axon Vibe detects and predicts human behaviour.<br />
Sync Norwich is one of the biggest tech meet-ups outside of London,<br />
with more than 900 members. @axonvibe @SyncNorwich<br />
Fiona Lettice<br />
Professor of innovation<br />
management<br />
Norwich Business<br />
School<br />
“Norwich started to<br />
recognise itself as a tech<br />
cluster around 2010 and<br />
it’s brought people together<br />
through different meet-up<br />
groups. Hot Source was<br />
founded that year, Sync<br />
Norwich in 2012 and Norfolk<br />
Developers in 2013. These<br />
have brought a sense of<br />
community. People from<br />
London, Ipswich and other<br />
places are attracted to the<br />
events here. What we’ve<br />
started to see as well is<br />
people who didn’t realise<br />
there was a tech community<br />
here wanting to come and<br />
live in Norwich and start<br />
a business. It’s definitely<br />
having an escalating effect.<br />
Norwich is strongest<br />
around the digital creative<br />
– marketing and advertising<br />
technology – but we also<br />
have quite a strong software<br />
development community, as<br />
well as a vibrant telecoms<br />
tech sector.”<br />
Lettice, an experienced academic<br />
researcher and lecturer,<br />
understands more than most the<br />
challenges facing Norwich in<br />
becoming a key UK tech cluster,<br />
pointing to the pivotal role of<br />
academic institutions like the<br />
University of East Anglia.<br />
@FLettice<br />
73
<strong>TechNation200</strong> <strong>Almanac</strong> <strong>2015</strong>/<strong>16</strong> | Oxford<br />
Michalis Papadakis<br />
Co-founder and chief executive<br />
Brainomix<br />
Oxford University’s Isis software incubator is<br />
a key player in driving the city’s tech startup<br />
successes and placing it on the UK cluster map.<br />
Oxford, home of the UK’s oldest university, has a<br />
burgeoning digital startup scene.<br />
Isis Innovation, the university’s technology transfer<br />
company, has an established incubator to support nascent<br />
software ventures emerging from the university’s increasingly<br />
prolifi c ecosystem.<br />
Since Isis opened in 2010, the pace of digital innovation<br />
has increased. By summer <strong>2015</strong>, the total number of ventures<br />
admitted to the Isis programme was 40, with 22 having reached<br />
its second phase and being incorporated as companies.<br />
Nine ventures have graduated from the programme<br />
altogether and have raised £10m between them, including<br />
Onfi do, Bounts, Brainomix, Esplorio and MeVitae (see profi les<br />
alongside).<br />
TheySay is a sentiment analysis and text analytics venture<br />
out of Oxford University’s Computer Science department.<br />
And Oxford Biochron specialises in behaviour-based user<br />
authentication.<br />
As these more mature companies take off, a new generation<br />
of ventures has taken their place and the fi rms are taking their<br />
fi rst steps.<br />
Prolifi c Academic is the world’s largest crowdsourcing<br />
community of people who love science. Researchers post<br />
studies and recruit the right participants fast.<br />
BusinessBinder is an enterprise social network that enables<br />
businesses to fi nd and connect with other credible local or<br />
global businesses on the platform using a broad range of<br />
connection tools.<br />
Singular Intelligence offers a cloud-based big-data product<br />
that empowers its customers to dynamically explore, predict and<br />
simulate business scenarios using organisational and big data.<br />
Oxpert provides online tools for small tradespeople and<br />
specifi cally gas and heating engineers to scale faster and<br />
better compete with large corporations through brand and<br />
operations management.<br />
Starticles is a platform where people can be recognised<br />
for the content they create rather than the qualifi cations they<br />
have. Users share their ideas or research, and the Starticles<br />
community rates this content.<br />
Isis maintains a rolling application process. You do not need<br />
to be based in Oxford to be supported by it but, as a universityaffi<br />
liated initiative, Isis does require that your venture has an<br />
Oxford link.<br />
TechCityinsider’s TechCities ambassador for Oxford is Roy Azoulay<br />
from Isis Software Incubator.<br />
“Strokes can be devastating<br />
and life-changing. Up to<br />
25% of patients who are<br />
eligible to receive the lifesaving<br />
benefits of established<br />
stroke treatment are missing<br />
out because worldwide there<br />
is a lack of readily available<br />
expertise to properly interpret<br />
brain CT scans. We have<br />
developed medical imaging<br />
software aimed at improving<br />
the diagnosis and treatment<br />
of stroke patients. Oxford is an ideal place for innovation; an<br />
ideal place for a startup. Having access to Isis Innovation,<br />
and Oxford University, you have access to world-class people<br />
from both science and business. You have the support of<br />
experienced individuals and teams that can give you the<br />
foundation you need as a startup.”<br />
Oxford-based medtech startup Brainomix works to improve the treatment<br />
of those affected by strokes – one of the great killers of our time – by<br />
deploying medical imaging software that evaluates damage on CT scans<br />
to ensure accurate and diagnosis, within the critical four-hour timescale<br />
needed to boost chances of recovery. @Brainomix<br />
Husayn Kassai<br />
Co-founder and chief executive<br />
Onfido<br />
“At university we were<br />
background checked for<br />
internships at different<br />
banks. It was a paper-based<br />
and unnecessarily cumbersome<br />
process. We felt that, from an<br />
applicant perspective, there<br />
didn’t seem to be a working<br />
model and, from a client<br />
perspective, there was clear<br />
scope to improve. We started<br />
to develop the fi rst version of<br />
the technology to automate this<br />
background-checking process to reduce turnaround times, cut<br />
the cost and also lower the amount of human touch required<br />
and thereby increase quality by stripping out the human error.<br />
Many sharing economy platforms have raised a lot of investment<br />
themselves, so when the VCs did due diligence on them, they<br />
could see that a key enabler for these businesses was Onfi do.”<br />
Oxford-founded background checks business Onfi do offers automated<br />
services for employers. Onfi do’s investors include lastminute.com<br />
founder Brent Hoberman and the co-founders of Blablacar, Onefinestay<br />
and Artfi nder. @Onfido<br />
74
See the full profile interviews at www.techcityinsider.net<br />
Tim Fernando<br />
Founder and chief executive<br />
Espolorio<br />
“Esplorio makes it really simple for people to keep track of the places they’ve been, their<br />
experiences, photographs they’ve taken, the restaurants they’ve eaten in and the hotels<br />
they’ve stayed in. People want more detail than a standard photo album can provide. With<br />
all the existing solutions, like blogs or trip journalling applications, you have to put in a lot<br />
of effort to get an end result. Esplorio has seen the boom of Oxford, which is a hub of very<br />
intelligent people. It’s a great networking area. Oxford Geek Night event has been running for<br />
many years and is very popular. Every two months, typically at the Jericho Tavern, maybe 200<br />
people turn up for an evening of talks and beer and wine.”<br />
Esplorio is looking to make it easier for people to record and share their travels with friends and family. They can<br />
use their Facebook, Instagram, Foursquare and other social media accounts to map out their travels. @esplorio<br />
Riham Satti<br />
Co-founder<br />
MeVitae<br />
“They say 80% of employee turnover is down to bad hiring.<br />
Recruiters usually write a job description, post it to job<br />
boards, get a bunch of candidates, flick through their<br />
CVs one at a time – spending about six seconds on each<br />
one – and pick the candidate they like. Nine months later,<br />
the candidate has been fired or has left. A lot of time, energy<br />
and money is lost in the process. We’ve automated the talent<br />
acquisition process. We have a hiring algorithm that finds the<br />
best candidates, shortlists them and shows the top 10 to the<br />
companies. It is eight times faster and a third cheaper than<br />
doing it manually.”<br />
MeVitae helps companies fi nd talent and vice versa by automating key<br />
parts of the process through a candidate selection algorithm. Candidates<br />
can sign up for a digital CV, while recruiters can use its intelligent job<br />
description maker. @MeVitae<br />
John Stuart<br />
Founder and chief<br />
executive<br />
Bounts<br />
“Bounts works simply by<br />
you proving that you’ve<br />
done exercise. With<br />
something like a Fitbit, you<br />
have to do more than 7,000<br />
steps a day. We convert this<br />
into points – just like air<br />
miles – which you can then<br />
spend on vouchers in our<br />
shop. Our vouchers include<br />
proper £5 cash vouchers for<br />
supermarkets like Morrisons<br />
or Waitrose as well as other<br />
high-street shops. I did a<br />
postgraduate at Oxford while<br />
developing this business<br />
idea. The most attractive<br />
thing to me about going into<br />
Oxford University’s incubator<br />
was the fact that we could<br />
use the university name to<br />
prove we were legitimate.<br />
From that moment, we really<br />
accelerated because people<br />
trusted we were going to be<br />
around for a while.”<br />
Bounts is an exercise reward<br />
programme and motivational tool<br />
for everybody. It is free to use and<br />
anyone can join and earn points<br />
from activities tracked by fi tness<br />
apps, devices and gyms.<br />
@bountsit<br />
75
<strong>TechNation200</strong> <strong>Almanac</strong> <strong>2015</strong>/<strong>16</strong> | Sheffield<br />
Paul Brooks<br />
Co-founder<br />
Twile<br />
With an industrial history forged in steel,<br />
Sheffield is today one of our great creative<br />
and entrepreneurial cities – with a vibrant tech<br />
startup culture to match.<br />
The city of Sheffi eld was forged though grit and steel. With<br />
the Made in Sheffi eld brand emblazoned on its cutlery, the<br />
city’s mark of excellence became known across the world.<br />
That spirit of manufacturing and ‘making’ now sees Sheffi eld<br />
emerging as one of the UK’s great tech cities.<br />
This focus of making has massively infl uenced how the<br />
city has embraced digital tech as a tool to continue to make<br />
products of real excellence.<br />
Access Space is one of the very fi rst of the generation of<br />
Maker Spaces established in 2000 by artist James Wallbank.<br />
The space uses recycled computers and offers people from<br />
all backgrounds and experiences access to technology and<br />
support to learn coding skills.<br />
The PiBow case is a product created for Raspberry Pi and<br />
was made over a weekend, spawning a company that now<br />
supports an incredibly diverse community of makers using<br />
coding and basic computer kits to build new products.<br />
Just as important has been the growth of a number of large<br />
tech companies that were born in Sheffi eld or adopted the city<br />
as their home. PlusNet, WanDisco, Servelec, Localphone and<br />
Sumo all invested in the workforce and built up large teams of<br />
software engineers.<br />
Startup Weekend, at the University of Sheffi eld, has become<br />
an important breeding ground for students and professionals to<br />
create new companies.<br />
Sheffi eld is also the chosen home for Dotforge, co-founded<br />
by a group of entrepreneurs and angels including Lee Strafford,<br />
Jon Burrows and Julie Kenny to bring together the ecosystem<br />
around tech startups. The programme attracts outstanding<br />
founders from around the world.<br />
The tech industry also benefi ts from two strong universities,<br />
with over 8,000 students enrolled in creative and digital<br />
subjects.<br />
To build the ecosystem Digital Sheffi eld has been established<br />
as the voice of the local industry, working as a focal point for<br />
many of the established companies.<br />
A much larger dedicated space to support the convergence<br />
of the maker and tech community is now becoming a reality,<br />
with Maker Hub awarded £3.5m by the government in the<br />
<strong>2015</strong> budget.<br />
TechCityinsider’s TechCities ambassador for Sheffi eld is Emma<br />
Cheshire of the Dotforge accelerator (www.dotforge.com).<br />
“There is increasingly often<br />
one person in a family who<br />
spends their spare time<br />
researching their family tree,<br />
doing research in libraries<br />
and online to dig up birth,<br />
marriage and death records and<br />
collate the family tree. What<br />
Twile is trying to do is to help<br />
family historians to share the<br />
interesting information that they<br />
fi nd with the rest of the family.<br />
Twile lets them create a visual<br />
timeline of their family history.<br />
I’m not a genealogist but I have<br />
three people in my family who are. Their research is not in an<br />
interesting or digestible format. I have two young children and it<br />
occurred to me that they will probably never have access to or<br />
an understanding of that family history unless we fi nd a way of<br />
storing it and passing it forward.”<br />
Twile helps family historians make their discoveries more engaging to<br />
the wider family – especially younger people. It lets them create visual<br />
timelines, allowing family to contribute their own content. @TwileTweets<br />
Carl Cavers<br />
Managing director<br />
Sumo Digital<br />
“You are forever learning new experiences. When I became<br />
involved, the PlayStation 1 was about to launch and back<br />
then teams had gone from one or two to five or six. We<br />
now have teams of over 100<br />
people working on projects.<br />
The scale is immense. The<br />
technology has moved on, not<br />
just in terms of the fidelity of the<br />
games, but also the mechanics<br />
of how that is delivered. The<br />
sophistication has changed<br />
beyond belief. That’s one of the<br />
most exciting things about the<br />
industry that we are involved in. It<br />
always remains cutting-edge. We<br />
are not chasing anything. We are<br />
constantly trying to optimise and<br />
it keeps it fresh. Every few years<br />
there is something new. We have<br />
lots of little sayings and one is that we are only as good as<br />
the last game we release.”<br />
Sumo, an award-winning game development studio, has more than<br />
260 people working from its Sheffi eld base (with another 50 in India),<br />
focusing on console games, including franchises like Sony’s Little Big<br />
Planet. @SumoDigitalLtd<br />
76
See the full profile interviews at www.techcityinsider.net<br />
Aldo Monteforte<br />
Founder and chief<br />
executive<br />
The Floow<br />
“Our mission is to make<br />
mobility safer and<br />
cheaper. We do that<br />
using technology called<br />
telematics, collecting data<br />
from sensors about individual<br />
mobility. Smartphones<br />
can be sensors, or it could<br />
be technology installed<br />
by drivers or fitted by car<br />
manufacturers. We specialise<br />
in collecting, cleansing,<br />
standardising and enriching<br />
this data with contextual<br />
information, like atmospheric<br />
weather, complexity of road<br />
infrastructure, curvature<br />
of the road, or presence of<br />
pubs or schools. We turn this<br />
data into insights and scores for insurance professionals. They use our insights for better<br />
understanding the risk of their portfolio, for offering discounts and, ultimately, for pricing<br />
insurance. We also use this data to build services that are delivered to end users, services that<br />
are designed to educate drivers to become responsible.”<br />
The Floow uses long-distance information transmission to provide motor insurers and auto organisations with<br />
actionable analytics to increase customer loyalty and return on investment. It monitors driver behaviour and car<br />
safety. @thefloowltd<br />
Giles Moore<br />
Chief executive<br />
Airstoc<br />
“Airstoc is a marketplace for<br />
drone-related activity. We<br />
have two sides. One, which is<br />
the main focus going forward, is<br />
allowing for more bespoke jobs<br />
to take place. So anyone from<br />
anywhere, in any industry can book<br />
a drone job anywhere in the world<br />
through our platform. The other part<br />
is the stock photography, stock<br />
footage side of things, which is<br />
where our USP is. It is all related<br />
to drones and 90% of the stuff we<br />
have on there is exclusive to Airstoc.<br />
We want it to be so quick that if<br />
someone wants to book a drone for their wedding, or do some mapping or surveying, they can come<br />
through and choose a package and within a matter of days or weeks, they’ll have that fi nished and<br />
there’s a set price for it.”<br />
The world’s fi rst dedicated marketplace for the professional drone industry, Airstoc connects customers with<br />
drone operators around the world with a simple platform that enables customers to book bespoke work and<br />
source drone footage. @airstoc<br />
Paul Rawlings<br />
Founder and chief<br />
executive<br />
Deliverd<br />
“We deliver good food<br />
to busy people and<br />
we’re solely focused on<br />
the lunchtime market . We<br />
outsource all our production<br />
so we actually don’t own any<br />
of the facilities that produce<br />
our food. Our Michelintrained<br />
chef walks into a<br />
local kitchen. We train them<br />
how to produce our menu,<br />
we create the demand, send<br />
the demand to the kitchen<br />
and then our network picks it<br />
up and delivers it just in time<br />
for the customers’ lunch. We<br />
are a social venture with a<br />
social mission. We outsource<br />
all our production to local<br />
businesses, so we’re putting<br />
money back into the local<br />
economy but we also work<br />
with social impact kitchens.<br />
In Sheffield, we’re working<br />
with the Cathedral Arts<br />
Project kitchen.”<br />
Sheffi eld-based food delivery<br />
service Deliverd was inspired by<br />
the Indian dabbawallah system,<br />
which seamlessly delivers<br />
home-cooked food from home<br />
to the workplace. The startup<br />
is on a social and eco mission,<br />
using local food producers and<br />
delivering fresh by pushbike only.<br />
@EatDeliverd<br />
77
<strong>TechNation200</strong> <strong>Almanac</strong> <strong>2015</strong>/<strong>16</strong> | South Wales<br />
Neil Cocker<br />
Co-founder, Dizzyjam<br />
Co-founder, Cardiff<br />
Start<br />
The South Wales cities of Cardiff, Swansea<br />
and Newport form an emerging startup cluster<br />
that is helping to replace jobs lost from the<br />
region’s old industries.<br />
The industrial past of South Wales is well known. Tiger<br />
Bay was once home to the busiest docks in the world,<br />
exporting coal and steel from the area to the world. And<br />
the surrounding valleys contain one of the world’s best-known<br />
coalfi elds, exploited for centuries by the mining industry.<br />
Now the Welsh economy is looking to another sector for<br />
growth. Led by specialisms in sports and health tech as well as<br />
data management, the digital companies springing up across<br />
the cluster are promising high returns.<br />
This growth has not gone unnoticed: Cardiff is the fastestgrowing<br />
core city in the UK and is also the fastest-growing<br />
capital city in Europe.<br />
The talent pool is of exceptional quality, with three universities<br />
and around 45,000 students in Cardiff alone. Combined with<br />
the low cost of overheads, this makes for a very attractive<br />
environment for startups.<br />
What South Wales is missing is a tech legacy. There is no<br />
long-standing culture of tech ingrained into the collective<br />
consciousness, and this is where other UK clusters have an<br />
advantage. One of the consequences of this is a scarcity of<br />
informed and experienced investors in the newly fl ourishing<br />
tech sector.<br />
Hence Cardiff Start was born: an unfunded volunteer<br />
organisation to provide a community for tech companies in the<br />
Cardiff city region. It provides mentorship, business advice and<br />
meet-ups for those working in the tech community.<br />
Alongside Cardiff Start, organisations like TechHub in<br />
Swansea and Welsh ICE, a co-working space in Caerphilly,<br />
which is home to more than 85 early-stage companies, are<br />
working hard to provide targeted support for the thriving tech<br />
community.<br />
The sports and health tech sectors show real promise. With<br />
everything a sports person could possibly want, from a Ryder<br />
Cup golf course, Ashes cricket ground to a Rugby World Cup<br />
stadium, South Wales is the perfect place for testing sports<br />
technology.<br />
The growth of the region and government investment in the<br />
Life Sciences Hub and Research Centre on Cardiff Bay have<br />
provided a great opportunity for startups specialising in sports<br />
tech and health tec h.<br />
TechCityinsider’s TechCities ambassador for South Wales is Neil<br />
Cocker from Cardiff Start (www.cardiffstart.com)<br />
“After graduation I had a<br />
record label with some<br />
friends. The idea for Dizzyjam<br />
came from having a big enough<br />
fan base that wanted to buy our<br />
merchandise but not having the<br />
infrastructure or capital to take<br />
advantage of that. We were<br />
teaching ourselves to print t-shirts and were getting clients. I<br />
realised that we were a print on-demand e-commerce business<br />
that happened to be servicing the music industry. I was doing<br />
huge amounts of reading of blogs and Twitter feeds about tech<br />
startups. I didn’t see any visible community or support for tech in<br />
Cardiff, so I wrote a long blog post about it. It rallied a few people<br />
to get in touch. We ended up having a few coffees, then meetups,<br />
then a Facebook group, then a newsletter. It’s snowballed into a<br />
strong community.”<br />
T-shirt printing business turned e-commerce platform Dizzyjam is trying<br />
to change the nature of music merchandising. Former DJ Cocker has<br />
turned his attention to helping grow the South Welsh tech scene by<br />
creating Cardiff Start. @Dizzyjam<br />
Warren Fauvel<br />
Chief executive<br />
Nudjed<br />
“We work with large corporations to figure out how to<br />
make health and wellness more strategic. We help them<br />
to measure workforce health quickly. We’ve developed<br />
some interesting tools that learn and create insights around<br />
health and wellness from<br />
workforces. Then we provide<br />
a tailored communications<br />
platform that talks to users<br />
and we individualise that<br />
health content that they<br />
might want to share with their<br />
workforces and so, hopefully,<br />
contribute to more sustainable<br />
or efficient health and<br />
wellness programmes. We are<br />
vanilla webtech and we work<br />
via email and text message.<br />
You can launch with iOS and<br />
Android apps but actually a<br />
lot of the larger workforces we look at use BlackBerry and<br />
Windows. You have a broad range of devices so we went<br />
tech-agnostic.”<br />
Health technology platform Nudjed, based in Caerphilly, measures the<br />
health of employees then tailors advice to suit, using an algorithm that<br />
recommends behaviour changes. @nudjed<br />
78
See the full profile interviews at www.techcityinsider.net<br />
Tom Gallard<br />
Founder<br />
Pwinty<br />
“I was looking for something like Pwinty and it didn’t exist. I wanted<br />
to add photo printing into an app that I was building. We have an<br />
API and receive orders through th at from apps or websites. We look<br />
at those orders then farm them out to the right printers in the country<br />
closest to the delivery address. The end customer gets the order and<br />
we just take a cut of the profit on every order. The community in Cardiff<br />
is really supportive. There are organisations like Cardiff Start, which<br />
offers advice on fundraising, customer acquisition or office space. What<br />
we’re really missing is that generation of people who have sold their<br />
businesses, who have really been through it and are able to offer us<br />
good advice.”<br />
Global white-label printing service Pwinty helps businesses to sell printed products,<br />
whether they be photo prints, phone cases, magnets or posters, through their app or<br />
website. @PwintyApp<br />
Ollie<br />
Gardener<br />
Co-founder<br />
NoddlePod<br />
“We have a<br />
business school in<br />
France that runs<br />
a very entrepreneurial<br />
leadership development<br />
programme. Our<br />
software helps it<br />
connect with its<br />
students and the<br />
leaders on the<br />
programme in a<br />
community of mutual<br />
support. They can<br />
share knowledge,<br />
experiences,<br />
frustrations and<br />
lessons learned online<br />
in a supportive, trusted<br />
community. We charge<br />
our business schools<br />
a yearly f ee to have a<br />
number of users on<br />
their system and they<br />
can have as many groups as they want and to structure those<br />
groups differently for each course. We provide a lot of facilitation<br />
and guidance and will follow up on a customer once a month.<br />
To be in a community like Welsh ICE tech hub has been hugely<br />
valuable and it reaches beyond the building and into Cardiff and<br />
South Wales more generally.”<br />
NoddlePod’s peer-to-peer learning platform is designed to help<br />
business schools and their students connect, share and learn from each<br />
other. Gardener co-founded the business with her husband and runs it<br />
from Caerphilly’s Welsh ICE co-working space. @NoddlePod<br />
Jason Smith<br />
Chief executive<br />
Blurrt<br />
“We are able to do very accurate, high-level, sentiment<br />
and emotion analysis – and in real time. It is a crowded<br />
marketplace but as far am I’m aware, there are very few<br />
companies around who are able to do that. In fact, I’m not<br />
sure anyone else does emotional analysis in real time other<br />
than us. We did a couple of the leader debates during the<br />
general election. We ran live sentiment Twitter worms for<br />
each of the leader debates and they ran on a sentiment<br />
graph, which we then embedded on ITV’s website. This gave<br />
the audience’s reaction to each leader.”<br />
Newport-based social media analytics platform Blurrt allows customers<br />
to understand social conversations by collecting and curating data and<br />
making sense of audience reactions. It aims to be a must-have tool for<br />
the broadcast media industry. @BlurrtUK<br />
79
<strong>TechNation200</strong> <strong>Almanac</strong> <strong>2015</strong>/<strong>16</strong> | Thames Valley<br />
Reading and the surrounding Thames Valley<br />
have long been home to big enterprise<br />
and consumer tech like Microsoft, Dell and<br />
Symantec. Can it now claim a position as a<br />
UK startup cluster?<br />
Can the Thames Valley consider itself to be the UK’s<br />
Silicon Valley? While it is rich in established techbased<br />
businesses such as global giants Microsoft, Dell,<br />
Oracle, Symantec and Verizon, the question the region now<br />
faces is how to harness new, disruptive thinking.<br />
In <strong>2015</strong>, Tech City UK reported that when looking at the<br />
number of digital jobs, Reading came in fourth – behind inner<br />
London, Bristol and Bath and Greater Manchester – with<br />
54,527.<br />
Reading’s location in the M4 enterprise belt, surrounded<br />
by traditional telecommunications HQs, means that one in<br />
fi ve businesses there is a tech fi rm. Despite this, skills and<br />
employability remain the biggest challenges facing Thames<br />
Valley tech companies.<br />
In 2014, Adam Clark and Louize Clarke set up ConnectTVT,<br />
with a clear mission to put the Thames Valley back on the tech<br />
cluster map. It is working to develop partnerships to harness<br />
the support needed to unlock the region’s technology and<br />
startup potential and talent. Funding, grassroots support and<br />
nurturing entrepreneurship are its priorities.<br />
ConnectTVT works out of the innovation hub GROW@<br />
Green Park, offering a fl exible, personal and buzzing co-working<br />
space. GROW aims to bring together like-minded businesses<br />
to meet, network and collaborate.<br />
The Festival of Digital Disruption is a big item on the Reading<br />
calendar. From a digital skills day and the inaugural GROW<br />
Film Festival & Awards Ceremony through to the launch of a<br />
10-week startup bootcamp and drone time trials, <strong>2015</strong>’s weeklong<br />
event celebrated all things digital in the Thames Valley.<br />
Thames Valley Tech Week followed in November <strong>2015</strong>.<br />
Leading tech specialist law fi rm Pitmans has a<br />
long-established commitment to supporting the<br />
entrepreneurial community across the Thames Valley<br />
and beyond. Its drop-in sessions enable startups to<br />
access Pitmans’ advice on key legal issues to be aware of<br />
when setting up and launching a venture.<br />
TechCityinsider’s TechCities ambassador for Reading and<br />
the Thames Valley is Louize Clarke of Thames Valley TVT<br />
(www.connecttvt.co.uk).<br />
Louize Clarke<br />
Co-founder<br />
ConnectTVT<br />
“I’ve been in the Thames Valley all my life and felt the area<br />
needed a wake-up call because we were disappearing off the<br />
UK cluster maps. I wanted to bring back some attention to a<br />
region I’m passionate about. It has a lot of interesting companies.<br />
I found a co-founder, Adam Clark, and I drove around the region<br />
for six months saying, ‘Shall we get the cluster back on the map?’<br />
Adam built a marvellous website and we launched with no money.<br />
We’re going to be a noise-making machine shouting about the<br />
Thames Valley, fi nding startups and building the cluster statistics.<br />
The day after we launched I got a bit bored and thought, ‘What do<br />
we do next?’ So we launched Thames Valley Tech Week.”<br />
Reading-based tech accelerator ConnectTVT is dedicated to raising<br />
the profi le of the Thames Valley’s incredible entrepreneurial talent and<br />
resources. It is based in a pop-up co-working space at wind-turbinepowered<br />
Green Park. @ConnectTVT<br />
Alex Jacques<br />
Managing director<br />
Creative Jar<br />
“Twyford was a convenient place for us to start a business.<br />
I live in High Wycombe and our other co-founder lives in<br />
Marlow. Twyford came to our attention because of the<br />
rail links into London – we’re only 35 minutes away from the<br />
city – which is incredibly convenient. We’re also slap bang<br />
in the middle of the M4 corridor. We work with a few lo cal<br />
businesses and it’s really worked for us. If you look at who’s<br />
local to the area – Microsoft, Oracle, CGI and Adobe – there’s<br />
a definite technology focus in this<br />
area. When we set up Creative<br />
Jar I was working in an e-learning<br />
consultancy as a Flash designer<br />
and developer. I enjoyed that work<br />
and it made me realise there was<br />
a different way of doing things that<br />
made the most of technology.”<br />
Creative Jar is a veteran independent<br />
digital agency based in the Berkshire<br />
village of Twyford, which is surprisingly<br />
close to some large technology players. Its<br />
own Tudor building is an unlikely HQ for<br />
its tech-driven business. @creativejar<br />
80
See the full profile interviews at www.techcityinsider.net<br />
Adam Smith<br />
Owner<br />
Rawnet<br />
“I’ve come from a product background<br />
where conversion is important. Yes, I love<br />
great graphics, yes I still get excited and<br />
yes I’m quite geeky about tech. But I’m<br />
still very commercial, so how much<br />
revenue we are driving per visitor<br />
is still very key to everything we<br />
do. Rawnet itself wasn’t started<br />
by me but by Ross Williams in his<br />
bedroom when he was at university<br />
20 years ago now. After Ross left<br />
t o do the dating side of things [at<br />
Venntro], we sat down, thought<br />
about who we were, what clients<br />
we were interested in and it<br />
was more or less starting a<br />
new agency. We started from<br />
scratch. It gave me a sense of<br />
owning it and moving forward<br />
with something that I could<br />
feel more part of.”<br />
Ascot-based Rawnet has<br />
carved a niche in the supercompetitive<br />
digital agency<br />
market by offering its corporate<br />
media clients highly usable web<br />
products backed by heavy-tech backend<br />
build, responding to a tech-savvy<br />
client base with higher expections than<br />
ever. @Rawnet<br />
Chris Sykes<br />
Chief executive<br />
Volume<br />
“I incorporated<br />
Volume in 1997<br />
when all the big<br />
US hardware and<br />
software companies<br />
were coming to the<br />
area. HP came in, then<br />
Microsoft, Oracle and<br />
Dell. The internet was<br />
emerging. Dell was the<br />
innovator in that space<br />
at the time. They were<br />
getting their senior<br />
execs focused on how<br />
to web-enable their<br />
business. We were<br />
early transitioners into<br />
the online world and<br />
developed websites,<br />
campaign microsites<br />
and landing pads.<br />
Reading has been central to that. All our clients were 10<br />
minutes from us. It was really easy to service. We didn’t have<br />
go into town or spend ages on the M4. At that time all these<br />
US companies were growing, expanding into EMEA and<br />
beyond and we hung off the back off that.”<br />
Award-winning Volume is a global provider of digital content, technology<br />
and innovation. It was named the UK’s most innovative digital media<br />
company in the <strong>2015</strong> Global Business Excellence awards.<br />
@VolumeLtd<br />
Ross Williams<br />
Founder and chief executive<br />
Venntro Media Group (formerly Global Personals)<br />
“We are the largest privately owned dating company in Europe.<br />
Many people haven’t heard of us because most of our revenue<br />
comes from white-label sites. We’re the guys who run sites<br />
on behalf of newspapers, magazines and radio stations. We work<br />
behind the scenes, putting our partners’ brands fi rst. We run<br />
the technology, database, customer care and payment systems<br />
behind those sites through our application, whitelabeldating.com. I<br />
founded the business in 2003 with my business partner Steve<br />
Pammenter. I was running a digital agency and in the down time<br />
we came up with the idea of a white-label dating business. The<br />
real cost of an online dating business is acquiring the customer<br />
and the beauty of a white-label model is that cost becomes the<br />
responsibility of partners.”<br />
Venntro – rebranded from Global Personals in <strong>2015</strong> – is a littleknown<br />
but highly successful online dating site business, licensing an<br />
impressive 25,000 white-label sites on its platform and generating<br />
£50m in revenue in <strong>2015</strong>. @venntro<br />
81
<strong>TechNation200</strong> <strong>Almanac</strong> <strong>2015</strong>/<strong>16</strong> | Partners<br />
Students put City first in capital of tech<br />
City University London is a<br />
leading global university<br />
with origins providing<br />
high-quality education relevant to<br />
business and the professions in<br />
London dating back <strong>16</strong>0 years.<br />
Like the diverse districts<br />
around our campus centres, in<br />
Clerkenwell, Old Street, Farringdon<br />
and the northern City of London,<br />
the University has moved with<br />
the times. City has increased<br />
its commitment to academic<br />
excellence, including innovative<br />
research, while remaining focused<br />
on the business and professional<br />
sectors that shape our locality.<br />
These days, alongside wellknown<br />
Cass Business School,<br />
the University also includes a<br />
School of Mathematics, Computer<br />
Science and Engineering; the City<br />
Law School; a School of Social<br />
Sciences; and a School of Health<br />
Sciences. From this broad base,<br />
City caters to those interested in<br />
the creative, government, health<br />
and technology professions, as well<br />
as the classic London destinations<br />
of business services, fi nancial and<br />
legal professions.<br />
In a typical year our student<br />
community numbers 18,000, of<br />
whom 5,000 are at Cass.<br />
With the rise of London’s<br />
digital business sector, and the<br />
expansion of Tech City to become<br />
the tech capital of Europe, many<br />
students have found City’s lively<br />
and direct connections with this<br />
creative engine of commerce have<br />
transformed their time at university.<br />
In <strong>2015</strong>, City was rated the<br />
top university in London for<br />
student satisfaction (National<br />
Student Survey, <strong>2015</strong>). At the<br />
same time, participation in our<br />
enterprise education activities,<br />
aimed at developing students’<br />
entrepreneurial insight and<br />
capability, surged to record levels.<br />
The CityStarters programme,<br />
which offers City students a<br />
range of free extra-curricular<br />
activities, resources and skills<br />
development opportunities for their<br />
entrepreneurship and employability<br />
journey, has gone from strength<br />
to strength. It has been supported<br />
by Tech City entrepreneurs,<br />
membership bodies and networks,<br />
our London alumni, and corporate<br />
partners. Partners include Unruly<br />
Ltd, the viral video specialist,<br />
whose founders and staff helped<br />
City academics create the pop-up<br />
business school City Unrulyversity.<br />
Many business partners also back<br />
an annual business competition,<br />
CitySpark, as well as a range of insyllabus<br />
activities to boost students’<br />
experience and readiness for<br />
technology-enabled workplaces.<br />
On our MSc Data Science<br />
programme, for example, students<br />
can meet industry visitors via Data<br />
Bites, a series that has attracted<br />
companies and organisations that<br />
showcase their needs for advanced<br />
analytics and visualisation to solve<br />
data challenges.<br />
Tech City companies have also<br />
stepped up to meet students taking<br />
the MICL (Masters in Innovation,<br />
Creativity and Leadership), a<br />
ground-breaking course anchored<br />
by Cass Business School.<br />
For more information, email<br />
strategic partnerships manager<br />
Andrew Huddart at a.huddart@<br />
city.ac.uk<br />
Supporting you to build billion-pound businesses<br />
Congratulations to all<br />
those featured in the<br />
<strong>TechNation200</strong> <strong>Almanac</strong><br />
for <strong>2015</strong>! The quality of the people<br />
profi led in this <strong>Almanac</strong>, together<br />
with the alumni from previous<br />
years, clearly demonstrates the<br />
current growth and potential of the<br />
UK technology sector.<br />
Business-minded technologists<br />
have always hatched grand plans<br />
for global business empires. Where<br />
it used to take decades to make<br />
an impact globally, today it can be<br />
more or less instantaneous. This<br />
creates threats and opportunities.<br />
Scaling operations and teams<br />
Depending on their level of<br />
maturity, the challenge for<br />
companies in the space differs, but<br />
the principle remains the same:<br />
grow or die. To be the next billionpound<br />
tech brand, CEOs need to<br />
scale and normalise faster than<br />
rivals – without compromising the<br />
DNA of the business.<br />
Raising the capital you need<br />
Ongoing access to fi nance is a key<br />
issue for high-growth businesses.<br />
Those that lack fi nancial fi repower<br />
may fi nd their growth constrained.<br />
Others may encounter problems<br />
with cashfl ow during day-to-day<br />
operations. At the same time, the<br />
funding landscape has changed<br />
drastically since the fi nancial crisis<br />
of 2008 – and continues to evolve.<br />
Understanding how to navigate<br />
through an evolving ecosystem of<br />
funding options is key.<br />
Keeping pace with tax to<br />
support growth aspirations<br />
When several world-leading tech<br />
companies made front-page news<br />
for their tax affairs in 2013, nobody<br />
in the business world was left<br />
in any doubt: tax matters more<br />
than ever to today’s ambitious<br />
companies. The government<br />
is creating a tax system that<br />
encourages innovation and<br />
entrepreneurship and is attracting<br />
investment and talent to the UK.<br />
Positive approach to regulation<br />
Tech companies must build into<br />
their products the functionality<br />
and capability to comply with a<br />
large and diverse set of confl icting<br />
international standards. They must<br />
give customers confi dence that<br />
their services and products are<br />
secure, protect their privacy and<br />
support compliance with other<br />
emerging standards. And if that<br />
isn’t enough, tech companies need<br />
to protect their own infrastructure<br />
and data as much as, if not more<br />
than, any other organisation.<br />
Infrastructure fit for purpose<br />
With rapid expansion comes the<br />
need to rationalise infrastructure<br />
fast – particularly after establishing<br />
a presence in a new market. If<br />
companies do not invest time and<br />
resources in making infrastructure<br />
more effi cient – eliminating<br />
redundancies in processes, systems<br />
and the operating structure – they<br />
will not only face signifi cant costs<br />
later on but it will slow them down.<br />
Scaling for tomorrow<br />
Our technology industry specialists<br />
can work with you to scale your<br />
business. Helping you to plan for<br />
growth; adapt your processes<br />
and co ntrols for a changing<br />
business model; manage risk;<br />
meet regulatory requirements and<br />
develop growth strategies. We<br />
focus on dynamic, high-growth<br />
companies. More than any other<br />
industry, our strategy directly<br />
aligns with the industry’s critical<br />
measures of success: growth.<br />
To learn how we can help you<br />
build for the future, email Steve<br />
Leith, UK media and technology<br />
director, at steven.leith@uk.gt.com<br />
83
Get in touch<br />
020 7040 0927<br />
cass-masters@city.ac.uk<br />
@creativity_city #theMICL<br />
www.cass.city.ac.uk/msc-creativity
<strong>TechNation200</strong> <strong>Almanac</strong> <strong>2015</strong>/<strong>16</strong> | Partners<br />
Put IP strategy at the heart of business<br />
So how was <strong>2015</strong> for you?<br />
Here at Williams Powell,<br />
we have had a busy year<br />
protecting and enforcing our<br />
clients’ technological innovation<br />
and branding.<br />
Some highlights include:<br />
•<br />
Filing patent applications for<br />
many startups in fi elds as diverse<br />
as:<br />
• Flood management systems<br />
• Improved domain name<br />
registration systems<br />
• Electrical cable joint protectors<br />
• Thermal treatment devices for<br />
sports injuries<br />
• Internet of things and app<br />
control technologies<br />
• Helping a jewellery business<br />
to face off threats from a major<br />
auction house, and negotiating a<br />
co-existence agreement<br />
The technology and investment sectors have shown strong growth in <strong>2015</strong>. As Williams Powell<br />
looks forward to 20<strong>16</strong>, it reminds us that an active intellectual property strategy is the key to<br />
successfully leveraging innovation.<br />
•<br />
Filing a series of patent<br />
applications for Vantablack, the<br />
world’s darkest material<br />
•<br />
Enforcing the Crittall trade mark<br />
on behalf of Crittall Windows<br />
•<br />
Assisting a UK medical devices<br />
client in its acquisition of the IP of a<br />
US company.<br />
These clients understand that<br />
strong legal protection of their<br />
innovation and branding pays<br />
dividends when it comes to<br />
attracting investment, securing<br />
market position and, ultimately,<br />
increasing profi ts.<br />
Questions to ask yourself as you<br />
plan for next year:<br />
•<br />
Have you carried out an IP<br />
audit?<br />
Have you registered any IP?<br />
•<br />
Have you ensured that the IP<br />
that does exist is actually owned by<br />
your company?<br />
•<br />
Have you carried out due<br />
diligence to ensure you are free to<br />
launch your product?<br />
•<br />
Do you have an IP strategy in<br />
place?<br />
Investors don’t expect you to<br />
have a fully fl edged IP portfolio<br />
from day one.<br />
They understand that a startup<br />
cannot possibly have the same<br />
approach to IP as a FTSE-100<br />
company. What they do expect,<br />
however, is for you to recognise the<br />
value of IP, to have asked the right<br />
questions, and to have in place<br />
an appropriate (and developing)<br />
IP strategy tailored to suit your<br />
company as it stands right now.<br />
If you would like our help putting<br />
in place an IP strategy for the new<br />
year, please contact Ian Tollett (ian.<br />
tollett@williamspowell.com) quoting<br />
#IPresolution for an hour’s free<br />
advice to get yo u ready for 20<strong>16</strong>.<br />
85
The Future. Faster.<br />
Can you benefit from being better connected?<br />
Join the network and find out.<br />
— Connect with 60,000+ members across all industries<br />
and technologies<br />
— Access expertise about projects, markets and research<br />
— Connect to UK and EU public funding calls and programmes<br />
— Engage with disruptive technologies in specialist groups<br />
— Collaborate with industry and the research base<br />
— Get help to build the business case for investment<br />
— Develop more sustainable business models<br />
ktn-uk.org<br />
@KTNUK
<strong>TechNation200</strong> <strong>Almanac</strong> <strong>2015</strong>/<strong>16</strong> | Partners<br />
12 months of innovation and change<br />
Vitamin T has been a partner<br />
of TechCityinsider for the<br />
past three years, as we<br />
believe in recognising exceptional<br />
talent in our peers as well as in the<br />
talent we represent.<br />
Vitamin T is a talent agency<br />
for digital creatives. We are a<br />
division of Aquent, created<br />
to exclusively meet the<br />
unique needs of ad<br />
agencies, startups, midsized<br />
companies and<br />
the digital creatives we<br />
all love.<br />
We are all about<br />
helping companies adapt<br />
to change, fi nd new ways to<br />
work, and stay competitive. We<br />
offer creative talent a broad<br />
range of services, from portfolio<br />
reviews, expert interviews to<br />
free online courses. This helps<br />
global companies and creative<br />
agencies add technical expertise<br />
to their marketing and creative<br />
departments, increase the<br />
bandwidth of their in-house teams,<br />
and more. With a notable client<br />
list, international talent network,<br />
and training opportunities, Aquent<br />
and Vitamin T attract and place<br />
in-demand talent on assignment<br />
worldwide.<br />
We listen to our clients<br />
and act on their business<br />
and industry needs. We<br />
know that as a business,<br />
if you want to meet the<br />
needs of the clients and<br />
do your best work, it’s<br />
best to continuously adapt<br />
to new media and be bold with<br />
innovation, new approaches and<br />
new possibilities.<br />
<strong>2015</strong> has been an interesting<br />
year in the tech sector from our<br />
perspective. We have seen the<br />
death of Flash, which for most<br />
online users is a positive move.<br />
However, this has meant demand<br />
for talent qualifi ed in HTML5. Upskilling<br />
is even more important to<br />
today’s digital creatives.<br />
UX is ubiquitous. You can’t meet<br />
with a new digital startup or be<br />
immersed within the tech sector<br />
without UX being a hot topic. We<br />
have found more digital designers<br />
are starting to cross over into this<br />
discipline, as UX roles become<br />
more defi ned. We have found that<br />
many still don’t quite understand<br />
the complexities of UX and the<br />
roles within this skillset. If you are a<br />
client it is important to understand<br />
what you require for a project.<br />
As talent, you need to know your<br />
strengths within the UX spectrum.<br />
The synergy between design<br />
and content is becoming more<br />
relevant, if not necessary. The way<br />
clients want to convey their key<br />
messaging via digital channels<br />
is very much interlinked with the<br />
design, and as a result there has<br />
been an integration of content in<br />
design roles.<br />
In the current creative digital<br />
landscape we have found a need<br />
for all-rounders. Clients expect<br />
more function in a role, someone<br />
who has an eye for design but also<br />
understands how to code. Talent<br />
need to be prepared and equipped<br />
for these demands.<br />
Recently internet-ready mobile<br />
devices have gone from a luxury<br />
bonus to an everyday essential.<br />
Users expect everything that is<br />
online to be perfectly digestible<br />
on a mobile device. Businesses<br />
are ensuring their services<br />
accommodate this expectation.<br />
For creative, marketing and digital<br />
recruitment requirements and<br />
opportunities please call 020<br />
7404 0077 or visit aquent.co.uk or<br />
vitamintalent.co.uk<br />
Three themes defining the year in tech<br />
<strong>2015</strong> has been the biggest<br />
year for Tech London<br />
Advocates to date. We’ve<br />
hosted a series of international<br />
events from Bangalore to San<br />
Francisco and expanded into<br />
Norway. We’ve tackled some of the<br />
most important tech issues head-on,<br />
making our voice as a unifi ed tech<br />
community heard amongst the UK’s<br />
policy makers and leaders.<br />
As investment in London’s<br />
technology sector reaches<br />
unprecedented levels, the<br />
capital’s status as the digital<br />
home of Europe has never been<br />
stronger.<br />
However, challenges remain.<br />
And in the past 12 months, three<br />
main themes have defi ned this year<br />
for the tech sector: infrastructure,<br />
diversity and unicorns.<br />
Infrastructure<br />
In London, tech companies at every<br />
stage of the growth trajectory are<br />
lacking some of the most basic<br />
tools for the industry. Without a<br />
concerted, collaborative effort<br />
to tackle London’s infrastructure<br />
problem, the industry’s potential for<br />
growth will be challenged.<br />
Take connectivity, the bedrock<br />
of digital business. Nearly half of<br />
companies in a recent Tech London<br />
Advocates report, Joining the Dots,<br />
said that a lack of broadband in<br />
the capital is damaging the city’s<br />
reputation as a centre for digital<br />
excellence.<br />
From broadband to transport,<br />
London’s digital businesses must<br />
commit to some joined-up thinking.<br />
If each of these infrastructure<br />
issues is tackled through<br />
private sector collaboration and<br />
government support, London can<br />
expect to continue to harness the<br />
power of technological growth in<br />
years to come.<br />
Unicorns<br />
A survey by GP Bullhound recently<br />
showed that the UK already has<br />
the largest number of unicorn<br />
companies. London, and the UK<br />
as a whole, is leading the charge<br />
of new developments in this<br />
fi eld. It is no surprise that 75% of<br />
tech professionals in the capital<br />
believe London is the digital<br />
capital of Europe.<br />
The future unicorns of the UK<br />
lie in London’s retail tech sector.<br />
This is according to a fi fth of Tech<br />
London Advocates in a study of<br />
the growth drivers of London’s<br />
technology industry.<br />
It is clear that London retail tech<br />
has the right foundations to support<br />
the next generation of unicorns. The<br />
growth of retail tech will be one of<br />
the defi ning developments of the<br />
next few years. To continue our<br />
success building billion-dollar tech<br />
fi rms it is to these new emerging<br />
sectors we must be turning.<br />
Diversity<br />
A survey distributed by Tech<br />
London Advocates in the summer<br />
revealed one in four (23%) fi rms in<br />
London’s tech community employ<br />
no women at board level. In fact, as<br />
Baroness Lane Fox noted, there is<br />
a greater proportion of women in<br />
the House of Lords than in British<br />
tech companies.<br />
The sector is in need of a steady<br />
stream of new talent. Experts<br />
predict that by 2020 we will suffer<br />
from a shortage of 300,000 digital<br />
experts and 70% of Tech London<br />
Advocates feel this is holding back<br />
London’s tech sector growth.<br />
Bringing more women into the<br />
heart of the sector would mobilise<br />
underused talent, which would<br />
enormously benefi t the industry, as<br />
well as the economy as a whole.<br />
www.techlondonadvocates.org.uk<br />
87
The independent, private sector network of<br />
experts, leaders and investors in the capital’s<br />
<br />
More than 2,000 Advocates now operate in 20 countries<br />
around the world. We champion, we connect, we support.<br />
WWW.TECHLONDONADVOCATES.ORG.UK
<strong>TechNation200</strong> <strong>Almanac</strong> <strong>2015</strong>/<strong>16</strong> | Partners<br />
<strong>2015</strong>: the year the clichés rang true<br />
After 20 years or so<br />
of working in various<br />
digital/tech communities<br />
right across the UK, I believe<br />
there are two clichés that<br />
get wheeled out annually<br />
towards the end of the year –<br />
at Christmas parties, awards<br />
ceremonies or, indeed, both.<br />
The fi rst is that technology<br />
is developing faster than ever,<br />
with an ever-increasing speed<br />
from idea to market.<br />
The second is that the<br />
convergence of different<br />
technologies is, at last,<br />
coming to pass, creating a<br />
(future) world where we are<br />
ubiquitously connected to<br />
an internet that meets all our<br />
human needs.<br />
Refl ecting on <strong>2015</strong>, who<br />
am I to disappoint you? Both<br />
assertions hold up when<br />
looking at the state of the<br />
tech nation over the past 12<br />
months. The more interesting<br />
topic of conversation when<br />
we’re sporting our tuxedos or<br />
falling out of our party dresses<br />
is, perhaps, to explore exactly<br />
where the rates of tech change<br />
are happening and where the<br />
convergence has made the<br />
most exciting difference.<br />
The evidence is clear. The<br />
two areas of digital tech that<br />
have accelerated far beyond<br />
the pack are those focused on<br />
block-chain (distributed ledger)<br />
applications and interactive<br />
user experience design (UX).<br />
Blockchain tech is<br />
increasingly deployed with<br />
varying success across not<br />
just fi ntech and cyber-security,<br />
but also digital healthcare,<br />
legal and content production<br />
and consumption. The<br />
applications are potentially<br />
endless, so the steam isn’t<br />
running out anytime soon.<br />
And even before the<br />
world began to discover<br />
VR and to thirst for<br />
truly immersive user<br />
experiences, UX design had<br />
won the ideological battle<br />
over CEOs who demanded<br />
any mobile service, so long<br />
as it was blue. Today there<br />
is no such thing as product<br />
design – only user-centred<br />
service design, which may<br />
happen to include real-world<br />
manifestations of great UX.<br />
Which brings us to the<br />
subject of convergence. The<br />
past year has brought an<br />
acceleration of wearable tech,<br />
pay tech, internet-of-things<br />
tech and autonomous tech,<br />
which, being increasingly<br />
stitched together, is beginning<br />
to offer a glimpse of what Adam<br />
Greenfi eld calls Everyware.<br />
Don’t replace your fl eshy arm<br />
with a robotic one yet – but,<br />
equally, start to think where<br />
your digital business can add<br />
value as these disparate fi elds<br />
come together. Convergence<br />
here will really speed up when<br />
the security and UX can be…<br />
oh, please see above.<br />
Jon Kingsbury, head of digital<br />
economy, Knowledge Transfer<br />
Network. www.ktn-uk.co.uk<br />
Beating the business fear factor<br />
New research from<br />
NatWest shows that the<br />
nation’s appetite to set<br />
up in business and become<br />
self-employed is greater than<br />
ever – but the fear of failure is<br />
holding the majority back.<br />
The latest edition of the<br />
NatWest Entrepreneurship<br />
Monitor – a quarterly survey<br />
of people across the UK –<br />
shows more than a quarter of<br />
respondents think now is a<br />
good time to start a business.<br />
However, only 5% are actually<br />
currently setting up on their own.<br />
This reveals that, despite<br />
improving economic conditions<br />
and a widely held desire to be<br />
self-employed, few people are<br />
actually taking the plunge.<br />
The other fi ndings include<br />
that 43% have considered<br />
starting their own business and<br />
nearly half would prefer to be<br />
self-employed, but 56% are<br />
held back by the fear of failure.<br />
In addition, 57% of<br />
respondents who want to<br />
start their own business say<br />
business advice is the thing<br />
that would help them most, but<br />
just one in 10 would consider<br />
going to a bank for advice.<br />
Furthermore,<br />
over half of<br />
adults who<br />
want to start a<br />
business don’t<br />
think there is enough support in<br />
their local area.<br />
These fi ndings show that<br />
we have a nation of potential<br />
entrepreneurs, but a lack of<br />
knowledge is holding us back.<br />
NatWest wants to fi ll these<br />
gaps by helping people to<br />
take their ideas forward.<br />
So in partnership with<br />
Entrepreneurial Spark and<br />
KPMG, we are launching free<br />
business accelerator hubs in<br />
our buildings across the UK.<br />
Hubs in Birmingham, Brighton,<br />
Bristol and Leeds opened<br />
in <strong>2015</strong>, with further hubs in<br />
Manchester, Belfast, Edinburgh,<br />
Cardiff, Newcastle and Milton<br />
Keynes due to open in 20<strong>16</strong><br />
and in London the<br />
following year.<br />
Our plan is to<br />
support 7,000<br />
entrepreneurs<br />
over the next fi ve years through<br />
this partnership. As part of the<br />
programme, we are providing<br />
aspiring entrepreneurs with<br />
free facilities, business advice,<br />
mentoring and support networks<br />
and access to the region’s wider<br />
business ecosystem.<br />
Our Entrepreneurship Monitor<br />
shows that starting your own<br />
business is more popular than<br />
ever, with more fi rms registered<br />
with zero employees. In fact, last<br />
year was the fi rst time there had<br />
been over fi ve million businesses<br />
in the UK, of which more than<br />
99% are SMEs.<br />
The enthusiasm programmes<br />
such as Entrepreneurial Spark<br />
generate shows that the<br />
appetite is there for people to<br />
set up on their own – it is just<br />
about creating the right network<br />
of support to help them do it.<br />
For more information about<br />
NatWest’s support for startups in<br />
the technology and media sector,<br />
and our activities within London’s<br />
technology and media community,<br />
contact director Jeff Mudge<br />
on 07786 703491 or jeffrey.<br />
mudge@natwest.com. For further<br />
information about Entrepreneurial<br />
Spark powered by NatWest, visit<br />
www.entrepreneurial-spark.com<br />
89
The most influential<br />
group in UK tech business<br />
Connect with 500+ tech businesses and<br />
thought leaders through the TCi Network<br />
Get on the inside track as<br />
a TechCityinsider partner:<br />
www.techcityinsider.net/engage
TCi Network | <strong>TechNation200</strong> <strong>Almanac</strong> <strong>2015</strong>/<strong>16</strong><br />
TCi Network hits 500<br />
The TechCityinsider Network is one of the most notable groups of technology business people in the<br />
UK. Everyone we have profiled in our annual TechCityinsider100 (and in <strong>2015</strong> <strong>TechNation200</strong>) series<br />
is a member. Since we started in 2012, the network has grown to 500 strong. These pages list the 300<br />
people profiled by TechCityinsider between 2012 and 2014.<br />
2012<br />
Michael Acton Smith, Mind Candy<br />
Tom Allason, Shutl<br />
Nick D’Aloisio, Summly<br />
Jorge Armanet, HealthUnlocked<br />
Charles Armstrong, Trampoline<br />
Systems/Trampery<br />
Azeem Azhar, PeerIndex (now a<br />
consultant)<br />
Dave Bailey, Mediatonic<br />
Sam Barnett, Struq<br />
Oli Barrett, StartUp Britain<br />
Katie Bell, Stardoll (now at Playmob)<br />
Mike Bennett, Oil Studios (now at Djinn)<br />
Paul Bennun, Somethin’ Else<br />
Patrick Bergel, Chirp<br />
George Berkowski, Hailo (now at<br />
IceCream)<br />
Swati Bhargava, Pouring Pounds<br />
Annie Blackmore, Hackney UTC<br />
(now at London Borough of Barking and<br />
Dagenham)<br />
Stephanie Bouchet, RougeFrog<br />
Josef Dunne/Mayel deBorniol,<br />
Babelverse<br />
Courtney Boyd Myers, General<br />
Assembly (now at Summit Series)<br />
Paulina Bozek, Inensu<br />
Mike Bracken, Government Digital<br />
Service (now at Co-operative Group)<br />
Jon Bradford, Springboard (now<br />
TechStars)<br />
Sally (Broom) Davey, Tripbod<br />
Eileen Burbidge, Passion Capital<br />
Jessica Butcher, Blippar<br />
Mike Butcher, TechHub/TechCrunch<br />
Steve Callanan, WireWAX<br />
Alexandra Chong, Lulu<br />
Chris Clarke, Lbi<br />
Judith Clegg, The Glasshouse<br />
Graham Cooke, QuBit<br />
Justin Cooke, Possible UK (now at<br />
Northzone Ventures)<br />
Chelsea Cooper, Uber (now at Hired)<br />
Sherry Coutu, angel investor<br />
Errol Damelin, Wonga (now an investor)<br />
Simon Devonshire, Wayra Academy<br />
(now at Talent Cupboard)<br />
Rajeeb Dey, Enternships<br />
Ben Drury, 7 Digital<br />
Julian Ehrhardt, UsTwo<br />
Georg Ell, Yammer (now at Tesla<br />
Motors)<br />
Anthony Eskanazi, ParkatmyHouse<br />
(now JustPark)<br />
Carlos Eduardo Espinal, Seedcamp<br />
Dean Fankhauser, Nuji (now at The<br />
Publishers)<br />
Andrew Fisher, Shazam<br />
Nathalie Gaveau, Shopcade<br />
Anil Hansjee, Angel investor<br />
Victor Henning, Mendeley<br />
Ian Hogarth, Songkick<br />
Andrew Humphries, UKTI<br />
Bindi Karia, Microsoft BizSpark (now in a<br />
new venture)<br />
Laurence Kemball-Cook, Pavegen<br />
Damian Kimmelman, Duedil<br />
Jon Kingsbury, Nesta (now at<br />
Knowledge Transfer Network)<br />
Martha Lane Fox, UK Digital Champion/<br />
Open University/House of Lords<br />
Iris Lapinski, Apps for Good<br />
James Layfield, Central Working<br />
Brad Liebmann, Geocast<br />
Jeff Lynn, Seedrs<br />
Andrew Lyons, Ultra Knowledge<br />
Joshua March, Conversocial<br />
Greg Marsh, Onefi nestay<br />
Julian McCrea, Portal Entertainment<br />
Elizabeth/Rebecca McPherson,<br />
Feelings in a Flash<br />
Donna Kelly/Sarah McVittie, Dressipi<br />
Andy Millns, Inition<br />
Alastair Mitchell, Huddle<br />
Tim Morgan, Summer Chimney<br />
(now at Mint Digital)<br />
Richard Moross, Moo<br />
Chris Morton, Lyst<br />
Ian Mulcahey, Gensler<br />
Emma Mulqueeny, Rewired State<br />
Alicia Navarro, Skimlinks<br />
Henrique Olifiers, Bossa Studios<br />
Jude Ower, Playmob<br />
Francesca Panetta, Hackney Podcast<br />
Kathryn Parsons, Decoded<br />
Karen Pearson, Folded Wing<br />
Gavin Poole, Here East<br />
Malcolm Poynton, SapientNitro (now at<br />
Cheil Worldwide)<br />
Deborah Rippol, StartupWeekend (now<br />
at Buffer)<br />
Sonali deRycker, Accel<br />
Bill Scott, Easel.tv<br />
Amit Shafrir, Badoo (now at lert.ly)<br />
Glenn Shoosmith, BookingBug<br />
Jeremy Silver, Mediaclarity<br />
Tiffany St James, Stimulation<br />
Kam Star, Digital Shoreditch/PlayGen<br />
Gavin Starks, Open Data Institute<br />
James Swanston, Carbon Voyage (now<br />
Voyage Control)<br />
Alice Taylor, Makielab<br />
Jason Trost, Smarkets<br />
Cate Trotter, Insider Trends<br />
Eze Vidra, Google Campus (now at<br />
Google Ventures)<br />
Darren Westlake, Crowdcube<br />
Natalie Downe/Simon Willison,<br />
Lanyrd<br />
Dylan Williams, Mother London (now at<br />
Publicis Worldwide/Drugstore)<br />
Mike Wilson, Ditto<br />
Robin Wong, Weir+Wong<br />
Sarah Wood, Unruly<br />
Milo Yiannopoulos, The Kernel (now at<br />
breitbart.com)<br />
91
<strong>TechNation200</strong> <strong>Almanac</strong> <strong>2015</strong>/<strong>16</strong> | TCi Network<br />
2013<br />
Dupsy Abiola, Intern Avenue<br />
Dana Al Salem, FanFactory<br />
Giles Andrews, Zopa<br />
Jennifer Arcuri, Innotech<br />
Robin Baker, Ravensbourne (now a<br />
consultant)<br />
Anna Bance, Girl Meets Dress<br />
Jason Bates, Freeformers (now at Mondo<br />
Bank)<br />
Thomas Benski, Pulse Films<br />
Arnaud Bertrand, HouseTrip (now a VR<br />
entrepreneur)<br />
Suzanne Biegel, ClearlySo<br />
Matt Black, Ninja Tune/Coldcut<br />
Sue Black, UCL/Bletchley Park<br />
Tom Blomfield, GoCardless (now at<br />
Mondo Bank)<br />
Maya Bogle, Talenthouse<br />
James Booth, Rockabox (now Scoota)<br />
Glenn Calvert, Affec.tv<br />
Lily Cole, Impossible<br />
James Connelly, Fetch<br />
Stefan Cordiner, Lime&Tonic<br />
Brendon Craigie, Hotwire PR<br />
Zoe Cunningham, Softwire<br />
Martyn Davies, SendGrid/Music<br />
Hackday<br />
Charles Delingpole, Market Invoice<br />
(now at Comply Advantage)<br />
Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino,<br />
Goodnight Lamp<br />
Maria Dramalioti-Taylor, x.Million<br />
Capital<br />
Mel Exon, BBH<br />
Tony Fish, Ineed<br />
Sheila Flavell, FDM Group<br />
Mark Freeman, Movement<br />
Michelle Gallen, Shhmooze<br />
Gerlinde Gniewosz, KO-SU<br />
Jason Goodman, Albion<br />
Simon Gordon, Facewatch<br />
Roger Gorman, Profi nda<br />
Sarah Greasley, IBM<br />
Ben Hammersley, Applied futurist<br />
Alex Haw, Atmos Studio<br />
Brynne Herbert, MOVE Guides<br />
Taavet Hinrikus, TransferWise<br />
Nick Hungerford, Nutmeg<br />
Rupert Hunt, Spareroom<br />
Kate Jackson, TableCrowd<br />
Shivvy Jervis, Telefonica Digital<br />
Nikita Johnson, RE.WORK<br />
Viktoras Jucikas, Yplan<br />
Bryce Keane, 3Beards<br />
Raf Keustermans, Plumbee<br />
Julian King, Volta (now at Zenium)<br />
Jemima Kiss, Guardian<br />
Michael Langguth, Poq Studio<br />
Ed Lea, Paddle<br />
Ian Livingstone, Eidos (now at Sumo<br />
Digital and the government’s creative<br />
industries champion)<br />
Emily Mackay, Crowdsurfer<br />
Matthias Metternich, Believe.in (now in<br />
a new venture)<br />
Christian Miccio, MPMe (now at First<br />
Data Corp)<br />
Charlie Muirhead, Rightster<br />
Tim Murphy, Amee (now at Hanh<br />
Murphy)<br />
Dale Murray, Angel investor<br />
Bobby Nayyar, Limehouse Books/<br />
Foundation<br />
Jane ní Dhulchaointigh, Sugru<br />
Guy Nicholson, London Borough of<br />
Hackney<br />
Matt O’Mara, VICE UK<br />
Ian O’Rourke, Adthena<br />
Tom Page, PLA Studios<br />
James Parton, Twilio<br />
Carl Petrou, Pondera<br />
Maggie Philbin, Teen Tech<br />
Simon Prockter, Housebites (now a<br />
consultant)<br />
Tom Quick, Smesh<br />
Peter Rankin, Fits.me (now at Social<br />
Annex)<br />
Maila Reeves, Change20<br />
Alice Regester, 33Seconds<br />
Seena Rejal, 3D Industries<br />
Jon Reynolds, Swiftkey<br />
Liz Rice, Tank Top TV<br />
Andrew Rogoff, Resource Guru<br />
Nicolas Roope, POKE<br />
Zack Sabban, Festicket<br />
Ernesto Schmitt, Zeebox (now at<br />
6Tribes)<br />
Robyn Scott, OneLeap/<br />
Intros.to<br />
Nikhil Shah, Mixcloud<br />
Joanna Shields, TCIO (now at<br />
Department for Culture, Media and Sport)<br />
Ami Shpiro, Innovation Warehouse<br />
Stuart Silberg, Hotels.com<br />
Ben Southworth, evangelist and<br />
community builder<br />
Bertie Stephens, Flubit<br />
Wendy Tan White, Moonfruit<br />
Brian Taylor, PixelPin<br />
Stelio Tzonis, Urturn<br />
Odera Ume-Ezeoke, Viewsy<br />
Eric van der Kleij, Level39<br />
Elizabeth Varley, Tech Hub<br />
Roger Wade, Boxpark<br />
Dan Wagner, Powa Technologies<br />
Emma Watkinson, SilkFred<br />
Matt Webb, Berg (now a consultant)<br />
Ian Wharton, Zolmo (now at AKQA)<br />
David White, Import.io<br />
Mark Wilson, Wilson Fletcher<br />
Niklas Zennström, Atomico<br />
92
TCi Network | <strong>TechNation200</strong> <strong>Almanac</strong> <strong>2015</strong>/<strong>16</strong><br />
2014<br />
Joanna Alpe, Makelight Interactive<br />
Pru Ashby, London & Partners<br />
Ian Ashman, Hackney Community<br />
College<br />
Rod Banner, Banner Corp (now at 3LA)<br />
Alex Berezovskiy, Leto<br />
Jonathan Berlin, Iconeme<br />
Maggie Berry, Women in Technology<br />
Ghislaine Boddington,<br />
Body>Data>Space/Women Shift Digital<br />
Emily Brooke, Blaze<br />
Dan Burgess, Good for Nothing<br />
Javier Buron, SocialBro<br />
Ed Bussey, Quill<br />
David Buttress, Just Eat<br />
Zabetta Camilleri, Sales Gossip<br />
Cristiana Camisotti, Silicon<br />
Milkroundabout<br />
Gareth Capon, Grabyo<br />
Matt Celuczak, CrowdEmotion<br />
Paul Clarke, BusinessBecause (now at<br />
GTI Media)<br />
James Clark, TLA Triage<br />
Paul Clement, Resident Advisor<br />
Paul Coby, John Lewis<br />
Jamie Conway, MADE Television<br />
Warren Cowan, Greenlight<br />
Myke Crosby, Oobedoo<br />
Matt Cynamon, General Assembly<br />
Alex Depledge, Hassle<br />
Wendy Devolder, Skills Matter<br />
James Eder, Beans Group<br />
Charmaine Eggberry, Wayra Academy<br />
(now at NED and Avanti Communications/<br />
Buzzmove)<br />
Robyn Exton, Datch (now HER)<br />
Akin Fernandez, Azte.co<br />
Claire Flynn Levy, Essentia Analytics<br />
Angel Gambino, Alchemists Collective<br />
Tom Gatten, Growth Intelligence<br />
Drummond Gilbert, GoCarShare<br />
John Goodall, Landbay<br />
Josephine Goube, Sharehoods (now<br />
Migreat)<br />
James Governor, Shoreditch Works<br />
Gerard Grech, Tech City UK<br />
Jenny Griffiths, Snap Fashion<br />
Juan Guerra, StudentFunder<br />
Logan Hall, Movebubble (now at Rebel<br />
Hack Studios)<br />
Nick Halstead, Datasift (now at Cognitive<br />
Logic)<br />
Peter Hames, Big Health/Sleep.io<br />
Julien Hammerson, Calastone<br />
Zia Hayat, CallSign<br />
Even Heggernes, Airbnb (now at<br />
NaboBil.no)<br />
Andrew Hunter, Adzuna<br />
Kay Hutchison, Belle Media<br />
Anne-Marie Imafidon, Stemettes<br />
Anthony Impey, Optimity<br />
Maria Ingold, Mireality<br />
Miles Jacobson, Sports Interactive<br />
Pip Jamieson, The Dots<br />
Daniel Kaplansky, One Fine Meal (now<br />
at POD Point)<br />
Howard Kingston, Future Ad Labs (now<br />
AdLudio)<br />
Saul Klein, Index Ventures<br />
Ruben Kostucki, Makers Academy<br />
Steve Lemon, Currency Cloud<br />
Stef Lewandowski, Makeshift (now at a<br />
new startup studio)<br />
Gavin Littlejohn, MoneyDashboard<br />
Alberto Lopez-Valenzuela, Alva<br />
Group<br />
Sinead Mac Manus, Fluency<br />
Martin Macmillan, Pollen<br />
Ben Males, XOX<br />
Audrey Mandela, Mandela Associates<br />
Glen Mehn, Bethnal Green Ventures<br />
Juliana Meyer, SupaPass<br />
Julie Meyer, Ariadne<br />
Niall Murphy, Evrythng<br />
Dan Murray, Grabble<br />
Sara Murray, Buddi<br />
Ted Nash, Tapdaq<br />
Berhnard Niesner, Busuu<br />
Renate Nyborg, Pleo (now at Apple)<br />
Leslie Onyesoh, Kwanji<br />
Zoe Peden, Insane Logic<br />
Priya Prakash, Design for Social<br />
Change<br />
Gregor Pryor, Reed Smith<br />
Rob Rebholz, SpaceWays (now at<br />
optilyz)<br />
Runar Reistrup, Depop<br />
Nick Russell, We Are Pop Up<br />
Tobi Schneidler, Bouncepad<br />
Russ Shaw, Tech London Advocates<br />
Paul Sheedy, Reward Technology<br />
Chris Sheldrick, What3Words<br />
Dame Stephanie Shirley, entrepreneurturned-philanthropist<br />
Rohan Silva, Second Home<br />
Reshma Sohoni, Seedcamp<br />
Ashon Spooner, Phundee<br />
Lucy Stonehill, BridgeU<br />
Clare Sutcliffe, Code Club<br />
Jess Tyrrell, Centre for London/<br />
Connecting Tech City<br />
Tom Valentine, Secret Escapes<br />
Alick Varma, Osper<br />
Nick Walters, Hopster<br />
Ben Whitaker, Masabi<br />
Pete Williams, Localz<br />
Adrian Woolard, BBC Connected<br />
Studio<br />
Marc Zornes, Winnow.<br />
Information correct as of November <strong>2015</strong>.<br />
View any updates on our TCi Network<br />
pages at www.techcityinsider.net/network<br />
93
<strong>TechNation200</strong> <strong>Almanac</strong> <strong>2015</strong>/<strong>16</strong> | TCi Dinners<br />
Food for thought<br />
Sometimes, you just have to<br />
take the evening off, break<br />
bread and refl ect on what<br />
it is that you do.<br />
That’s why every month,<br />
TechCityinsider hosts a monthly<br />
invite-only business networking<br />
dinner at its Shoreditch offi ces.<br />
These dinners, which have been<br />
running since 2012, bring together<br />
folk from the tech startup business<br />
community to share ideas and get<br />
to know each other better.<br />
They are a chance for members<br />
of our 500-strong TechCityinsider<br />
Network to meet face to face,<br />
away from the offi ce. Our expert<br />
partners, from City University<br />
London, Grant Thornton,<br />
Knowledge Transfer Network,<br />
NatWest, Tech London Advocates,<br />
Vitamin T and Williams Powell also<br />
attend.<br />
The dinners are fi rst and<br />
foremost informal affairs, but we<br />
always follow a theme. This helps<br />
inform the editorial content that<br />
Since starting work covering the London tech startup scene in 2012,<br />
TechCityinsider has hosted a monthly business networking dinner. These<br />
events have grown in influence to become real agenda setters.<br />
follows on TechCityinsider.net in<br />
the weeks that follow.<br />
Themes during <strong>2015</strong> included<br />
Food Technology, Digital<br />
Democracy, Big Data, The Internet<br />
of Things, Adtech/Mediatech,<br />
Retail Technology, Smart Cities<br />
and two women-in-tech-themed<br />
dinners: Rising Women Stars and<br />
Women Backing Women. Every<br />
one our meals generated serious<br />
food for thought.<br />
Finding guests from our network<br />
for the Rising Women Stars<br />
network was easy – we’ve shared<br />
lots of stories of women founders<br />
since we started – but getting<br />
the list down to a manageable 20<br />
was tricky. In the end we settled<br />
for a list that included founders<br />
from Grub Club, WonderLuk,<br />
KweekWeek and Buzzmove.<br />
The response to that dinner<br />
led to a provocative feature being<br />
published on TechCityinsider by The<br />
Dots founder Pip Jamieson, arguing<br />
for more women to back more<br />
women entrepreneurs. That piece,<br />
among our most shared of the<br />
year, led to the follow-up Women<br />
Backing Women gathering.<br />
Jamieson was among the<br />
entrepreneurs around the table<br />
and was joined by the founders of<br />
Fluency, Frugl, Andiamo and others,<br />
alongside investors from Cabot<br />
Square Capital, Potential Female<br />
Founders and Angel Academe,<br />
whose head, Sarah Turner, urged<br />
more women to get into investing.<br />
At our Adtech-Madtech<br />
gathering, we heard from<br />
branding and advertising sage<br />
Rod Banner, who offered us<br />
his wisdom on the rise and rise<br />
of data-driven advertising and<br />
marketing technologies. Others<br />
there included Affec.tv and<br />
Growth Intelligence, which are<br />
both changing the advertising and<br />
marketing game.<br />
Onfi do told our Data dinner<br />
guests about the growth of online<br />
background checks and how that’s<br />
set to disrupt a sector shrouded<br />
in mystery and ineffi ciency, while<br />
Datasift gave us a glimpse into<br />
its new work with Facebook,<br />
accessing its fi rehose for new<br />
levels of marketing analytics.<br />
<strong>2015</strong> was also, of course,<br />
election year. An excellent Digital<br />
Democracy night heard from the<br />
likes of Bite the Ballot and Vote for<br />
Policies on political engagement,<br />
while Coadec and Futuregov<br />
94
See the full profile interviews at www.techcityinsider.net<br />
<strong>2015</strong> TechCityinsider dinners: themes and guests<br />
Women Backing<br />
Women<br />
Andiamo<br />
Angel Academe<br />
Cabot Square Capital<br />
The Dots<br />
Fluency<br />
Frugl<br />
Prettly<br />
Smart Cities<br />
Arcola Energy<br />
Atmos Studio<br />
Dyson<br />
Eight Inc<br />
Future Cities Catapult<br />
Greenwich University<br />
Inngenii<br />
Stickyworld<br />
Rising Women Stars<br />
Buzzmove<br />
Crowdjustice<br />
GrantTree<br />
Grub Club<br />
KweekWeek<br />
Venturespring<br />
Warblr<br />
WonderLuk<br />
Retail Technology<br />
Appear Here<br />
Divido<br />
Grabble<br />
Made.com<br />
Pointr<br />
Poq Studio<br />
Reward Technology<br />
Viewsy<br />
Adtech/Mediatech<br />
3LA<br />
Adludio<br />
Affec.tv<br />
Growth Intelligence<br />
Proxama<br />
SocialBro<br />
Internet of Things<br />
Arqiva<br />
Claire Rowland<br />
Evolveyourself<br />
EVRYTHNG<br />
Hackney Council<br />
Intamac<br />
Plumen<br />
Resin.io<br />
Think Innovate<br />
Big Data<br />
Attraqt<br />
Big Brother Watch<br />
Datasift<br />
Onfi do<br />
RefME<br />
SalesGossip<br />
Sandtable<br />
Satago<br />
Taggstar<br />
Digital Democracy<br />
Bite the Ballot<br />
Centre for London<br />
Coadec<br />
FutureGov<br />
Rewired State<br />
techUK<br />
Tinder Foundation<br />
Vote for Policies<br />
YouCanBookMe<br />
Food Technology<br />
Mucho<br />
Deliveroo<br />
Farmdrop<br />
Farmhopping<br />
Food Startup School<br />
Ministry of Startups<br />
Raddiso<br />
LoveThyChef<br />
TableCrowd<br />
TechCityinsider100<br />
Dinner<br />
Acorn Aspirations<br />
My Beauty Matches<br />
London& Partners<br />
RefME<br />
Student Funder<br />
Stemettes<br />
YouCanBookMe<br />
Zealify<br />
TCi partners attending<br />
City University London<br />
Grant Thornton<br />
Knowledge Transfer<br />
Network<br />
NatWest<br />
Tech London Advocates<br />
Vitamin T<br />
Williams Powell<br />
offered tech policy options.<br />
We’ve also had inspiring and<br />
entertaining evenings on The<br />
Internet of Things, Smart Cities and<br />
Retail Tech. And, of course, no tech<br />
dinner roster would be complete<br />
without a Food Tech gathering.<br />
We were joined by Winnow,<br />
TableCrowd, Mucho and Farmdrop<br />
to fi gure out how tech is changing<br />
what we eat, and how.<br />
So food for thought indeed. We<br />
often had a lot of fun around the<br />
table, too. Read the full guest list<br />
above.<br />
The catering for TechCityinsider’s<br />
dinners have been provided by our<br />
two brilliant resident chefs, Asma<br />
Khan from Darjeeling Express and<br />
Nikita Gulhane from Spice Monkey.<br />
Thanks to both for their culinary<br />
efforts!<br />
Also in <strong>2015</strong>, TCi hosted<br />
its second annual Tech House<br />
Party. This bash, during Digital<br />
Shoreditch <strong>2015</strong>, gathered<br />
more than 200 guests from the<br />
community for a night of music,<br />
drinking and dancing at our<br />
Shoreditch HQ.<br />
If you’re interested in attending a<br />
TCi event, email techcityinsider@<br />
c21media.net<br />
95
TechCity<br />
insider<br />
Defining next-generation<br />
digital business across the UK.<br />
Read, watch and listen to us<br />
every day at TechCityinsider.net
<strong>TechNation200</strong> <strong>Almanac</strong> <strong>2015</strong>/<strong>16</strong><br />
Welcome to<br />
the tech nation<br />
TechCityinsider’s annual almanac has doubled<br />
in size. C21Media’s editor-in-chief & managing<br />
director David Jenkinson explains why.<br />
Hard to believe, but it’s now four years since<br />
C21Media launched TechCityinsider.<br />
When we started work at the back end<br />
of 2011, we were responding to the tech startup<br />
phenomenon happening around our East London home.<br />
We’d been in business in Shoreditch since 1997,<br />
one of the fi rst digital startups in the area, launching a<br />
website to cover the international TV content business<br />
before most people knew what banner ads were. So we felt part of the story.<br />
We knew the tech media was already offering plenty of news about the startup sector,<br />
and we didn’t want to replicate that. So we decided to take a different tack, aiming to<br />
understand what it was that was driving the people behind new technology businesses –<br />
the entrepreneurs – and tell their stories.<br />
The ambition was to build a bank of experience and wisdom that others could learn<br />
from and share. And so TechCityinsider.net came to be.<br />
We began with a very sharp focus on the East London startup scene: Tech City, Silicon<br />
Roundabout, or to many of us just plain old Shoreditch. We spoke to 100 business<br />
leaders, mostly entrepreneurs but also investors and others, to hear their stories and what<br />
it was that they wanted to achieve.<br />
As we moved into 2013 and 2014 we started to broaden our horizons to take in<br />
a number of other emerging clusters of activity around London, whether in Croydon,<br />
Bermondsey or Kentish Town.<br />
By the end of 2014, it became clear that a wider UK agenda was fast emerging – that<br />
of a tech nation. Signifi cant technology business clusters were growing around the UK.<br />
The truth is, in places such as Cambridge, Manchester and Edinburgh, these clusters<br />
had been around for a long time. But like Tech City UK, with its landmark Tech Nation<br />
report, we wanted to broaden our remit and recognise the national picture, having<br />
started on home turf.<br />
So where previous almanacs have contained 100 companies, largely based in London,<br />
this one contains 200, featuring digital game-changers across the UK.<br />
Each business story is different, of course, but there are strong trends and drivers. Tech<br />
entrepreneurs are in business to make money, like the rest of us. And digital startup offers<br />
the possibility of rapid success at a low entry cost.<br />
But the tech startup agenda is very often about more than profi t. Ideas are driven by<br />
personal experience and frustration and a desire to change the world. Or to use that alltoo<br />
ubiquitous term, to disrupt.<br />
We’ve been on a journey – quite literally – to bring those stories to light. We’re<br />
supported in our work by some great partners, whose content appears in this almanac,<br />
and whose input helps inform. If you’re interested in becoming a partner please do get in<br />
touch. You will be in very good company.<br />
We hope that this almanac gives you a greater understanding of what is now<br />
undeniably a tech nation and look forward to telling more great stories in 20<strong>16</strong>.<br />
C21Media<br />
Second Floor, 148 Curtain Road, EC2A 3AT<br />
020 7720 7460<br />
techcity@c21media.net<br />
Editor<br />
Julian Blake<br />
julian@c21media.net<br />
Editor of C21Media.net & FutureMedia<br />
Jonathan Webdale<br />
jonathan@c21media.net<br />
News editor<br />
Clive Whittingham<br />
clive@c21media.net<br />
Senior reporters<br />
Andrew Dickens<br />
andrew@c21media.net<br />
Richard MIddleton<br />
rich@c21media.net<br />
Nico Franks<br />
nico@c21media.net<br />
Reporter<br />
Toni Sekinah<br />
toni@c21media.net<br />
Chief sub editor<br />
Gary Smitherman<br />
gary@c21media.net<br />
Sub editor<br />
John Winfield<br />
john@c21media.net<br />
Head of production<br />
Lucy Scott<br />
lucy@c21media.net<br />
Head of television<br />
Jason Olive<br />
jason@c21media.net<br />
Video editor<br />
Will Lambert<br />
will@c21media.net<br />
Sales directors<br />
Odiri Iwuji<br />
odiri@c21media.net<br />
Peter Treacher<br />
peter@c21media.net<br />
Head of special projects and events<br />
Leanne Farrell<br />
leanne@c21media.net<br />
Senior sales executive<br />
Richard Segal<br />
richard@c21media.net<br />
Telesales executive<br />
Hayley Salt<br />
hayley@c21media.net<br />
Finance director<br />
Paul Freedman<br />
paul@c21media.net<br />
Finance manager<br />
Susan Dean<br />
susan@c21media.net<br />
Editorial director<br />
Ed Waller<br />
ed@c21media.net<br />
Editor-in-chief & managing director<br />
David Jenkinson<br />
david@c21media.net<br />
98
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One solution.<br />
Providing support, making connections and unlocking potential for growth is core<br />
to the way we help our clients achieve their vision. We call it 360° advice – from<br />
one firm, one team and from day one.<br />
As an established partner to the technology market<br />
in the UK, Grant Thornton has an inherent understanding<br />
of your business and an ability to spot opportunities and<br />
potential issues proactively as you grow.<br />
The way in which your business articulates vision,<br />
scales product and operations, incentivises people,<br />
and communicates strategy is key to achieving your<br />
objectives and realising potential.<br />
<br />
<br />
Steve Leith<br />
Media & Technology<br />
T 078<strong>16</strong> 295838<br />
E steven.leith@uk.gt.com<br />
International expansion | Transfer pricing | Employment tax | VAT planning |<br />
Employee incentives | IPO | Exit | Audit | Founder tax planning | R&D | Patent box<br />
www.grant-thornton.co.uk<br />
<br />
grant-thornton.co.uk for further details.