TechNation200 Almanac 2015/16
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<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 />
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