A Week in London Tech City

This is a new post following the “A Week In” series that included: A Week in Silicon Valley, A Week at Harvard University, and A Week in Boulder. This time, the Tech Tourism Week was in what is being promoted by the UK Government as the Digital Capital of Europe, Tech City, in London.

Unlike what you would expect, Tech City is not as modern as the name may suggest. It is not like the Internet City in Dubai, or the Smart City in Cairo. On the contrary, it is part of the Eastern old part of London. Very old and small buildings that were converted into office spaces, mainly because it’s cheaper there. It’s like Jabal Amman area in Amman.

Tech city is actually a project started by the UK Government, to encourage more entrepreneurs to come to London and start their companies there. It all started with a small group of tech companies that were located near the Silicon Roundabout in east London in 2008, then the Gov. built on that and started to promote the area in 2010 for more startups and even big tech companies to move there to form a technology hub. The project office is located at the heart of East London, with a new creative design called Hackney House.

This effort resulted in an exponential increase in the number of startups and tech companies from only 15 in 2008 to more than 200 in mid 2011, and more than a 1000 now!!! This includes Google, Facebook, and Cisco. Entrepreneurs moved to Tech City from all over Europe! Lots of accelerators and co-working places have been created, and lots of weekly and monthly tech meetups and events have been started since then.

Unlike Silicon Valley, most of the companies here are in the creative and media industry as opposed to technology innovation. So it is more like Silicon Alley (New York Area) than Silicon Valley. However, you can still find really good technical talents there, mostly europeans who moved there looking for new entrepreneurial opportunities.

We were lucky to get introduced to the city’s “Champion”: Andrew Humphries by the UK Trade and Investment Team at the British Embassy in Amman. He invited us to his office and told us the story of Tech City, and answered our questions. Then Karen Ball and Ted Ridgway, from the project team, took us for a tour in the city.

People come here to get started, but they always keep their eyes on Silicon Valley. So their dream would be to move to the valley some time in the future. Thus, for European entrepreneurs, I think it makes sense to move there, as it would be their first connection with international investors. Yes, some big US VCs opened offices in London in the past few years to capture good deal from this new hub. In addition, there are now some really good tax incentives for startups and VCs in London compared to the rest of Europe. They also help any company that is registered in UK to reach new markets via the Trade Missions in UK embassies all over the globe.

However, for Arab entrepreneurs, I still can’t find a really good reason to move there. Salaries and rents are much more expensive than in Arabia, even more expensive than Dubai. Hiring and firing laws and regulations are somehow tough. Although there are tax incentives, but there are tax-free zones in Dubai, and there is almost no tax in Saudi. And anyway, even if you regiter in UK, you will still need to work on building relations with US investors to go global, and register in Delaware or Cayman Islands, which are tax-free zones. So why to go to London to start a company from the first place?!

One more thing I noticed about British business people, as also told by some of them, they are not as open to intros as in the Valley or even as in Jordan. They don’t share contacts and they don’t initiate intros unless they are asked to, or unless this will benefit them! But this is starting to change as more and more european entrepreneurs are moving in, and as more connections they have with international investors.

Overall, my week there was amazing, I found a presentation on the web about Business in London, and it listed all tech meetups and events. I happened to be there at the same time London Startup Weekend was organized! I was also invited to join Endeavor Investor Event in London. There were also few other meetups that I attended during that same week.

I visited lots of places that I can’t even list, and met lots of people from the tech community in there. I would encourage Tech City team to develop a list of Tech Tourism Destinations: places/events to visit/attend while in London :-)

I will leave you with few photos from the city.

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