“Only with a steady flow of international and home-grown talent, British tech can continue to compete on the world’s stage.”
Last week 47 Tech leaders from Tech City UK’s Future Fifty programme signed an open letter to the UK government urging them to protect the flow of tech talent to the UK and ensure that there is no slowdown in the high-value digital sector.
These leaders, mostly CEOs, come from such fast-growing companies as Mimecast, Qubit, Synthesio and Yieldify, to name but the four most familiar names to us. All have been making waves in a wide range of new tech niches, for example, digital experience management (Qubit, Yieldify); social media monitoring (Synthesio), cloud email security (Mimecast); crowdfunding platforms (Crowdcube) and peer to peer lending (RateSetter, Zopa).
Growing at a fast pace, they’ve created high value jobs, not just in London but all over the country. Though there have been initiatives to build the UK’s tech skills (coding in schools, university-tech company schemes), there’s no way we can keep up with the fast pace of change and growing demand for specialist skills without having some recourse to the international talent pool. We certainly don’t want to lose our top spot as an incubator for tech start-ups (40% of all European Tech unicorns – that’s tech businesses valued over $1bn – are based here) or those unique advantages that have laid the groundwork for continued and future domination in such sectors as FinTech, EdTech, Gaming and HealthTech. An industry that contributes some £161bn in turnover to the economy (Tech Nation 2016) certainly has a louder voice than most to fight for a better Brexit and the future success of the UK’s digital economy.
Read the full letter here.
Update: Time for renewed optimism?
Yesterday, marketingmoves attended the exciting LiveConnected launch of Plexal, a new innovation centre in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, which will be one of the largest innovation centres in Europe. With many great speakers, from the inspirational Dame Sarah Storey, DBE, Team GB’s most decorated Paralympian to Tech City’s Gerard Grech (“We’re here to make sure the UK is the best place to start & grow a digital business…We work with the government to ensure that policies nurture the next generation of entrepreneurs.”) and Liam Maxwell, National Technology Adviser, HM Government (“Tech and digital supports 1.4 million jobs in the UK”).
The £15 million Plexal space will go beyond other fantastic startup hubs like WeWork and Techhub, with more access to services and modern equipment like 3D printers and laser cutters. The focus of the space will be on connected devices – within sport, health, fashion and IoT tech.
These are the kind of high value initiatives we need to protect the UK tech sector’s start-ups and culture of innovation to keep growing our digital economy.
