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East London Tech City
East London Tech City (also known as Tech City and Silicon Roundabout) is a technology cluster of high-tech companies located in East London, United Kingdom. Its main area lies broadly between St Luke's and Hackney Road, with an accelerator space for spinout companies at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.
A cluster of web businesses initially developed around the Old Street Roundabout in 2008. The area had historically been relatively poor compared to the City of London, and was known as the City Fringe. The 2008 financial crisis further suppressed rents through the closure of numerous firms, making it affordable to technology startups, while redundancies from financial services companies, such as investment banks, released a local pool of experienced talent interested in entrepreneurship.
From 2010, as the cluster developed, both local and national government supported its growth, with the goal of creating a cluster comparable to Silicon Valley in the United States. Cisco Systems, Facebook, Google, Intel, McKinsey & Company and Microsoft are among the companies that have invested in the area. City, University of London, London Metropolitan University, Imperial College London, Queen Mary University of London and University College London are all academic partners in projects based in the cluster.
Technology companies located in the area in 2008 included Dopplr, Last.fm, Consolidated Independent, Trampoline Systems, AMEE, Skimbit (now Skimlinks), Songkick, Poke London, Kizoom, Redmonk, MOO, LShift, Ket Lai, Solstice and Schulze & Webb. Other early companies to locate there were Tinker.it, flubit, TweetDeck, Berg, Fotango, weartical.com, Rummble, Squiz, Techlightenment, BrightLemon, Believe.in, Livemusic and WAYN. The name Silicon Roundabout was initially proposed as a tongue-in-cheek joke by Matt Biddulph.
Plans to help accelerate the growth of the cluster were announced by Prime Minister David Cameron in a speech given in east London on 4 November 2010. A year later, Cameron announced that he was appointing entrepreneur Eric van der Kleij to lead the initiative. In 2010, there were 85 startup companies in the area. By 2011, approximately 200 firms were occupying the area, signifying a rapid increase in interest. Wired magazine updated this figure in 2012 and suggested some 5,000 tech companies were located in the wider area centred on the Old Street roundabout. Wired maintains a topic on the area. In 2015, Douglas McWilliams of the Centre for Economics and Business Research, which is based on Old Street, authored The Flat White Economy: How the Digital Economy Is Transforming London & Other Cities of the Future.
On 28 September 2011, it was announced that Google had acquired a seven-story building near Old Street roundabout. Google said that the building, in Bonhill Street, would host "a range of activities, such as speaker series, hackathons, training workshops and product demonstrations" in addition to providing workspace for new companies. The building, known as Campus London, opened in March 2012.
In 2013, the Nominet Trust selected "5 startups making positive social change" which are based in the cluster: Streetbank, Give What You're Good At, Videre Est Credere, Buddy App and PaveGen.
A report by EY published in 2016 highlighted the importance of London to the UK's FinTech industry in terms of availability of expertise and demand for services.
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East London Tech City
East London Tech City (also known as Tech City and Silicon Roundabout) is a technology cluster of high-tech companies located in East London, United Kingdom. Its main area lies broadly between St Luke's and Hackney Road, with an accelerator space for spinout companies at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.
A cluster of web businesses initially developed around the Old Street Roundabout in 2008. The area had historically been relatively poor compared to the City of London, and was known as the City Fringe. The 2008 financial crisis further suppressed rents through the closure of numerous firms, making it affordable to technology startups, while redundancies from financial services companies, such as investment banks, released a local pool of experienced talent interested in entrepreneurship.
From 2010, as the cluster developed, both local and national government supported its growth, with the goal of creating a cluster comparable to Silicon Valley in the United States. Cisco Systems, Facebook, Google, Intel, McKinsey & Company and Microsoft are among the companies that have invested in the area. City, University of London, London Metropolitan University, Imperial College London, Queen Mary University of London and University College London are all academic partners in projects based in the cluster.
Technology companies located in the area in 2008 included Dopplr, Last.fm, Consolidated Independent, Trampoline Systems, AMEE, Skimbit (now Skimlinks), Songkick, Poke London, Kizoom, Redmonk, MOO, LShift, Ket Lai, Solstice and Schulze & Webb. Other early companies to locate there were Tinker.it, flubit, TweetDeck, Berg, Fotango, weartical.com, Rummble, Squiz, Techlightenment, BrightLemon, Believe.in, Livemusic and WAYN. The name Silicon Roundabout was initially proposed as a tongue-in-cheek joke by Matt Biddulph.
Plans to help accelerate the growth of the cluster were announced by Prime Minister David Cameron in a speech given in east London on 4 November 2010. A year later, Cameron announced that he was appointing entrepreneur Eric van der Kleij to lead the initiative. In 2010, there were 85 startup companies in the area. By 2011, approximately 200 firms were occupying the area, signifying a rapid increase in interest. Wired magazine updated this figure in 2012 and suggested some 5,000 tech companies were located in the wider area centred on the Old Street roundabout. Wired maintains a topic on the area. In 2015, Douglas McWilliams of the Centre for Economics and Business Research, which is based on Old Street, authored The Flat White Economy: How the Digital Economy Is Transforming London & Other Cities of the Future.
On 28 September 2011, it was announced that Google had acquired a seven-story building near Old Street roundabout. Google said that the building, in Bonhill Street, would host "a range of activities, such as speaker series, hackathons, training workshops and product demonstrations" in addition to providing workspace for new companies. The building, known as Campus London, opened in March 2012.
In 2013, the Nominet Trust selected "5 startups making positive social change" which are based in the cluster: Streetbank, Give What You're Good At, Videre Est Credere, Buddy App and PaveGen.
A report by EY published in 2016 highlighted the importance of London to the UK's FinTech industry in terms of availability of expertise and demand for services.