Hehe. We actually had one back in the dot com era called Attachments ;-) Oddly, the BBC seems to have disowned it and it's very hard to get a copy of now..
Having been in the "industry" for a large number of years now, I genuinely don't find that any of the startups are congregating around the these new areas unless they are VC funded burn-out outfits which to be honest I wouldn't poke with a stick.
Most of the genuinely interesting ones seem to be running out of people's houses with no specific location. They're also making cash without VC intervention.
You've got a good point. We've been profitable from day one and never had investment until very recently, not even a bank loan.
However, we are in Newcastle. Why? Because that's where(ish) we live. As a developer, it's nice to be able to get out a couple times a month and meet like minded folks at things like SuperMondays and talk about specifics at user group meetings.
Personally, I'd rather work down in York but from what mates tell me, the community isn't quite there.
Yeah there's not much of a startup community down here in York, it is much nicer than Newcastle but also more expensive on average. We really need a HN meetup in the north(ish) east.
We're a growing startup, based out of a real office with air conditioning, carpets and everything, with paying customers and no VC intervention. And we're based out of Newcastle.
Just one data point, granted, but we're not alone.
I agree with these thoughts. A founder with enough passion and drive for their company doesn't need VC funding - if IT focused. IT stuff can be built and hosted with minimal outlay.
VC money needed for cash intensive manufacturing activities?
I work in Newcastle, live in Middlesbrough. It's becoming surprisingly strong for a developer community now, when I left Uni about 5 years ago there wasn't really much going on.
There's a lot the North East has going for it, living costs are pretty spectacularly low in most parts, office space is cheap, there's reasonably strong transport links between the hubs (ish, it's still British transport). It's nice to see it being represented nationality, the focus often swings back to the London community.
The biggest criticism I've heard it's there's a lack of angels and VCs but it feels like a chicken and egg situation. Do startups flourish in areas with a large amount of VCs, or are VCs drawn to areas with a large amount of startups?
For those further interested there's also Sunderland Software City and the Middlesbrough Digital City project outside of Newcastle.
Many European VCs will invest in cities where they're not based. Most will have offices in a few major hubs but for a lot of the time VCs will be on the road travelling to other cities to meet startups.
Which is what I thought, but when the TechCity initiative in London was ramping up there was a lot of fanfare about it putting startups with VCs as a selling point.
Newcastle is a great city to take a startup from napkin to reality. It wont take much to open the door of any business or investor and the community is generally welcoming (Kind of un-British) in some respects.It's also beautiful city and happens to have one of the lowest costs of living in the UK.
However Newcastle and the North East in general suffers from a shortage in quality developers. Primarily because they're either entrepreneurial with their own startup or finding offers from startups in London with double the salary on the table.
Newcastle isn't really trying to be anything other than itself, it understands that there isn't an abundance of developers and it's trying god dam hard to bring the right talent to the area.
Newcastle university offers a great CS course headed up by Professor Aad van Moorsel and with the right startups keeping that talent in the area shouldn't be hard.
If you're located in London and looking to take that idea into a reality, Newcastle and the North East(York & Durham) are great choices. £10,000 can give you 6months of decent living up here. As opposed to 2-3 in London.
As someone working out of, literally, a tin shed in Byker (a stones through from the Tyne river in Newcastle for those unfamiliar with the area) it's nice to see the city getting some good PR. One thing I would add is that there are plenty of businesses outside straight up IT/Tech in the city and as a result there is a really great and diverse business community.
If you are looking for somewhere to start a company that involves manufacturing (as ours does) then you could do a lot worse that the Northeast - the legacy of ship building and the presence of the 500,000 cars per year Nissan factory make it a great place to get stuff made.
Alos, London is great an everything but for quality of life and low cost of living Newcastle knocks spots of it. Something that, as a cash strapped founder, is really useful and on a good day it's only a 2.5 hour train ride to London.
Great video I can empathize with. We're building a startup community in Myrtle Beach, SC, US (www.coworkmyr.com). We aren't quite at 'critical mass' yet, but share a lot of the same sentiments about it being somewhere to focus, and so long as it has some community and access to the same resources it can be a great place to do a startup.
Perhaps even a better place than major hubs where cost of living is so high that your runway is necessarily shorter.
This is just up the road from my hometown. It's a breath of fresh air to see startups in the North of England, especially as it is one of the most deprived. Hopefully it's sustainable as I'm getting tired of all the Tech City talk by the government.
It's also not just Newcastle. Sunderland and Middlesbrough have communities that are coming along. York University has expanded their incubator so I'd expect to see more in that area as well, although my friends in the area bemoan the lack of community at this point in time.
Oh nice, I'm the sole pinpoint in the middle of Lincolnshire, so not too far down the road! :-) I had no idea Bytemark was in York though had heard of you. Will you be doing any colo? We've been tempted but the thought of going to Manchester or London hasn't been appealing so far.
Very nice site. It asked me for my location and... emptiness. Well, I guess Tech Britain needs to be more popular to be useful because I believe there are start-ups in Guildford.
Yeah, it seems to be oddly patchy. I think it did the rounds on TechCrunch or even here at one stage. The folks who run it are involved in TechHub Manchester so that's why I think Manchester is heavily represented there.
Awesome to see this video. Currently down in London on an internship before I go back to Newcastle University next year. With the amount of startup events going on down here (highly recommend the HN London meetup if people haven't been) I was pretty apprehensive about going back up but not as much anymore!
Definitely feel a bit more excited now. Apart from Super Mondays, are there any other events I should remember for next year?
Help to help you out with contacts - I'm the guy from ignite100 in the feature. Also, if you'd like to work with any of the ignite100 alumni, more than happy to connect you.
Wow, that would be an awesome opportunity and I'd really appreciate it. Any chance I could contact you in a few months when it's closer to me moving back up there?
Isn't there just too much benefit to being in a large city (in this case, London)? Specifically: established and well attended social groups, like meetup groups focussed on your particular technology or vertical? The possibility of an encounter with someone who either has an invaluable piece of advice or wants to join your team must be exponentially higher.
Why indeed? Are they? Did anybody check? I suspect they may already be!
You could take that clip out use it to build the script of "This Is Spinal Tap" for UK startups.