Russ Shaw’s London Tech Week Diary: Londoners the secret sauce
London Tech Week – the showcase of all things innovative – is back. Each day this week, Tech London Advocates and Global Tech Advocates boss Russ Shaw CBE will write for us reflecting on the jamboree. Here’s day four.
The fourth day of London Tech Week has been a celebration of the unique element behind the growth of our capital as a world-class tech hub – Londoners.
Talent is the single most important issue facing any tech company, and London’s capacity to both nurture a diverse community of home-grown tech professionals and attract the very best tech talent from around the world is the secret behind the city’s most successful tech startups and scaleups.
Research issued yesterday by Startup Genome and London & Partners ranked London as the leading destination to grow a tech startup outside of Silicon Valley. Talent was cited as one of the key advantages for London, with its close proximity to four of the world’s top ten universities and access to nearly 500,000 software developers in the city.
The fourth day of London Tech Week started with the launch of TLA Young Entrepreneurs – a new network for tech founders aged between 18 to 30. Bringing together more than 100 young people at the University of Arts London’s Creative Computing Institute in Peckham, the event sent a clear message that London’s future talent pipeline is stronger than ever.
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Led by a 15-year old South Londoner, Femi Olowade-Coombes, the event featured many aspiring entrepreneurs from the capital. Let’s not kid ourselves, the next generation of tech leaders in London are snapping at our heels. These are not teenagers learning how to code in their bedrooms, these are young people born into the digital age with serious ambitions. I have every confidence that some of London’s future tech unicorns attended the event this morning and will be making headlines very soon.
accelerateHer – one of the anchor events of London Tech Week – showcased some of the incredible female tech leaders operating in the capital. The event also featured an exclusive interview with Hillary Rodham Clinton alongside Microsoft and McKinsey to discuss the importance of female leadership in business.
However, Day Four of London Tech Week also reminded us that we can’t take the diversity of London for granted, and that inclusion remains a serious challenge for tech companies.
The Black Women in Tech network has quickly established itself as one of the largest groups in Tech London Advocates. Their event today focused on the continued challenges facing women, and particularly black women, when it comes to raising investment and securing funding rounds.
For an industry which aims to be open, transparent and inclusive – this is a problem that remains despite all of the hard work and great initiatives seen in London over recent years. Flavilla Fongang, who runs the creative agency 3 Colours Rule as well as the Black Women in Tech group, spoke passionately about the need to increase engagement with communities across the city currently under-represented in tech. Diversity in tech, and across investors, needs to change.
The same is true for international talent. The TLA Immigration Working Group, run by Pat Saini from law firm Penningtons Manches Cooper, released a new website for London Tech Week outlining the viability of the visa routes open to tech entrepreneurs looking to enter the country. Senior tech leaders want to come to London to start and grow their companies, but too often the visa routes are too expensive and too slow. For London to maintain it’s world-leading crown, this is a problem that has to be fixed.
As we approach the final day of London Tech Week, talent has been the underlying topic at every single physical and virtual event I have attended. We have a unique advantage living in a truly global city, but the entire tech community must come together to ensure that the industry is as open and inclusive as it claims to be.
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