Silicon Roundabout £50m THING to spew 200 startups A YEAR
Mentoring and incubating Blighty out of recession
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Prime Minister David Cameron and Mayor of London Boris Johnson have unveiled plans to establish a £50 million "technical and creative institute" around the area dubbed the Silicon Roundabout at Old Street in London.
The plans, set out at a conference organised by LSE Cities, propose an architecture-designed scheme housing 200 startup companies a year, and hosting two annual conferences for companies from the technology sector and creative industries. Potential locations for the institute are being assessed in a feasibility study which will be completed in the New Year.
The Greater London Authority will have responsibility for delivering the project, which has already been backed by several companies including KPMG, IBM and Microsoft.
“The UK is in a global race and I am determined that we as a government continue doing everything we can to equip the UK to compete and thrive in that race", said the Prime Minister.
“That’s why we’re investing in creating the largest civic space in Europe – a place for startup companies and the local community to come together and become the next generation of entrepreneurs.”
The institute will also host a mentoring network for entrepreneurs, help 1,000 young people each year find skilled employment, support initiatives which make recruitment easier such as providing support around Visa applications for overseas workers, engage up to 50,000 school children with enterprise programmes, support the growth of Digital Shoreditch Festival to an audience of 200,000, and lead 10 overseas trade delegations with UKTI and the Mayor’s promotional agency London & Partners.
Chancellor George Osborne confirmed the funding for the new institute in his Autumn Statement last week. Cameron committed himself to developing the area also known as Tech City two years ago.
Copyright © 2012, Out-Law.com
Out-Law.com is part of international law firm Pinsent Masons.
COMMENTS
Re: The beginning of the end
Shoreditch filled with tech startups because it was cheap. It was cheap because it was nasty.
The ongoing efforts to smarten the place up have caused rents to triple.
Throwing money at new startups just so they can afford the new rents is Bloody Stupid, and the next wave of en- and nontrepreneurs will simply go elsewhere.
And yet
They see no problem in potential engineers facing a lifetime's debt for their education.
When it comes to not-adding-up there is something olympic class about this mob.
Re: Let me predict the outcome
Quite enjoyed that when I first read it.
I'm all for starting the businesses of the future, but that's not what most of the startup scene seems to be about, it seems to be about a cycle of coming up with a derivative idea, hyping and pumping it until someone gives you some money, hyping and pumping it some more then trying to sell the company to someone so that the founders can make a successful exit, where 'successful' is measured solely by the size of the bags of cash. Meanwhile, basically none of them have effected any change AFAICT.
Let me also say that when I was a Londoner the areas 'Shoreditch' and 'Old Street' were to be avoided on account of being packed full of insufferable tw*ts.
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