London is a tech superpower – so why don’t we act like it?
London is a tech superpower, but gloomy commentators hate to acknowledge it. It’s time to start backing ourselves, writes Adam French
“A general mood of gloom has settled over a region that was recently the focus of international attention for its high-tech successes.”
For anyone in London’s tech ecosystem, that quote hits close to home. Investment has slowed, IPO activity is tepid, top startups are eyeing the US and Paris is stealing headlines in AI. The mood? A full-blown identity crisis.
We see this in the panic around the Chancellor’s tinkering with entrepreneur relief tax last year, the constant attempts to retrofit a London-Cambridge-Oxford triangle to re-create Silicon Valley in the UK and the founder of our most successful unicorn, Revolut, complaining Europeans don’t work hard enough.
This negativity doesn’t reflect what is happening on the ground. The truth is we are seeing record numbers of founders entering the arena, we’re seeing world-class engineers and software developers leaving unicorns to build their own ventures and we’re seeing global tech giants choosing London for their AI centres of excellence.
Never a better time for tech founders in the UK
We have four of the world’s top universities within striking distance of London and geopolitical turbulence is driving international talent to the UK.
There has never been a better time to start a tech company in London. There are more early-stage investments than ever and founders are using AI to rapidly accelerate their speed of execution.
That gloomy quote from earlier? It’s not about London. It’s from a 2003 report by the Public Policy Institute of California, written in the aftermath of the dot-com crash, an apparent obituary for Silicon Valley.
Within five years, Silicon Valley produced Facebook, Youtube and the iPhone. Ask any founder – it’s impossible to avoid failures. What matters is how you respond.
Yes the success of fintech and a seemingly endless rise of unicorns in London has made us complacent. Yes, it turns out Paris, Berlin and Stockholm also have great AI and climate tech startups. And yes, investment levels have fallen since the fever pitch of 2020 and 2021. But, just like Silicon Valley in the early 00s, London has all of the constituent parts required to maintain its position as one of the world’s most exciting tech cities. Make no mistake, category-defining tech companies that will define the next decade are being built in London right now.
UK tech must shake its grumpy middle age
One of our most recent investments in London is a startup using AI to optimise food ingredient supply chains. The founding team includes a serial entrepreneur who raised £100m for her last vertical farming startup, a CTO from a global bank’s innovation lab and the former founder of a major Indian ready meal brand. That combination of highly skilled individuals would only have come together in London. And that’s just one example.
What role should government play in all of this? Simply put: don’t forget us. Tech startups are the growth engine of the UK economy, and we’ll always be asking for more, because our ambition doesn’t stop. What we’re asking for isn’t special treatment, it’s attention. Use your convening power. Celebrate success. Keep listening to the founders and startups building the future. Our ecosystem thrives on momentum, and momentum needs champions.
At the same time, we in the ecosystem must take responsibility too. Entrepreneurs, investors and operators – it’s on us to keep pushing, building and raising the bar. We do that by starting to think like founders again.
Rather than slip into a grumpy middle age, the UK’s tech ecosystem must stay restless, forward-looking and ambitious. We are the world’s third-largest tech ecosystem, let’s act like it.
Adam French is a partner at Antler