TECH WAR: Brummies say firms 'lose out' in London's Tech City The business bods of Birmingham have commissioned a survey designed to tempt startups away from the British capital's Silicon Roundabout scene. A group called Business Birmingham commissioned a survey whose questions highlighted the high costs of doing business in London, likely hoping attracting talent away from from the …
...to ignorant cockney journos (1) that Birmingham is not the Black Country (which is Wolverhampton and towns to the south, including Sedgely, Coseley, Tipton, Dudley et al). Eeeh, happy memories of being a student, dodging lectures and catching the 126 bus along the Birmingham New Road to see what heavy rock could be acquired from the shops in Brum.
But regardless, if I were a tech company trying to avoid the dirty, expensive, overcrowded metrollops, then I'd be looking at using the (supposed) location independence of technology, and living somewhere a lot nicer than either Black Country, Birmingham, or London.
(1) You DO mind if I consider London as homogenous whole? Oh dear.
I completely agree. London is a horrid busy place, but if you must go elsewhere why would you choose another horrid busy place? If you want to attract techies then move somewhere interesting and invite them to join you. Somewhere on a nice bit of coast, or near some mountains or forests. Look at Cornwall for instance, the most connected place in the UK in theory, beautiful beaches, reasonable infrastructure and reasonable transport links. South Wales is nice too, as I'm sure are many of the more northern bits of England and Scotland. If I wrote code for a living there is no way anyone could convince me that being in London was a good idea!
Many Black Country folk don't class Wolverhampton as the Black Country, but only a small are of if, gobbled up by the urban sprawl. Wolvehampton's desperate for any sort promotion just slaps that on it's signs instead of "The Boarded Up City"
Most tend to agree the Black country refers to the seam of coal in the region, not that fact it was covered in soot as many think. If you want to know if you are in the Black Country, sell your house; If a mine survey is required, then you proberly are..
Either way they are all shit holes, I know I lived there for 7 years and work in the slums of Birmingham.
There are some truths to location independence for tech companies, but they generally don't offset the advantages of being near the multitude of other services a business requires if it is going to grow very much.
Your product and getting it delivered to customers is only ~50% of actually running a business. You've got to have access to lawyers, accountants, banks, marketing firms and suppliers familiar with your business sector if you want to see the massive growth people expect out of tech companies. You've also got to do the requisite wining & dining of people who can help you, which is hard to do if you're far away. You can't sacrifice an entire days work to get to a dinner. Lots of people scoff at the wining and dining stuff, but if you really want to scale it is an unavoidable part of the game.
Does Birmingham have all the specialized resources a new tech business needs? Maybe. But that's a hard decision to make, when you know for a fact what you need is in London.
The thing is, none of the truly successful tech companies have used any of those services while starting up, especially the taking people out to dinner nonsense. In the world of tech, people adopt your service/buy your software/play your game based on what it can do for them generally and these days word of mouth is sufficient advertising if your product is good enough to succeed. Marketing is useless to a startup because they wouldn't be running the type of campaign to need analysis. Lawyers on the other hand are all over the place, but are surprisingly good at working remotely when you ask them to.
I was with three successful tech startups, two through their IPO's and one was acquired. You might very well be using the products of one of them right now. I now do my own thing but I also sit on the board of a VC group in DC where I work with some of our portfolio businesses on a weekly basis. I'm telling you you're limiting yourself with that attitude and you're predefining your future path.
If you've got the kind of business that depends on exponential growth and outside investment you're next to doomed if you aren't near specialized resources and the people who can make things happen for you. No matter how great your product is, you're going to have tremendous difficulty fostering the kind of growth necessary to justify significant outside investment without that face to face access. Successful, high value, startups need as much, or more guidance from outside than they do from inside. You've got to be where you can get that guidance.
I'm not saying you can't have a good business without doing all the showy, nauseating, bullshit, but it is next to impossible to position a tech company for maximum valuations if you don't. If you aren't taking people out to dinner then you're stuck making your money one sale little sale at a time. That isn't a strategy that will get most companies into the big returns.
Is that the kind of company you want? That's a decision you'll have to make yourself.
And the real problem - getting and keeping people.
The good people go to SF, so to get good people you need to be in SF, so the good employers go to SF, so the good people move to SF.....
Not saying you can't run a successful software company in Kircaldy or Idaho - but you are going to have to offer something special to lure the best people there.
Senior IT Bod Normal place £40-50k, 3-4 bed house £250,000-£350,000
Same IT Bod London £50k-80k, 3-4 bed house £750,000 - £1,000,000+
Sorry but I can earn less money, own a nicer house in a better part of the country and still have more money left over. What f*cking motivation do I have to even think of working there.
Used to think the same, till I actually tried it. Having my salary quadrupled in the space of two years made me think again (as opposed to a few percent per year increases). Standard of living mostly revolves around disposable income and I have much more of it here. No way in hell, I'd move back.
Happy for you to stick it out there, wherever you are though. Whatever floats your boat I guess.
Being smaller than London, there's a best of both worlds situation. I live in SW Brum, and can be on Broad Street in about 15 minutes from where I live. Yet 10 minutes the other way there's the beautiful Lickey Hills and Worcestershire countryside.
And the convergence of the M6/M5/M54 doesn't hinder things.
Speaking as an ex-pat Londoner, the only things I really miss are: tube trains, foreign films, and a decent Italian delicatessen.
@JimmyPage
I'm a little further out, but small businesses might want to know about the cheap premises round Digbeth and some of the studio/office space in that big old mill near Hurst St. There is always the Custard Factory but that seems to be mostly second hand furniture these days.
Up your end, there is the Jewellery Quarter with small workshops and a large 60s block known as the Big Peg, that has a few tech companies in it.
Seems to be good connectivity in the centre as well (I'm on copper adsl and stuck with it for some time by the look of the plans).
Not so bad. Lots of trees, and more canals than Venice (see icon)
" I live in SW Brum"
Come off it, Rubery, Frankley, Northfield etc - nobody's beating a path there, are they? Better than the sh*ttier parts of London, but otherwise not much to say for the place. As for transport, the Bristol and Alcester Roads aren't much cop at peak hours. I do quite like Brum and the Black Country, but for somebody fleeing London you'd go somehwere that offers reasonable communications, acceptable access to city faciltiies and links to the rest of the country, and most importantly a better quality of life. I don;'t think I'd be getting that last one in Highters Heath or Woodgate in Brum, or Dudley Port or Blakenhall in the Black Country.
So Cornwall's lovely, but a bit out in the sticks for when you do need to travel, and property prices can be an issue. Rural Yorkshire's likewise picturesque but a bit of a hike, and you have to like the cold. Scotland's out of the question because the natives still eat people. But places like Worcestershire, the further reaches of Dorset, East Anglia, the areas around Bristol, those would be more promising.
That's not right. The Scots don't do anything except spend their benefit cheques on Tennent's Super. Their two "greatest" financial institutions - RBS and Bank of Scotland - had to be bailed out by the taxpayer. Just like their economy every year. And they still suffer from the delusion they have rights to the UK's North Sea. LOL, have another 6 cans. On the taxpayer (of course).
I love that moniker!
Once I used to genuinely feel embarrassed at its mention, but now I've overcome this feeling and I'm liberated. Yes, it's cringe-worthy. Yes, it's Pants. And yes, it is a term invented by "cool" Westminster media types.
Let Birmingham have their HS2. Keep the 'Silicon Roundabout' in London!
"tech companies that are successful and generate the most money are actually in and around Cambridge"
That's contentious; I would like to see numbers on that. Maybe you’re right in EBITDA land but on genuine cash flowing into vault (and not out again) I reckon dull Thames corridor is generally the winner
As a Brummie who lives in London, and loves it, there is no way I would think of working In Brum or Yam Yam land, or worse for the Hanson mild drinkers, starting a business there again
Cambridge just has old fashioned companies like ARM - all they have done is design the chip that powers just about desirable mobile device.
Silicon Roundabout is converging social media with the monetisation of crowd-sourced dynamic content in a democratised ...
Sorry - temporarily lost the will to live.
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