UK is the tech start-up centre of Europe – research

A new report from Tech Nation has crowned the UK as the European hotspot for technology start-ups, and fourth worldwide for scale-up investment after US, China and India.

While the US led the rankings by a considerable margin, the UK managed to attract 5% of global high-tech scaleup investment, with capital investments in UK firms topping £6.3 billion for 2018. Digging down into the details, Tech Nation estimate the fintech firms are doing even better, attracting £4.5 billion of investment between 2015 and 2018, with the UK leading the world.

“The UK continues to exceed all predictions when it comes to tech growth,” said Gerard Grech, CEO of Tech Nation. “This report shows how the UK is a critical hub when it comes to global technology developments, with scale-up tech investment being the highest in Europe, and only surpassed by the US, China and India. This is a testament to the innovation, ambition and tenacity of tech entrepreneurs across the UK.”

The claim itself is based on various datasets, including information from PitchBook. By identifying the number of scale-up companies in each of the determined countries, and the value of investments made into these companies, Tech Nation has drawn-up the ranking. Scale-up companies are identified as those which have either achieved employment or revenue growth of 20% for two consecutive years and have a minimum of 10 employees.

The US is leading the rankings, which will come as a surprise to few considering the dominance of Silicon Valley on the technology industry, with China coming in second and India coming in third. US firms attracted 49.3% of the world’s scale-up investment, while China accounted for 20.4%.

The total scale-up investments made in UK firms was also 2.5X the value of what would be expected for a nation the size of the UK. In fact, tech scaleup deals delivered £5 billion of the £6 billion investments made in tech companies in the UK across 2018. AI seems to have taken the crown, accounting for £1.3 billion of the total.

Critically, this demonstrates the work which has been done to attract and encourage innovation, investment and start-ups in UK society is working. Perhaps there is some method to the government madness. Looking forward, all the signs seem to be heading in the right direction. With 5G networks on the horizon, the catalyst for growth is about to emerge.

5G will not necessarily change the world overnight, but the power of the networks has the potential to foster the unicorns of tomorrow. This is a network which will deliver new services in the same way as 4G did, demonstrating the importance of being one of the first to scale the connectivity boom.

The US led the deployment of 4G networks did not spur the economy into any great revolution, but the tools offered allowed innovation. Companies like Uber scaled because evolution of the networks, while an entire new segment of the economy was allowed to flourish. Without the connectivity tools to play with, these companies would have not had the potential to scale; the same can be said about 5G.

5G offers an opportunity to create new products and services. Artificial intelligence, cyber security, latency, MEC and high-consumption/speed data-applications can all exist without 5G, but they are more attractive, practical and viable with the next evolution of the network. Uber could have existed without 4G, but it is a disruptive success because of it. Joe Bloggs cannot conceive what products and services will be available over the next couple of years, but the right tools have to be in place to ensure the innovators can scale them.

5G won’t change the world, but it will offer the opportunity for innovators to create value for themselves, customers and the national society which fosters them.

What might be a hurdle before too long are the deployment plans of the UK telcos. Having a test-bed to create these products and services in the first instance is all well and good, but soon enough these start-ups will need customers to scale the business. The faster networks are deployed, the quicker these start-ups can get to market, engage customers, tweak the proposition and potentially create the Uber of the 5G generation.

The UK Government has been looking for ways to shore-up defences against the future, hoping to give the economy and society the greatest opportunity to thrive. This is why fibre rollouts, or mobile coverage gains are so important now even if there is no immediate benefit; it’s all about making the country future-proof, ready for the unknown and resilient to the future challenges. And cultivating start-ups is a critical component.

Not only does this have the potential to address the questions surrounding wealth in-equality, it removes the UK dependence on the financial sector. Tech is the dominating growth sector in the global economy, and the best way to reap the rewards is to create an environment suitable for start-ups, the companies who could steal the headlines in the future.

The UK Government has been preaching about the world it is doing to encourage innovation and start-ups over the last couple of years; perhaps this report is vindication of the work which has been done.