Issue #285: The Data Issue
Put ya feet up pet and digest a bit of a data. It's Friday, you've earned it.
Morning tech fans. I believe it was Napoleon Bonaparte who said, ‘War is ninety percent information’. Of course, reader, you knew that. And as somewhat of a Little General myself, not to be confused with being a little too general thank you very much, let me assure you the Digest is of course ninety percent information, too. The other 10% you ask? Well, er, that’s just the banter, innit?
Today it’s the information we’re focusing on (thank god). Yes we’ve many a NE tech stat to rock your socks. As ever, any queries or challenges, please do send me an email and I’ll always be happy to talk more.
The following data comes from our first North East Tech Quarterly event, a forum for ecosystem stakeholders to come together and candidly discuss sector performance, opportunities and challenges. Thanks to those who came along. The next one will be in June with a focus around high-potential startups. But for now, data.
Numbers at a glance
Our slide deck at yesterday’s event had 20+ slides and we spent an hour talking through statistics, complementing raw numbers with insights and context. I therefore appreciate that me throwing a load of screenshotted slides isn’t the most useful. Rather what I’ve done is pulled out a couple.
For those of you as passionate as I am about this, I will happily forward on the slides or arrange a zoom call if you want to chat through anything.
The North East contributes roughly 7% of the total above. What does this mean? Is this a good thing? How can I contextualise that, Jamie? Well there’s no exact science here but we can bring people, and therefore talent, density into the equation.
There are roughly 2.5m in the North East, 5.5m in Yorkshire and 7.5m in the North West. So of the North’s population, around 16% hail from our region. One might therefore suggest 16% of the North’s startup value pie should therefore be attributed to the North East. Not quite.
Total investment in the region is down. Why? Well, we’re a small ecosystem when it comes to scaleable high-potential tech ventures. 2023’s numbers were inflated by a large Atom Bank raise. Numbers going down isn’t a great worry, rather the concern would be the relatively total regardless. While our tech stock is going up generally, we have few growth stage ventures that can be transformative to our wider ecosystem success.
Our scaling tech funnel is unhealthy. The North East employs many tech sector workers who are attached to larger, established firms. Indeed many companies which were established 20+ years ago, no necessarily a bad thing. But, while there are exceptions, we aren’t great at scaleups. We aren’t great at fuelling super-fast growing firms, which then go on to employ hundreds of people locally. Access to Finance limitations play a role here but so too do contributing factors before a firm even reaches the Growth stage.
As I say, the above is a taster of the discussion. If this is interesting, let’s talk. For now I will leave you with the slide I ended on, below.
What else you need to know this week
As you’ll see in our News section below, we’ve a few developments to shout about. Good to see the team at Newcastle’s MySalesCoach secure new investment in its scaling journey. It feels like just yesterday, in Issue #183, we covered the startup springing to life and securing £500k to get going. Truly excellent to see traction and growth, well done team.
Elsewhere there’s good contract wins for Kinewell and Lamasa, Northstar’s EIS fund launches its second wave and finally I’d urge readers to take time to look at analysis regarding the impact of university startups on our tech ecosystem.
Have a lovely weekend in the sun, folks. Cheers, Jamie
This week’s news
MySalesCoach secures further investment
Northstar Ventures launches second tranche of EIS fund for individual investors
Graduate start-ups a boost to growth in the North East of England
Kinewell Energy secures multi-year contract renewal with global business
Filtronic expands work with Elon Musk's SpaceX a year on from landmark agreement
Opencast misses £3.4m revenues following closure of partner start-up Swarm Energy
Newcastle’s LamasaTech secures milestone deal with Co-op
iamproperty amongst Megabuyte winners
Events
A couple of upcoming events between now and the end of the month to get on your radar, tech fans.
Thursday 27 March, 18.00 - 21.00
Join the Silicon Mingle boys and partners Barclays Eagle Labs for a two year celebration of the super-friendly, ecosystem-wide tech meetup.
Monday 31 March, 13.30 - 15.30
This special meetup about allyship, hosted by Women in Tech North East CIC, is open to all genders. Whether you're an active ally or looking to learn how to better support women in tech, this event is for you.
Nee free lunch, ya dafty!
To close today I’ve an ask of you, reader. Cheeky, I know.
I am starting to structure a long-form piece on the North East’s reach into the global tech world, from an individual perspective. In other words I want to spotlight individuals who are playing leading roles at large tech organisations (non NE HQ’d) around the world yet are doing so while living in North East England.
Why Jamie, you maniac, I hear you cry! Well, reader, I write a lot about entities themselves - based here in the region - and demonstrating their global reach. This is cool and we’ll continue to push that out in the Digest. Yet I am meeting more and more people who live in our region yet work for a London fintech or a European HQ’s software scaleup, for instance. It’s starting to surprise me how many people are doing so.
You might think it’s obvious, indeed in our post-pandemic world of work, though it’s an area I am yet to really explore. What I’d really like to do, in between my attendance at underground raves and bare-knuckle brawling, is complement such qualitative examples with a quantitative study too.
My theory, ultimately, is that there are individuals physically here who are ‘unplugged’ to the North East tech ecosystem but who could provide immense value, given the learnings the have from experience beyond our borders. As ever, any thoughts on this, or indeed introductions you can make I would be grateful. Thanks!
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