The London Tech Scene’s best kept secret

For the past 18 months, without much fanfare, the Mayor of London has been using £1.9m EU Regional Development Funds to co-fund the expansion and intensification of support offered to tech start-ups in London.

The funding, through a project called the Capital Accelerator Programme, has matched funded, pound for pound, predominately private sector money to enable the who’s who of London’s tech support scene to expand their activities and create new services for tech start-ups in London.

The line up of organisations supported and new programmes created is impressive to say the least, it includes:

• Established accelerators such as Seedcamp, Collider and Accelerator Academy have been able to use the co-funding to massively expand their activities.

• New to London accelerators such as Startup Bootcamp, Techstars, Makerpro and Eco-Machines who through the programmes support have been helped to become stalwarts of the London Tech support scene.

• Co-working spaces such as Innovation Warehouse, Idea London, Launch 22 and Hub Westminster have been able to develop and run new business support services for their members.

• Universities such as UCL, Imperial and City have developed and run new pre-accelerator programmes such as Fast Forward or new services such as UCL’s Digital Business Lab that provides support to tech startups to design and test their apps.

• Investment brokerage services such as Capital List, and the London Business Angel Network run Angels in the City and Angels in Med City have been supported by the programme and through the projects partner, GLE, trade missions to Singapore, China and the USA have been co-funded.

In total 21 organisations have benefited through the programme.

There are many reasons why London is Europe’s No 1 tech startup cluster. Having the largest market and talent pool of English speaking people is one reason. The availability of risk capital is another. But another cited is the outstanding quality and abundance of support services offered to tech startups through London based accelerators, co-working spaces and universities.

The Capital Accelerator Programme is fuelling that support eco-system.

“Through the programme we only match fund our partners to use new contractors and staff to offer new or enhanced services” says John Spindler the CEO of Capital Enterprise “and we only partner with members of Capital Enterprise to ensure they share our ethos and values of “paying forward” so that we invest together in London to make sure it will continue to be the best place in Europe to start and scale a tech business”.

The Capital Accelerator Programme ends on the 30th September and on present forecast will have:

• Supported over 700 businesses.

• Helped 145 new start-ups to raise in excess of £40M in investment from angels and VC’s.

• Created and sustained over 420 new jobs in London.

“The programme is, in terms of achievements the best performing EU programme in London for the past 8 years. But more than that it shows that by working together, the support providers in London can make a greater impact” says John Spindler

Going forward Capital Enterprise is hoping to repeat the success of the programme with slightly later stage tech businesses seeking to scale-up. The new programme called CASTS hopes to secure new ERDF funding from the Mayor of London office in the next few months.

Capital Enterprise is also in talks with other regions in the UK and Europe about how they could replicate the programme’s success in combining public and private money to build out a start-up support eco-system.

Finally on the 17th of September Capital Enterprise and all its partners will be celebrating the Capital Accelerators Programmes success by attending a 300 person conference where 50+ speakers and 200+ tech start-ups will discuss and share ideas on the future of the London Tech Scene.

Please contact rosa@capitalenterprise.org for more information.


About Capital Enterprise

Capital Enterprise's prime mission is to enable its members to individually and collectively support London's entrepreneurs