October 2022 - A Month in Review

October 2022 turned out to be a busier month than expected for the UK (obviously with a brand new Prime Minister), the UK tech sector and Tech Nation.

Despite continued market jitters, there was a ray of hope in October with a marked increase in technology investment in the UK, after three months of private investment decline. See below data looking at investment per month broken down by business stage for the last 3 years, from our Data Commons platform.

Chart: Investment into UK technology per month over the last 3 years, broken down by business stage

To highlight and celebrate the immense growth of the UK sector over the last 10 years, we started a social media campaign. Here are some facts which I hope will interest you. Did you know:

• Over the past decade, UK tech investment has reached $155bn , with $41.6bn received in the last year alone.
• The total number of tech jobs in the UK has doubled to an incredible 4.7 million over the past 10 years, that's 14% of the UK's current workforce which feels like it's at a tipping point. Covid has clearly accelerated this demand, as we increasingly adopt digital services to go about our daily lives.
• There are now over 130 tech ‘unicorns’ in the UK - that’s 7x the number 10 years ago. At Tech Nation, we’re delighted to have supported over a third (31%) of the UK’s tech unicorns, which have collectively raised just over ￡28 billion in venture capital investment.

There is clearly more to do in the coming years in helping to accelerate the growth of UK tech, especially in its application to solving global challenges such as climate change, as well as making it more representative of the societies it serves.

Our annual report 2022

We recently published our Tech Nation Annual Report 2022 , where we touched on some of the amazing things we’ve been able to achieve to date - including supporting over 4,000 UK tech businesses (and supporting the creation of over 2,649 jobs in the last year), processing over 5,500 Global Talent Visa applications to bring the best global tech talent into the UK, and generating a ￡15 return on every ￡1 invested by the UK government. The report also importantly includes our carbon emissions for the company at 280 tonnes for the last year which amounts to 3.25 tonnes per employee which is lower than the UK average. Nonetheless, we recently made decisions on how to continue reducing our footprint which we will be announcing shortly. ?

In the meantime, here’s a little breakdown of some of the exciting things that have been happening over the last few weeks alone:

Welcoming 3 amazing new tech company cohorts to our growth programmes, including a new one for later-stage tech climate companies in conjunction with PWC.

This month, we launched the first Net Zero X programme in collaboration with PwC UK to supercharge the growth of the UK’s highest-impact later-stage climate tech companies, as well as our eighth Upscale programme to help scale the UK’s fastest-growing tech scaleups, and our fourth Applied AI programme to support the UK’s most transformative AI companies.

Our Net Zero Scaling Expert Sammy Fry speaking at the Net Zero X kick off event

Our Director of Research & Insights Dr. George Windsor presenting at the Net Zero X launch

Here are some amazing facts about our three newest cohorts:

• Nearly three-quarters of the companies joining this year’s Applied AI programme hail from outside of London, and half have at least one female founder, making this the Applied AI programme’s most regionally and gender-diverse cohort yet.
• Together, the 35 companies joining Upscale 8.0 employ over 1,400 people already and scaling quickly
• Collectively, the 20 climate tech companies joining Net Zero X have raised almost ￡387 million in VC investment, and are poised to drive down the UK’s carbon emissions by 1 gigaton annually! ??

You can find out more about the incredible companies joining Net Zero X , Applied AI and Upscale this year on our company blog .?

UK tech is buzzing across the UK - and the world!?

Excitingly, our International team kicked off their APAC webinar series this month. With more and more UK tech companies looking to expand into international markets, this series was designed specifically to help UK tech companies expand into the APAC region, and it began with an eye-opening webinar on ‘hiring employee #1’ in your new region and making sure you have the right talent on the ground ??

On the topic of international expansion, at Leeds Digital Festival 2022, our team recently spoke to Michelle Cooper, International Trade Adviser for Yorkshire & Humber at the Department for International Trade (DIT), about the opportunities for UK tech companies looking to expand to Southeast Asia. You can watch her inspiring thoughts here in our video interview.?

As part of Leeds Digital Festival, our UK team also had a fantastic time meeting local entrepreneurs at the York Digital Focus event, which our Scaleup Engagement Manager for Yorkshire, Alina-Faith Cameron, helped to organise - and which was kindly sponsored by Brewin Dolphin, and opened by the The Right Honourable Lord Mayor of York, Councillor David Carr.

Some inspiring Northern tech entrepreneurs together at the York Digital Focus event in Leeds

As always, across the whole of the UK, our Scaleup Engagement Managers and programme leads have been busy meeting with our network of UK tech entrepreneurs. You can watch some great video content of our regional companies on our social channels - like this video interview with the CEO of Leeds-based edtech note-taking scaleup Glean (a member of our Upscale programme), this video interview with the CEO and Co-founder of Leeds-based Bidnamic (who have just raised a ￡4mn VC round and expanded to Austin, Texas), and our Yorkshire Scaleup Engagement Manager Alina’s interview with Leeds-based development studio XR Games (watch it here ).

If you’re in search of more great tech content for this month, our Chair Stephen Kelly also gave a fantastic interview on the Investing Matters podcast about his experience leading high-growth tech companies, which is well worth a listen (you can find it here ).?

The importance & joy of coming together in person

Excitingly, we had our quarterly company social in London this month, which was a Taskmaster-themed day of challenges and activities, followed by an evening of food, drinks and socialising.?

I believe coming together once in a while simply for the joy of being together, and making time to bond as a team, is a huge reason why our team culture feels stronger than ever - even in times of change. I’ve said it before, but I really recommend every tech CEO or founder to invite their entire team to get together at least once every quarter to speak, socialise and brainstorm with one another.?

Some of our teams making spaghetti towers at Tech Nation’s latest quarterly company away day!

Coming up

Next month, we’re beyond excited to be launching our Net Zero Report 2022; our own Tech Nation Sustainability Report. We are also partnering with weare3Sixty on an incredible initiative to support UK tech founders and leadership teams with their well-being and mental health (more details on this coming soon).?

We’ve also got our next Female Founder Office Hours - an event where female tech founders have the opportunity to meet investors for pitching or mentoring opportunities - happening on the 10th of November, led by Playfair Capital and Global Ventures in collaboration with us (Tech Nation), Google for Startups and MEVCA, which will see female founders meeting 150 VCs from across the UK, Europe and MENA!

On top of that, we will be announcing the Regional Winners of our national Rising Stars competition (the UK’s most exciting startup competition, identifying the brightest and best early-stage UK tech startups from every region of the UK) ?

Plus, we have an exciting webinar coming up from our Lawtech UK panel around ‘shaping the future of lawtech’ (sign up here ). Additionally, our International team members in the UK and South East Asia have led on helping Weavr, a fintech based in London, expand to Singapore, where they will be marking the company’s official launch at an in-person event at the start of next month. They are also gearing up for a virtual US Growth Workshop for UK tech companies looking to expand to US markets (sign up here ), and so much more!

A big thank you

I’d like to end by not only thanking the amazingly hard-working team, who are changing the lives of tech founders and entrepreneurs across the UK, but to thank the industry as a whole for the flurry of messages of support I’ve received over the last few weeks. It’s amazing to be reminded that Tech Nation’s work is making a lasting difference, and I look forward to sharing another update with you next month.

Thanks for reading! Bring on November!?