Top U.S. Tech Investors Come to London
Investors in San Francisco (Bloomberg) and Los Angeles (ROC) will join Boris Johnson at London’s InnoTech Summit on Friday, 26th April
Leading tech business event, the InnoTech Summit, has confirmed that some of the world’s most powerful tech venture capitalists are set to attend, including Partners and CEOs from Greycroft, Bessemer Venture Partners, Huddle, Siemer& Associates, and DN Capital. Sequoia Capital, a business that has alone backed companies now collectively worth over 20 percent of the total value of the NASDAQ stock exchange, will also be represented. They will join the London event from InnoTech Summits held in San Francisco (Bloomberg office) and Los Angeles (The Roc, Santa Monica) via a live publically broadcast video group chat hosted by Mayor of London, Boris Johnson.
Venture Capitalists Eye UK Opportunities
As well as being keen to see what the London tech startup scene has to offer, the investors are set to engage in a discussion with the Mayor about how they can more readily take advantage of the UK’s growing internet economy. Currently, the Internet economy represents 8.4% of UK GDP, which constitutes a bigger share than for any of the G20 major countries, including the USA. Furthermore, it is forecast to represent 12.6% by 2016.
London’s Strategic Role in Tech Innovation
InnoTech Summit founder Jennifer Arcuri, believes that this makes London the obvious place with which the Californian tech scene should align itself: “London has the potential to not only be Europe’s tech ‘capital’, but one of the major tech hubs in the world. As well as an internet-hungry population, we have excellent Government initiatives, the EU’s second highest number of high-sector workers, and the best time zone for trading with both eastern and western economies,” she said.
It is also hoped that this transatlantic dialogue will enable policy makers, business leaders and investors in the UK to better understand how to create an improved environment for UK tech startups to grow. Too often in the recent past these young businesses have been acquired by overseas giants and grown offshore, kissing goodbye to jobs and economic prosperity in Britain. Failure to up-scale UK startups into tech giants such as Google and FaceBook is becoming an increasingly recognised problem.
Expanding UK Startups onto the Global Stage
“We need to be able to scale and headquarter our tech startups here and then help them to expand out into places like Silicon Valley. By strengthening our relationship with West Coast tech companies and venture capitalists, we’ll learn how to do this better. The speakers on our Californian panels have served hundreds of IPOs – companies such as FaceBook, LinkedIn, Yahoo, Google, adly, Amplify; the list goes on. What we can learn from these guys is imperative. And the best thing about it is that it’s a symbiotic relationship, one that benefits economies on both side of the pond,” explained MsArcuri.
The Stateside ‘British Breakfast’ events, so called because they are scheduled for 9am PSD, take place during California’s Brit Week – a major affair that celebrates British business on the West Coast. The Google Hangout video chat, hosted by Boris Johnson, will start at 5pm BST on 26th April. It will be streamed live from the InnoTech Summit at Level39 Canary Wharf, and can be viewed via the InnoTech Summit website and FaceBook page.
