Here’s how our Entrepreneur Engagement Managers supported founders in June
7 min read
North East
Find support and useful resources, make new contacts and discover events in your local community
- Read Jamie’s Q&A
- Email: jamiehardesty@technation.io
- Social media: Twitter – LinkedIn
Our Entrepreneur Engagement Managers (EEMs) are helping to build a national network of ambitious tech entrepreneurs.
I’m Jamie Hardesty, your EEM on the ground in the North East.
I’m passionate about raising the profile of tech startups in the region, as well as the entire North East ecosystem as a whole. With a background in journalism and community building, I’m here to help founders on their journeys in whichever ways I can.
This page is your directory to help you find the best resources available in the region.
Contact me for help with plugging into our UK-wide entrepreneur network, applying for Tech Nation’s growth programmes, and everything inbetween.
North East in stats
For more stats on UK tech, discover Tech Nation report 2019
1.26Digital tech turnover (£bn)
2,905Digital tech business count
30,000Employment in digital tech
80Digital tech productivity per worker (£000s)
Also check out: Scotland | Yorkshire | North West | Northern Ireland | Midlands | Wales | East of England | South West | South East | London
From the community
Click the headings below to hear from community leaders, read the latest ecosystem developments and view founder case studies
Community insight
Developments: Newcastle & Gateshead – Sunderland – Middlesbrough
Case studies: Newcastle & Gateshead – Sunderland – Middlesbrough
Newcastle & Gateshead
Paul Smith, cofounder and CEO, Ricochet Technologies
Opportunities?
North of Tyne and Gateshead continue to offer huge potential. Key highlights in 2018 include the likes of Northstar Ventures and ADV actively investing at seed stage, and Gateshead Council delivering on its long-term strategy to support tech SMEs. Nurturing early-stage founders and teams is critical if we want more scaleups flourishing in the region.
Challenges?
There’s a critical lack of expertise; too few A-players with operational experience of high-growth technology businesses, which leads to a lack of informed advice and understanding of the early-stage sector, of the nuances of investment and business models. Above all, too few agendas are aligned with the needs of the community, and there’s too little tolerance for activities or solutions that deviate from these agendas, meaning best practise isn’t being sought or shared to help inform broader policy; differences of opinion are often treated as a threat, not a strength.
Sunderland
David Dunn, CEO, Sunderland Software City
Opportunities?
We are now starting to see wider digital adoption from traditionally non-digital sectors such as manufacturing and charities. As this continues, there is a huge opportunity for the tech sector to understand these wider digital needs and develop new products and services to meet demand. I’m proud of some of the pioneering work being done in the city and the wider North East around the creation of test-beds as ultimately this helps new users reap the benefits of technology and helps the digital companies test their new ideas.
Challenges?
Exposure to markets beyond the local geography is still a big challenge for small companies who have limited capacity to talk about their innovative products and services. Access to skilled people is an inevitable challenge but we are starting to see some innovative new ways of finding new talent in the industry.
Middlesbrough
Dan Watson, Digital Middlesbrough Manager, Middlesbrough Council
Opportunities?
There’s a big focus on digital transformation in wider priority sectors, and given our industrial heritage this is unlocking a number of key opportunities for businesses in both digital and non-digital sectors, but it’s vital that we continue to provide support and break down barriers for our growing core digital tech industries. We have a very strong digital services sector, and we’re seeing more and more product spinouts coming out of these companies, many of which are in the area of ecommerce tech.
Challenges?
One of the key barriers to growth has been business accommodation that is fit for purpose for digital tech businesses, allowing for both the growth of indigenous digital tech companies and the ability to capitalise on further inward investment opportunities. We’ve been working very closely with local property developers to rectify this, and our plans for Boho Next Generation will future-proof this for the sector.
- The now-live Jeremie 2 investment funds have been a warm addition to the local tech scene. A total of five funds, the £120m purse is expected to support 600 companies and help create 2,500 jobs by 2023. Startup champion Northstar Ventures, which has backed North East entrepreneurs for over 15 years now, is managing the £27m Innovation Fund.
- Northstar Ventures has helped reinvigorate the early-stage ecosystem of late, making 50 investments into 48 companies in the past 12 months. Popular startup accelerator Ignite is back in the region and will launch its third programme via the Fund this year.
- Newcastle Helix, a 24-acre tech and science hub in the city centre, is continuing to develop as an innovation beacon for the region. Two accelerator programmes, in life sciences and ageing, have launched this year.
- The Lumen, a 100,000 sqft Grade A office development, is on course to be open before 2020. An incubator and accelerator are expected to follow on site next year.
- The opening of PROTO: The Emerging Technology Centre has firmly enhanced Gateshead’s reputation as a hotspot for innovation. The state-of-the-art R&D facility is equipped with a sound recording studio and specialist 3D character and motion capture equipment for hire.
- Owned and managed by the visionary Gateshead Council and part of the Digital Catapult NETV network, PROTO is home to the North East Tees Valley Immersive Lab (one of only four in the UK).
- Sunderland City Council has launched an innovative pilot programme to test if data gathered through the Internet of Things could help Sunderland residents who receive adult health and social care packages live independently in their own homes for longer. Working with Digital Catapult NETV, they have already procured assistive technologies designed to tackle issues such as the management of medication, moving around the home safely, and monitoring individual’s moods.
- The Digital Catapult have invested in the NETV centre through until 2021, leading to more innovation support across the region. The centre has developed an excellent reputation in enabling startups and scaleups to work with large organisations, by educating traditionally non-digital companies on the value of emerging technologies.
- Sunderland, along with the wider North East, has carved a real niche for games development in recent years, with firms such as Coatsink leading the charge locally. With demand increasing for skilled games developers, the state-of-the-art NextGen studio, based at Sunderland College, has been purpose-built to replicate the real-world working environment of a commercial game and VFX (visual effects) studio.
- Boho Next Generation proposes a high-level masterplan to expand Middlesbrough’s digital and creative quarter, The Boho Zone, to create a genuine digital campus. A £20m investment has been secured from Tees Valley Combined Authority for the first phase of the masterplan, which will deliver 80,000 sq ft of office space, seeing The Zone grow to 10 physically clustered buildings dedicated specifically to digital tech companies.
- Teesside University hosted its 20th annual animation and games festival, The Animex Festival, this year. The popular event gives people the chance to meet those who work behind-the-scenes in the animation industry, a niche sector-specialism for the area. Industry-leading firms such as Sony London Studio, Santa Monica Studios, MPC and Insomniac Games also attended the festival.
- Digital innovation driver, DigitalCity is expanding its startup support offering by this year launching a new investment readiness programme. Eighteen Tees Valley-based founders will be helped in demystifying the investment process and bolstered with insight on what makes a business truly investment ready.
Pete Daykin, CEO, Wordnerds
About Wordnerds
Wordnerds makes sense of the millions of tweets, emails, web chats, online reviews, CRM-entries and survey results written by and about big brands that are currently invisible to them. We combine bleeding-edge AI (no, really!) and old-school linguistic techniques to provide next-generation automated understanding of unstructured text data, to help brands listen, understand and act.
What are you proud of achieving in the past year?
We’re just closing our first round of investment, which has seen us close down the agency that gave us life, an agency that was established, profitable and enjoyed a great reputation. Nevertheless, going all in on Wordnerds was a no-brainer. The size of the brands we’re winning, the calibre of the people we’re working with and for and the track records of the people investing in us are intoxicating and exceed anything we could have achieved. We’ve only been going a couple of years and already we can tell this is a special opportunity and one that doesn’t come around too often.
Why Gateshead?
Simple. Gateshead Council have been innovators since the days of the Team Valley and the Metro Centre. With Proto, the Council continue to be innovators today. When we spoke to different people about where to locate, they wanted us the most and gave us more and better help. Moreover, the NE tech community is that of a rare breed, a group of people that help each other and come together in the face of bigger and better-funded national and international competitors. It’s a wonderful place to grow a tech business. We’re the UK’s tiger economy.
Jonny Grubin, founder and CEO, SoPost
About SoPost
SoPost helps brands run the most powerful product sampling campaigns online, with a focus on relevance, data and analytics. Our platform allows brands to integrate sampling into a range of digital activations, such as media buys, influencer partnerships, and from within content. We do this across 7 markets and we power the entire experience including data handling, fulfillment, and collection of feedback once someone has received their sample (as well as everything else that you wouldn’t even think of!).
What are you proud of achieving in the past year?
The last year has been a bit of a whirlwind – we’ve been growing incredibly quickly, to the point where Deloitte recognised us as the UK’s 13th fastest growing tech company. I’m so proud of the team we’re building here, and all the work that has gone in – on the product and commercially – to get us to a place where we’re humbled to see others try to mimic what we do. It’s an extraordinary feeling to know that we’re the best at what we do, and that fills me with a lot of pride and motivation to keep getting better.
Why Newcastle?
Why not? Being based here gives us a massive competitive advantage: we can hire the best people and we can build a great working environment. Costs are also so much lower here which means that we’ve been able to build a real, fast-growing business, without having to load up on tonnes of venture capital money. I’m convinced that our structure of headquartering programming, design and operations in Newcastle, with commercial bases in London and New York, is a key reason why we’re seeing the success that we are.
Mike Rohan, CEO, Technically Compatible
About Technically Compatible
Technically Compatible helps recruiters make better technical hires and chief technical officers build stronger teams through its software platform which assesses candidates technical ability online.
What are you proud of achieving in the past year?
We raised a growth round in October 2018 through one of the UK’s most respected VC firms which has helped us scale the team. I have been able to bring in leaders for my Marketing and Client Services functions as well as strengthening the board through the addition of a new Chair who has walked in my shoes when it comes to scaling a tech company. To say the last 6 months has been transformative is an understatement.
Why Sunderland?
We were founded in Sunderland in 2014, it’s proven a great place to scale a tech company for a number of reasons. First of all there’s the access to talent – we have some great Universities in the North East. All of our tech team have graduated out of Durham, Newcastle, Sunderland or Teesside and I’m passionate about retaining talent in the region. We also have a really supportive local authority and the cost base is really favourable too – our whole office probably costs the same as renting a desk out of a nice serviced office in London.
Stewart Kibby, CEO, Workcast
About Workcast
At WorkCast, we have been helping businesses create powerful and engaging online events since 2008. The company really began as a solution to a problem – how can we make webinars as easy to use and easy to scale as video? Since then, we have worked with some of the world’s biggest and fastest growing companies – including Sony, Moz, GSK and AutoDesk – making their webinars, webcasts, and virtual events truly spectacular, and becoming a global leader in online events in the process.
What are you proud of achieving in the past year?
WorkCast has achieved a lot over the past year, especially in streamlining our UK and US operations. Our HQ is in Sunderland but we have an office in Seattle, helping us to achieve 50% growth in the US and 13% growth overall in the past financial year. We are currently in the midst of expanding our operations base in Sunderland, with plans to add ten new roles. Being able to support the growing digital economy in the region and provide jobs is also something of which we are incredibly proud.
Why Sunderland?
Sunderland is an untapped market for digital companies. There are a number of great universities in the area which are turning out sharp and ambitious graduates. There is a slight challenge in terms of finding the right experience, but being able to bring on recent graduates means we can shape their thinking about what a digital company can be. We’re finding more and more people with the digital skill set don’t necessarily want to move to the cities that are traditionally seen as the ‘digital market’, so there is an increased appetite for these sorts of roles in Sunderland.
Ian Cornwell, CEO, Kraken IM
About Kraken
What are you We make software that makes sure engineering and construction projects get the right information at the right time, that they need to operate their facilities, assets and buildings. We’re interested in big engineered assets, think power stations, process plants, infrastructure, renewables etc. We’re trying to make sure that the information exists but also bring trust and transparency to the whole process and create a golden thread of digital information. It’s not exactly Snapchat but it’s a real problem in these sectors.
What are you proud of achieving in the past year?
The last 12 months have been a real breakthrough for us, there’s two things that we’re super proud of that stand out. The first is that we built the world’s first distributed ledger engineering information management platform, as well as being a mouthful, we’re hoping it ensures a transparent distribution of information across buildings and assets. Basically, it lets our users create a golden thread of digital information. The second has been on the client front, we’re now seeing a real interest in what we do and that has resulted in some pretty big wins, we’re now selling and exporting into world top 10 world companies.
Why Middlesbrough?
Well, the fact we’re all Teessiders is probably a factor, not going to lie. That said, there’s a small but vibrant tech scene in Boro, plus, for what we do specifically there’s a cluster of world leaders right here in Teesside. Whilst it’s not Manchester or Newcastle there’s a will locally to build our tech scene and the support is fantastic, from the awesome Teesside Uni Launchpad team, the Council, all the way up to the Mayor and combined authority. It’s great that there’s a desire to build an ecosystem.
James Lees, Marketing Director, Mabo Media
About Mabo
We help our clients improve and grow their business through PPC advertising.
What are you proud of achieving in the past year?
As an agency, we have many things to be proud of over the last 12 months. The growth of our clients’ businesses whilst working with Mabo, our 40+ strong team based in Middlesbrough, our 97.5% client retention rate. But for me, it was that Mabo were named as the Best Small PPC Agency at the 2018 European Search Awards. Our Middlesbrough based agency being named as the best at what we do on the continent will take some beating!
Why Middlesbrough?
Middlesbrough is our home. Our business is born from Teesside and will always remain in Teesside. All five directors of Mabo are born and bred in Teesside and we are driven to build the Biggest and BEST PPC Management Agency in the UK from Middlesbrough. The University has a fantastic record of producing fantastic graduates on a year on year basis which helps our growth immensely. People from Middlesbrough are responsible, passionate, approachable, honest and approachable. These five key personality traits are what our company ethics are built upon, so why wouldn’t we want to be based in Middlesbrough?
Latest news from the region
Support for founders
Meetups & networks
Research shows that collaborative tech ecosystems with thriving meetup scenes are more likely to succeed. As a founder, making the effort to get out to meetups and network events can lead to serendipitous encounters with people in the community who can give your business a boost.
Have a suggestion for this section? Let Jamie know
- North East – Dev meetups (Meetup.com)
- Newcastle – Founders Friday
- Newcastle – Newcastle Tech Trust Mixers
- Newcastle – First Friday
- Middlesbrough – Tees Tech Talks
Middlesbrough – Refresh Teesside
- Sunderland – Sunderland Digital
- Sunderland – Sunderland Software City
Co-working space
Co-working isn’t just about the free coffee – it’s a more flexible alternative to working out of traditional office space and brings the benefits of being part of a community. There’s no better way to build out your network, discover new routes to collaboration and learn the best tech events to attend. We’ve picked out some of the best co-working spaces in the region.
Have a suggestion for this section? Let Jamie know
- Newcastle – TusPark
- Newcastle – Natwest Entrepreneur Accelerator
- Durham – Aykley Heads
- Gateshead – PROTO
- Gateshead – Northern Design Centre
- Middlesbrough – Boho
- Sunderland – Sunderland Software City
Skills support
From learning how to develop software to nailing the art of self-promotion, helping your team brush up on its digital and soft skills can be financially rewarding while reducing reliance on others. We’ve highlighted some of the best code clubs, incubators, accelerators, bootcamps and other support services in the region.
Have a suggestion for this section? Let Jamie know
- Newcastle – Tech For Life
- Newcastle – North East Futures UTC
- Newcastle – Newcastle College: Digital Skills Academy
- Newcastle – Business and IP Centre
- Sunderland – Sunderland Software City
- Sunderland/Gateshead – Digital Catapult
Finance & investment
Securing finance and raising investment can be vital when it comes to taking your startup to the next level. Whether you’re seeking angel, VC or bank finance, we’ve picked out a range of investors, funds and support networks in the region.
Have a suggestion for this section? Let Jamie know
- North East – Ignite Accelerator
- North East – The North East Fund
- North East – Northstar Ventures
- Durham – Northern Powerhouse Fund
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