Developments

The city has a history in asset management and investment, but its real strength lies in its people. Edinburgh’s thriving digital tech scene is conspicuously collaborative, with a strong sense of camaraderie. CodeBase, the UK’s largest tech incubator sits at the heart of Edinburgh’s tech scene, offering invaluable knowledge to local startups. It is also home to CivTech, the Scotland-wide initiative, helping startups engage with, and solve, public sector challenges.

• It has been a good year for acquisitions in Edinburgh: Aquila Insight was acquired by Merkle; Converse.AI by Smartsheet; Cloudgine by Epic Games. Meanwhile, FanDuel co-founders Nigel Eccles and Rob Jones have launched a new eSports company, Flick.

• The city’s universities are furthering its ambition to become the data capital of Europe. Heriot-Watt University’s new Discovery and Innovation Centre is focused on computer science and technology.
  

• Barclays and CodeBase have announced the launch of Scotland’s first Eagle Lab. Located in CodeBase’s Edinburgh facility, it will combine the innovative Eagle Lab model with CodeBase’s incubator expertise. The makerspace will offer rapid prototyping of hardware and IoT products, allowing startups to iterate as quickly with hardware, as they do with software.

Community perceptions survey findings

The Tech Nation 2018 Survey was conducted between January 2018 and February 2018, in partnership with Streetbees. This year’s survey received the largest response yet from members of the UK tech community. In a total of 3,428 submissions, people told us about the opportunities and challenges their local ecosystems face, and the digital tech leaders they admire. The majority of respondents (33%) were founders and CEOs.

Who Edinburgh startups say is influential