Liverpool

Scaleup ecosystem with 144% increase in digital business births from 2011 to 2016

£305 mDigital tech business turnover (2017)

ScaleupDistribution of businesses by age (2017)

£76 kDigital tech turnover by employee (2017)

104Digital tech business births (2016)

£456 mGVA
(2017)

3,989Jobs in the digital tech sector (2017)

12,890Digital tech jobs
(2017)

Developments

Its rich cultural heritage and world-leading big data/AI capabilities gives Liverpool a unique and undeniable ‘edge’. Disruptive technologies, combined with challenging minds, are driving the highly collaborative createch and digital scenes across the City Region.

Createch: The Baltic Triangle was voted the UK’s coolest place to live and work in 2017 by The Times. It is home to artists, makers, gamers and multi-award winning companies, including vTime (one of Gartner’s ‘Cool Vendors’), the Studio School – specialising in gaming and digital media, unique workspaces like Baltic Creative and Cains Brewery Village, plus Liverpool Girl Geeks who have expanded into InnovateHer. Meanwhile, plans have been unveiled for the £35million transformation of the former Littlewoods building into one of the largest film studios in the UK, with state-of-the-art film and content production resources, sound stages, training and education facilities, a live venue and business campus.

AI & data economy: as evidenced in the BEIS-commissioned LCR+ Science & Innovation Audit published in September 2017, the new STFC Hartree Centre at ever-expanding SciTech Daresbury has international prominence in high performance computing and cognitive computing/AI thanks to the UK’s most powerful supercomputer dedicated to industrial R&D, plus a unique collaboration with IBM’s pioneering Watson platform, e.g. now being deployed to realise Alder Hey children’s hospital’s ambition to become the world’s first “Living Hospital".

4IR: Sensor City – one of the world’s first incubators dedicated to the development and application of sensors/IoT technology – opened in 2017. Not only an integral element of LCR4.0 – the UK’s leading sub-national programme applying 4IR solutions to revolutionise productivity in manufacturing sector SMEs – it also led Liverpool’s winning bid to become one of only 6 initial UK 5G testbeds.

Oliver Hall

CEO, Ultamation

About Ultamation
Ultamation are a multi-award winning company, who specialise in high-end Crestron home automation solutions, with focus on software development and user interface design.

Why Liverpool?
Being based within the Knowledge Quarter of Liverpool, Liverpool Science Park gives us great access to like-minded businesses, the opportunities to get involved in various city initiatives, and the access to many resources of the Universities.

National & International focus
We have worked on projects as far afield as Dubai, and have customers internationally. Our online shop has a truly international market reach with programmers from the US to Russia purchasing software. Closer to home, we’ve got much more involved with businesses on our doorstep over the past 12 months, having been involved with LCR 4.0.

Founded: 2007

Rosemary Kay

Creative Director, Immersive Storylab

About Immersive Storylab
The Immersive Storylab creates enchanted encounters with place. We work in research, development and production of VR and AR experiences. As well as creating VR films for both public and private organisations, from heritage projects to commercial and international operations, we also develop and produce unique and innovative AR experiences.

Why Liverpool?
Liverpool has long been a magnet for the most talented creatives in the film industry, which is my background. And now the development of Immersive Technology seems to be empowered by the cities of the North like Liverpool. It is a creative hub so our company can draw on all that creativity.

National & International focus
We work with a wide range of people from the creative industries around the UK, on a freelance basis, or as associates, such as professional actors. We have also partnered with other businesses around the UK, such as Kay-Lambert Associates, and with national charities like the Marine Conservation Society. We have the support of the Digital Catapult, and Innovate UK, and we are working with international companies such as Motive.io, a Canada based AR developer.

Founded: 2017

Popular meetups in Liverpool

840 members

Liverpool Tester Gathering

644 members

Google Developer Group Liverpool

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.

What Liverpool startups say is a strength

1Helpful tech community

2Appealing area

3Access to resources

What Liverpool startups say is a challenge

1Access to funding

2Access to talent

3Local government

Who Liverpool startups say is influential

Lee Omar

CEO, Red Ninja

About Red Ninja
We create “Tech for Good,” – Smart City and Digital Health applications that use IoT Sensors, Artificial Intelligence and Data Science to save people’s lives, reduce falls for the ageing population and help cities run better. Before founding Red Ninja, I worked at a Human Rights NGO for 11 years.

Unique to Liverpool?
Several start-ups have successful Internet of Things products. Some great companies working in E-Commerce, E-learning as well as “Creatch” firms using a creative approach to tech in VR, AR, and gaming. There is a strong cluster of e-health start-ups, who are collaborating with the NHS and social care organisations.

Strengths & Challenges
There are some awesome grassroots non-profits such as Agent Academy, OH and Liverpool Girl Geeks working to empower and up-skill people to enter the tech workforce. These organisations should receive some sort of public sector funding like Tech Nation, as they are growing the wider economy for UK PLC and could scale their achievements to add more value to the tech economy.

Tech Nation 2018 is now open!

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