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Truro and Redruth

Digital tech turnover up by 32% from
2014 to 2017

£50 mDigital tech business turnover (2017)
£70 kDigital tech turnover by employee (2017)
£93 mGVA
(2017)
716Jobs in digital tech sector
(2017)
2,368Digital tech jobs
(2017)

Developments

Truro and Redruth’s tech sector may be small, but it has exhibited impressive growth over the past few years and shows no sign of slowing down. The strong sense of community is a great asset to this growing tech hub and a big draw for businesses from elsewhere in the UK. Big news in the area is the £8.4 million investment in Goonhilly Earth Station which will create the world’s first commercial deep-space communications station.

  • Tecademy for Teachers – is a two-day programme in which Raspberry Pi educators and industry experts help teachers with the new computing curriculum and develop activities they can run with their students. After the huge success of their previous events, Tecadaemy will be running again in Autumn 2018.
  • Software Cornwall continues to boost the local talent pipeline. Its annual four-day Missions to Mars programme and its Code Clubs encourage coding amongst school children through workshops, after-school clubs, assemblies and more.
  • European Regional Development Funding will continue to boost Cornish projects until 2019. Beneficiaries currently include Aerospace Cornwall and Agritech Cornwall. In 2017, the University of Plymouth and partners were also awarded £2.7 million to improve the use of e-health in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly.

Marcus Kern

Co-founder & CEO, CFT Group

About CFT Group
CFT Group is a fin-tech start-up setting out to revolutionise bill payments across the UK. Our DUESDAY app helps couples and sharers to split direct debits easily. We give merchants with recurring bills like utilities, gyms and charities new tools to strengthen loyalty and help customers on lower incomes.

Why Truro and Redruth?
With low rent costs, super-fast broadband, and a steady stream of world-class talent, Cornwall is the perfect place to grow CFT Group, supported by ERDF in our early stages.

National & International focus
Initially grown with EU funds, we have recently attracted investment from London, Madrid and Vancouver. We have partners in Spain and Mexico, who have expressed interest to export the DUESDAY model to their markets.

Garry Barter

CEO & Co-founder, Hertzian

About Hertzian
Hertzian gives businesses the ability to extract value from their customers’ feedback. Through the use of Machine Learning technology, our AI platform helps businesses improve their customer retention and grow revenue.

Why Truro and Redruth?
Hertzian chose to be based in Cornwall due to the unique quality of life the location can provide to our employees, as well as having access to the significant amount of talent emerging from the county.

National & International focus
With clients and colleagues around the world, communication is the most important part of our organisation. It’s essential that when communication is easy and often extremely frequent, we know when to open up dialogue.

Popular meetups in Truro & Redruth

770 members

Cornwall Digital Meetup Group

584 members

Cornwall Social Media Cafe

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 Truro & Redruth startups say is a strength

1Helpful tech community
2Appealing area
3Good internet speed

What Truro & Redruth startups say is a challenge

1Access to talent
2Bad transport links
3Remote area

Who Truro & Redruth startups say is influential

Paul Massey

Director, Bluefruit Software

About you
I started in embedded software when I was 15 years old on work experience. I worked in that business for seven years whilst studying science, maths and engineering at college. And then started Bluefruit when I was 22 years old.

Unique to Truro and Redruth?
Truro & Redruth is unique as an employer and an employee. As an employee, it offers a beautiful, sunny and stimulating environment. As an employer, it offers a deep pool of raw talent which of course is the most important ingredient for building a software business.

Strengths & Challenges
In Cornwall, there is a shortage of skilled talent, but an abundance of raw talent so I believe the key to success in the area is creating an effective skills incubator, and inspiring both local and visiting talent to grow here. Not only does this give the area a unique solution to the global talent challenge, but also allows us to break the mould.

Tech Nation 2018 is now open!

Great news. All data featured in the 2018 Tech Nation Report is available online for non-commercial use by third parties.  The data can be accessed through the data.world platform. If you use the data, please let us know. We would love to showcase your work.

If you'd like know why we are doing this, check out our blog.

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