Tech Nation, December 21, 2022 7 min read
Hello everyone! We hope you’re all excited to have a wonderful and restful festive period.
Before we get into all of the exciting things we have in store for 2023, we wanted to take one last look back at 2022 and all the incredible things achieved by the UK’s flourishing tech sector, its emerging tech startups and our amazing colleagues at Tech Nation.
Despite a challenging year, it’s been another record year for Tech Nation 🙌
UK tech remains resilient
Despite the social and economic hardships of 2022, it’s been a record-breaking year for UK tech. Earlier this year, our ‘A Decade of UK Tech’ (commissioned by Google for Startups) unveiled that funding for purpose-driven UK tech companies (addressing UN Sustainable Development Goals) reached $3.5 billion in 2021 (almost 43x the $74mn they received in 2011)!
We had more good news in July as our People & Skills report revealed that UK tech job opportunities have hit a 10-year high, with nearly 5 million people working in UK tech today, and that tech salaries are a staggering 80% higher on average than salaries for non-tech jobs.
Another highlight was the launch of our eye-opening Faces of Visa 2022 Report (following a record number of migrants with tech skills applying for UK visas, as The Times reported). This report found that 18% of all UK tech companies are founded by at least one non-UK national, and these founders are accelerating the growth of the UK tech sector, as companies founded by non-UK nationals raised almost 23% of all UK tech VC investment (£8bn) in 2021. This increased diversity in UK tech is boosting innovation, creating more jobs and strengthening our nation’s economy, and it’s definitely something to celebrate.
With so much tech growth happening in recent times, and more diversity and innovation in the UK tech sector than ever, it’s hard to know where to begin when talking about the highlights of 2022.
Market Closing at the London Stock Exchange (LSEG) with companies from our Future Fifty 10.0 cohort, together with the London Stock Exchange CEO and Digital Technology Minister.
An incredible year for UK climate tech
We’d love to start by talking about net zero and climate tech in the UK, as this was an enormous focus for us at Tech Nation – and the tech sector at large – in 2022.
In November, we launched our Climate Tech Report 2022, which revealed that investment into UK climate tech is growing exponentially, with UK climate companies raising $7.5bn in 2022 (up from $4bn in 2021)!
Throughout the year, the outsized role technology is playing in tackling the climate crisis became clear. That’s why we launched our newest growth programme, Net Zero X, in 2022, to accelerate the growth of the UK’s leading later-stage climate tech scaleups, which have the highest potential to reduce global emissions across each key sector.
Through 2023 and beyond, we must continue to fuel the areas curtailing emissions with investment and shape policy that allows real change to become possible. This is the only way to preserve our planet for future generations.
We recently published our “How the tech sector can achieve net zero” report, which outlined some actionable steps every tech company can take to drastically reduce their carbon emissions, including opting for a more sustainable office, choosing greener pension schemes and prioritising train travel. If you’re a tech leader working in the UK, we highly recommend you read the report – and make it your New Year’s Resolution to put sustainability at the core of your company’s values in 2023!
Plus, in case you missed it, we recently launched the Climate Tech Policy Coalition Report in collaboration with the Climate Change Centre for Innovation, Coadec and TechUK. The report follows a series of roundtables conducted over the summer with over 100 climate tech startups across the UK, and outlines over 25 policy recommendations to the Government to better support the growth of climatch tech. We’d really encourage you to read this if you haven’t already!
Our wonderful third Net Zero cohort together at our London event space in Spitalfields
The launch of our Growth Platform
An enormous highlight for us at Tech Nation in 2022 was the launch of our new Growth Platform, which we celebrated alongside hundreds of the UK’s most ambitious and fast-growing tech scaleups at our Scaleup Summer Social at King’s Cross in London. Fast forward six months, and we’ve now had over 2,500 companies sign up to the platform. That’s the majority of all tech scaleups in the UK! 😮
In case you haven’t already, please do sign up to the platform, join your fast-growing founder peers and enjoy the knowledge and networks that our Growth Platform has to offer. The Growth Platform provides personalised content, masterclasses, support and a closed network for scaleup leaders. Built from a decade of supporting scaleups, including over 30% of UK unicorns, the platform was created to help scaleups address and solve over 900 scaling challenges, and to help leadership teams solve challenges, save time and accelerate growth.
Startups & scaleups networking at our Summer Social in King’s Cross
An illuminating panel at the Libra 2.0 kick-off event for underrepresented UK tech founders
Making an impact across the UK – and around the world 🌍
In true Tech Nation style, we’ve been busy hosting events and bringing the tech community together across every region of the UK. Over the Summer, our International team found tech scaleups ready to expand internationally during their Inter(National) road trip across England, Scotland and Wales, we hosted networking events for our Rising Stars 5.0 applicants (tech startups) in over 30 cities across the UK, and over the course of our year our Tech Nationers gave over 50 inspiring talks at major industry events such as the Leeds Digital Festival, CogX, Birmingham Tech Week, London Tech Week and the Big Data Belfast conference – to name just a few!
Our Chair Stephen Kelly takes to the stage at the Big Data Belfast conference
Our virtual Rising Stars 2022 awards ceremony for the brightest and best tech startups across the UK was an enormous success!
And our Tech Nation events haven’t just been happening across every part of the UK – but also every part of the world! To name just a couple of international highlights, in 2022, our Global Talent Visa team headed to America to attend the UK Consulate’s Visa event in Boston to share how global talent can build brilliant lives, careers and businesses here in the UK, and we headed to Singapore to launch GBxAsia (supported by the UK government’s Digital Trade Network).
GBxAsia is a brand new network for British tech entrepreneurs, powered by Tech Nation, which will bring together entrepreneurs and investors with a connection to the UK to make the most of the opportunities in Asia Pacific. The network will provide British tech entrepreneurs establishing themselves in this region the ability to access insights and advice to accelerate their growth. As part of the wider GBx global network, this is the first of its kind to connect British tech across the world’s leading tech hubs – the UK, the US, and Asia.
Tech Nation and UK government representatives at GBxAsia launch alongside Natalie Black, Her Majesty’s Trade Commissioner for APAC; Kara Owen, UK High Commissioner to Singapore; and Gerard Grech, CEO of Tech Nation
A year of impact
We haven’t even touched on half of the incredible activity that’s been going on across Tech Nation and our network of incredible tech scaleups over the past 12 months. There’s so much we are proud of this year. Our Upscale growth programme (for fast-scaling mid-stage tech scaleups) was named the UK’s most active accelerator, we’ve hosted some amazing quarterly in-person team bonding events in London and Manchester, and at the start of the year we also announced the 10 winners of Rising Stars 4.0; our annual competition to find the UK’s best and brightest early-stage tech startups from all regions of the UK. It’s been a delight to see this year’s incredible winners’ (HR DataHub, Kuberno, Kythera AI, MYNDUP, Naurt, Renude, Settld, RDvault, xigxag and Zoa Rental) growth accelerate since.
Our Client Engagement Director Liz Scott hosts a panel with Zilch CEO Philip Belamont and PatSnap CEO Ray Chohan at our 2022 cross-programmes finale event
A note of heartfelt thanks
Finally and importantly, we want to express our gratitude for the industry’s continued support and engagement in Tech Nation. With your support, we’ve supported thousands of tech companies from all around the UK to grow, stay resilient and make a lasting impact in the world.
But there is so much more to do. In 2023, even more needs to be done to boost regions across the UK, support underrepresented founders, drive tech investment for achieving net zero and ensure tech scaleups in the UK have the dedicated, impartial support they need to grow and succeed.
With the right ecosystem in place, we believe the number of scaleups and unicorns could be doubled by 2030. A very happy festive season to you all!
Meanwhile here are all the other years in reviews:
