Startup News UK 2016 Review - March and April

by Startacus Admin

Earlier this week we started our 2016 UK Startup Review by focusing on many of the key startup happenings from January and February of this year.

Every few days or so we will share a bite-sized review until we are all done with reviewing 2016 as a whole: if you think your news, or someone else's startup related news should be included, email [email protected] and we’ll take a gander.

Now with January and February done and dusted we continue by reviewing the key UK Startup news from March and April…

March

• Our February overview ended with a note that UK Startups had started (in the main) to get a little jittery about the impact BREXIT would have, should we vote to leave the European Union. In March those jitters didn’t go away and a survey of members of Tech London Advocates, a group of a few thousand founders, thought leaders & Investors of the London Tech scene, polled overwhelmingly against a UK exit from the EU. (87% opposed Brexit). 81% of those TLA members believing that a BREXIT would make it tougher to employ talent from EU Countries.

• Speaking of recruitment of talent from outside of the UK it was also reported in March that one in five directors of new UK technology companies were foreign nationals according to research from DueDil.

• Further BREXIT jitters (or strategic false jitters) started to to appear in the media, with headlines such as ‘Brexit’ Nerves Cost This London Tech Startup $142,000 Already’ hitting the tech media. (BTW It was Sup - who ended up closing their doors in October)

• Whilst all this BREXIT anxiety went on, there was plenty of other news and headlines; London fintech startup GoCardless raised $13 million, Scottish startup eeGeo raised $5 million (3D-mapping), UK data science start-up Black Swan secured £3m in Japanese investment, Manchester based Social Chain raised $2m in German investment, Fintech App-only bank Monzo (called Mondo at the time) banked £1 million on Crowdcube (in just 96 seconds), and the investment bounce continued with Bristol Airhop landing a £6 million business loan from Santander to launch trampoline parks across Europe.

• Entries opened for a new digital health start-up accelerator DigitalHealth.London

• MasterCard partnered with Norwich-based artificial intelligence Rainbird

• Richard Branson launched a £1m competition with Virgin called VOOM 2016

• Entrepreneurial Spark launched in Northern Ireland and NI Accelerator StartPlanetNI’s first cohort ended with ‘demo day’ at Hillsborough Castle. 

• There was good news for Manchester and its further positioning as a Tech Ecosystem of note when direct flights to San Francisco were announced to begin in 2017.

• The North's 50 fastest growing tech businesses were revealed

• Baroness Mone published the 'Be the boss' review
  
  

April

• Startacus teamed up with leading European Tech event Digital DNA to host a Startup Pitch Event at their June event. A call was made for applications for the June event. (Which was very successful and you can watch a 3-minute video summary here) 

• UK firms dominated the FinTech50 2016 list which was announced at Money20/20 

• The John Lewis Corporate Accelerator JLAB returned and made a call out for applications 

• The National Living Wage was introduced in April

• Topshop launched a startup accelerator focused on wearables

• HackTrain and its cohort of ten startups reached the halfway stage of its Accelerator programme aimed at solving the UK rail industry's problems

• In Investment news - UK-based startups raised $1.3bn in Quarter 1 of 2016, down slightly from Q4 2015. London delivery startup Jinn raised $7.5 million, & home improvement startup Opun built on their success with a £3m investment from Aviva Ventures. 

• TechEast, a four year project was launched. The plan is (by 2020) to create an extra 5,000 digital tech jobs and drive economic growth in the East of England with focus on the three main tech hubs of Norwich, Cambridge and Ipswich.

• It was also reported in April that the North East beats London with the most startups in engineering

• An event hosted by cloud-based accountancy software provider Xero, the overwhelming message from speakers and attendees was that UK tech startups 'must be prepared for Brexit' whether they like it or not - perhaps a sign of a shifting tone and a foreshadow of what was to come.

• Also over on the BBC website (in the Business section) the question was asked about the then Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump - How did Donald Trump make his fortune? We will be hearing more on “The Donald” in the months to follow.

Hopefully that has given you a flavour of some of key UK Startup happenings and events for March and April 2016.

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Published on: 8th December 2016