Video from our Silicon Roundabout special event featuring the Minister for Science David Willetts

Published by: Tech Hubber on 21st Dec 2010 | View all blogs by Tech Hubber

(Click above or here for video)

Following the government's announcements about supporting tech businesses in London in the form of their "East London Tech City" initiative TechHub decided to bring together the community of tech companies around Silicon Roundabout to discuss the issues. On the panel, chaired by TechHub's Elizabeth Varley, was David Willetts, Minister for Science and Universities and Anthony Browne from the Mayor's Office.

TechHub is working with Number 10, the UKTI, the Mayor's Office, BIS and the Technology Strategy Board to make sure startups and high-growth tech businesses in the existing Shoreditch/Old Street tech cluster can make the most of the opportunities available. We invited tech companies in the area to the event to talk with these high level people about what their needs were.

Some of the topics covered included:

• Early stage funding

• The role of universities

• The issues around recruiting talent to the area (and if this would be affected)

• The entrepreneur's visa and immigration issues

• And how will the government be supporting the existing tech cluster in Shoreditch?

At the end the Minister made a commitment to look a issues around venture funding and the appropriateness of education/IT courses in regards to how they map to startups.

One person asked if the BBC should be brough into the TechCity fold, perhaps in terms of their commissioning budget. Another person said this would be a bad idea as they'd simply recruit people out of startups and put up the price of talent again.

A show of hands showed very few Startups have been able to win government contracts.

On discussion was around giving access to small amounts of money to a lot of companies. The Minister said it would be hard to structure that.

The Minister also said it would be hard to give london Startups an exemption on national Insurance given the economics in the rest of the country.

Minister David Willetts said connections with universities will hopefully come with getting them to "look East".

The event was very much about Q&A and getting the politicians to listen to the concerns of the community. We hope you enjoyed the event.

TechHub's aim is to support the tech industry by bringing together all the elements of the technology ecosystem. This is the first event in our series of events exclusively for the Shoreditch tech cluster, so look out for more coming from January.

We'd like to thank the UKTI and the Mayor's Office for their help in putting together this event.

Click here for video.