Startups in Leicester: How The Public Sector Can Help

Business support for innovative startups in Leicester is not focused on the right things and this symptomatic of a common misunderstanding of what a startup really is.

Public sector organisations often often assume that startups are just young SME companies. They also often end up supporting business services agencies rather than teams focussed on innovative and scalable business ideas.

As a result, support schemes often require startups to write business plans, incorporate, register for VAT, rent office space etc, before they have worked out a clear business model. At best, jumping through these hoops makes extra work for startup entrepreneurs when they should be focussed on prototyping and validating their product. At worst it can be a waste of everyone's time and money.

Young SMEs who are already establishing the paraphernalia of business (office, telephone number, business cards, etc) are certainly worthy of support but they are not really startups and their needs are quite different to startups.

SMEs tend to sell their time and expertise for money which tends to limit their ability to grow. Startups strive to create scalable products with a global reach like Facebook, Dropbox or Twitter. Typically startups derive their income from intellectual property, global sales or subscription-based income.

Again, absolutely nothing wrong with accommodating and nurturing business-to-business SMEs (I've run one such firm myself for the last 12 years) but they are less likely to create profound innovation or help turn your city into a thriving Tech City or Silicon Valley.


What Are Startups and How Can They Be Supported?

The reality is that a true startup is nothing more than an informal bunch of people with a wild idea and the enthusiasm to see where it can take them.

Stanford professor and Lean Methodology pioneer Steve Blank defines a startup as:-

"An organisation formed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model".

These are very speculative organisations who are highly innovative but have a high 'failure' rate. These frequent 'failures' however do not mean bankruptcies and lay-offs - they mean quickly testing business ideas and gaining insight without spending lots of money or over-formalising. They are experiments not companies.

Such innovative organisations should not be pressurised into formalising their businesses prematurely but they are absolutely worthy of support.

Key things that startup entrepreneurs really need include:-

• Sources of inspiration for business ideas.
• Opportunities to meet diverse potential co-founders.
• Moral support and mentoring from peers.
• Informal access to experts in their field.
• Education on quickly validating business ideas and building prototypes (especially Lean Methodology.)

Above all, they need the support of an entrepreneurial ecosystem as championed by Brad Feld in his pioneering book Startup Communities, based on his experience in Boulder, Colorado. Feld is very clear that these need to be entrepreneur-led grass-roots communities rather than top-down public sector initiatives but that doesn't mean that the public sector has no place in an entrepreneurial ecosystem. It just requires a more nuanced, light-touch approach where the public sector feeds rather than leads entrepreneurial activity.

Here are some examples of ways in which the public sector in Leicester could help startups:-

• Fund cheap, large-scale, low-commitment co-working space close to the universities and cultural quarter but let startup-friendly organisations run things.
• Make it easier for community organisers to access free or cheap event venues (especially in the evenings) to spread knowledge.
• Promote existing startup activities to help accumulate a critical mass of participants. 
• Build better bridges with the universities to break the still-present town-and-gown mentality.
• End the artificial pigeon-holing and separation of 'technology' and 'creative' businesses - they need each other.
• Open public sector data to the public to support the civic hack community.

Leicester already has a small but flourishing startup community which I helped found at the beginning of 2013 based on Brad Feld's wisdom. We've gone from a couple of meet-ups a month to typically 5-10 with a wide range of activities including startup weekends, hackathons, seminars and mentoring sessions. We also have the beginnings of a base camp for activities in the form of accelerator and co-working space Incubate Leicester which opened its doors earlier in May 2014.

If Leicester aspires to produce its own Facebook or be a Silicon Valley then it needs to prioritise developing an entrepreneurial culture over ploughing into expensive copycat science parks or giving perks to SMEs. The good news is that raw materials are all around us with two great universities, a cosmopolitan population and a flourishing creative business community.

We've already had some enthusiastic, albeit limited, support from Leicester City Council, University of Leicester and De Montfort University, particularly with hosting startup events. However, there is a lot more potential for support in the way of facilities and activities which focus on informality, serendipity and the growth of the ecosystem.

Turning Off Traffic Lights - Part 2

A couple of years ago I blogged about the counterintuitive idea of removing traffic lights to reduce traffic congestion, accidents, pollution & road clutter.

More recently we have seen the results of the fantastic traffic re-engineering scheme in Poynton, Cheshire which shows how much better roads can be for all users.

This morning I was lucky enough to witness an outage of the traffic lights at the junction of Fosse Road and Hinckley Road in Leicester (one of the first junctions to have lights I believe).

Did this lead to crashes, road rage and general chaos?

Absolutely not. What I saw was a textbook example of how Leicester drivers can behave in a sensible and conscientious way when faced with an ambiguous traffic situation. Drivers spotted the lights were out, approached the junction with care and filtered off politely, stopping to allow nervous pedestrians to cross too. In addition, the typical queues that I witness at this junction every morning on my walk to work were completely absent.

Here's a rather shaky phone video of what I witnessed:-



Update 12/06/13 - here's how the junction is at the same time of day with the traffic lights working:-

City of Culture Bid: Looking Beyond Diversity

I was delighted to learn that the City Mayor has given the green light to Leicester's bid to be the 2017 City of Culture.

However, I already have nagging doubts about the direction this might be taking.

It's the flogging of the word 'diversity' that concerns me. We've made diversity our official civic religion in Leicester but I think we should place more emphasis to the ways in which we mix to give us the best chance of winning City of Culture.

Let's be clear, my wife is of a different race, religion and nationality to me and we have two lovely mixed-race daughters. My life is richer and more interesting as a result. I also think it's absolutely essential to continue the battle for equality so that that the diverse people in this city can all feel equally represented and respected. But diversity alone is just a statistic and having diversity doesn't necessarily mean harmony or cultural significance. It's what we do with it that counts.

Leicester has done something with it, demonstrated by the extent of blending, mixing and intermarriage between different groups of people. This is something to celebrate because A) it is somewhat unique to Leicester and B) is a living testament to the efforts in race relations and community cohesion that this city is rightly famous for.

I took my five year old (mixed Anglo-Singaporean-Indian) daughter to Chinese New Year party at one of her schoolmate's houses the other day. There were around 10 children there and all but one of them were mixed race. This is backed up by recent census data and it's high likely that mixed race people will become the majority in places like Leicester in the next 50-100 years.

Even our existing 'monocultural' festivals such as the Caribbean Carnival, Diwali celebrations and St Georges Festival are becoming increasingly mixed events, both culturally and racially. This is one of those exciting times when new culture emerges.

To me, mixing is one of the most culturally significant things about Leicester but it rarely gets much attention because it tends to happen quietly and without fanfare in our homes, workplaces, schools, etc. Also, those who participate in mixing are not one single cultural or political group whose voices get heard clearly.

Regarding the City of Culture bid, it's absolutely right that Leicester should bid for this and I think we have a great chance of winning. But I also think we need to do more than just celebrating our individual immigrant groups - something which was born out of a desire to welcome newcomers (noble though that is) -  and put more emphasis on new home-grown, hybrid and shared culture.

Already, the first item posted on the Leicester bid's Facebook page was the question "Who is your favourite international artist? Who would you invite to Leicester when we become City of Culture in 2017?" To me, this question implies that authenticity and value can only be acquired from outside and suggests an underlying lack of confidence or awareness of the richness of our home-grown talent. Any bidding city with enough money can import performers from across the World but then there's a big risk that the whole exercise will degenerate into an unoriginal 'World Music' kludge rather than something that truly represents us.

Instead, I believe we should be uncovering and celebrating the culturally unique things that our city has produced (through cultural mixing or otherwise) - the food, music, art, science, sport, business, language, humour. etc. If diversity is to be a selling point then we should be looking at how other mixed cities like New York or Rio de Janeiro celebrate their collective uniqueness not just their ethnic statistics.

Let's celebrate the fruits of diversity, not just the facts of it.

Here are just a few suggested examples of the sorts of mixing that Leicester has produced or nurtured:-

• Interfaith sport (such as the Imams vs Clerics cricket match in 2006)
• Gok Wan (Anglo-Chinese heritage)
• White Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims
• Laurel Aitken ("Godfather of Ska")
• Welcoming a new mosque
• Cornershop
• Curry pubs (e.g. Paddy's Marten Inn or the Rifle Butts)
• Engelbert Humperdinck (Anglo-Indian heritage)
• The Empire (formerly St Mark's church - award-winning restoration by a Leicester Muslim businessman)
• Bali Rai  (author, inspired by Sue Townsend and Roald Dahl)
• Ajmer Singh Mataru (first British policeman to wear a turban)
• Jadoo (movie release imminent)
• Ju-Lees Asian Veg stall at Leicester Market (English market traders who can speak Hindi and Gujarati to their customers)
• Riaz Khan (former Baby Squad casual)
• Please suggest more...!

Help Me Build a Tech Startup Community in Leicester

Last year I blogged about the City Mayor's Knowledge Economy Summit which aimed to kick-start discussions on how Leicester can drive prosperity though technology and innovation.

Stakeholder (noun): person or organisation with a vested interest who has to be consulted for political purposes but generally gets in the way of progress.

Cynicism aside, I did leave this meeting wondering what such an event really offered for me as the owner of a small business with entrepreneurial ambitions. Back then it was hard to put my finger on what was missing and my original post could only express a few hunches.

Then I read Startup Communities by Brad Feld and had a bit of an epiphany. Feld's book details precisely how he helped make Boulder, Colorado one of the best locations in the world for start-ups.

Put simply, Brad Feld's 'Boulder Thesis' is that it is entrepreneurs who must lead a knowledge economy and that everyone else (local government, universities, chambers of commerce, investors) can only feed it.

Suddenly the pervasive 'top-down' mentality that I had seen amongst politicians, local government, Quangos and indeed some businesses became blindingly obvious. It's not that these people are a 'problem' - far from it - most are extremely supportive but they are not entrepreneurs and their agenda and the time they take to do things is just different. Entrepreneurs are people who want to start things yesterday whereas local government tends to move at glacial pace and is stuck in a 5-year re-election calendar.

But entrepreneurs do not need to wait for innovation centres to be built or for matched-funding for their projects. Not that these things aren't welcome but they tend to follow enterprise rather than stimulate it.

What Leicester does have in great abundance is diverse, clever people from our businesses though to our universities. Indeed Leicester puts Brad Feld's hometown of Boulder, Colorado (population 100k, one university, low diversity) in the shade when it comes to raw materials.

Following Feld's 'Boulder Thesis', what I want to create is a business community which encourages collaboration, joint ventures, start-up companies and generally helping each other out.

Leicester's existing creative business community is also a source of inspiration although collaboration there tends to be based more on traditional client-supplier relationships than a true start-up community.

Here are some ideas for the sorts of activities I am in the process of organising for 2013:-

• Regular networking sessions for entrepreneurs (e.g. Open Coffee format)
• Seminars and lectures from entrepreneurs and mentors
• Civic hackathons and competitions
• Mentoring sessions from business experts

This will require a change of mindset from some people. It requires the courage to share potentially marketable ideas with other people, openness to creating joint ventures or spin-off companies, the ability to embrace rather than stigmatise failure and a general willingness to help each other out. It's not about traditional touting of one's business for a fee.

If this sounds if interest to you or you think you could contribute to getting things started then I'd love to hear from you. Email me at ben@ultimateweb.co.uk

Update 17/12/2012: I'm running a Christmas Meetup on Wednesday 19th December to get this underway: http://leicesterstartups2012.eventbrite.co.uk/ - if you're a startup or involved with startups then please join us.

Update 20/12/2012: Here are my presentation slides from last night's inaugural Leicester Startups event: http://www.ultimateweb.co.uk/leicestertechstartups.pdf

Update 16/01/2013: Next event is an Open Coffee networking session at Phoenix Cafe Bar on Wednesday 23rd Jan at 10am which will then happen fortnightly. Sign up here: http://opencoffeeclub040113.eventbrite.co.uk/

FINAL UPDATE: Leicester Tech Startups is now a thriving group - full details of events and activities at www.leicesterstartups.com

Leicester on the Map, Literally.

Leicester South MP Jonathan Ashworth took David Cameron to task in parliament last week when he apparently got Leicester and Birmingham muddled up. Mr Ashworth's response was to send Mr Cameron a map with Leicester and Birmingham clearly marked on it.

Whether this was a case of genuine geographical ignorance or just an attempt to duck a question remains to be seen but it did remind me just how much Leicester gets overlooked in so many situations.

I believe there is a perennial failing with much of Leicester's public relations efforts, namely that despite our many USPs, the vast majority of British people do not have the foggiest idea where the city is.

Terry Wogan famously nailed this when he described Leicester as The Lost City. Anecdotal evidence would suggest that people think Leicester is much further North, perhaps because of our reknowned Indian-origin population. How are we going to attract investment from London-based companies, for example, if they think we are just up the road from Bradford?

Jonathan Ashworth is right to get a map out but we need to do this on a much grander scale. before we can harp on about how great we are we need to first make sure that people know where we are located.

I would like to see our promotional agencies commission a survey of people in key British cities (and maybe even some foreign ones?) to see what proportion of people know where Leicester is located. I'm literally talking about getting people to stick a pin in a map. I believe this would not only highlight the challenge we face but also give a useful benchmark for future public relations work.

I think this would bring into focus just how invisible Leicester is, despite being Britain's tenth largest city. Campaigns to put Leicester 'on the map' should worry about the literal meaning of this as much as the metaphorical one.

For a start, we should tackle the absence of promotional signage on the road gateways to our city which epitomises Terry Wogan's characterisation of a city "constantly mentioned in traffic reports but 'otherwise unknown to mankind'". In addition, our companies and organisations should be encouraged to stick a location map on all their promotional literature like the one we put on the back of our company brochure:-

Broadband Connectivity in Leicester - Feedback from Businesses Sought

I’ve been invited to attend a City Council hosted workshop called “Leicester’s Digital Future” on Wednesday 10th October and would like to have input from Leicester's business community about broadband and other Internet connectivity in the city.

Text of the invite:-


"This issue is clearly vital to the prosperity of the City and of all our citizens. New technologies and capacities have the power to radically impact on how our public services are organised and delivered and on private sector competitiveness. Whilst our city has benefited in the past from quality infrastructure, we need now to be thinking collectively about our futures. The session will cover how current government policy to encourage superfast broadband etc may impact on the city and the county. It will review current broadband provision within the city, note the pipeline investment anticipated, take the temperature from the business community on this issue and start to discuss how the city might benefit from advances in new technologies. It is hoped that a specific outcome will be some ideas for how we need to organise ourselves across both across the public, private and voluntary sectors."


My initial thoughts, based partly on my experience with running web development agency Ultimateweb, are as follows:-

1. In terms of standard broadband the city centre isn't too bad - agree?
2. Some outlying suburbs struggle to get good broadband speeds.
3. Rural areas often have very poor coverage which could affect the ability for city-based firms to sell services that rely on fast connections.
4. Is poor broadband putting off inward investment (cf. residential broadband being a consideration for home buyers)?
5. Will wire/cable delivered broadband will become obsolete in the near future? Would it be better to concentrate on getting the next generation of wireless/4G/SuperWiFi connectivity?
6. Is city-wide free WiFi like Swindon attempted anything more than a gimmick?
7. Is the city too reliant on a small number of incoming backbone pipes? Are we resilient or are we too reliant on pipes to London, etc?
8. What are the likely digital services that businesses and their customers will use in the future and what sorts of capacities will they require?
9. Why did Leicester miss out on the Everything Everywhere 4G rollout when smaller cities such as Derby & Hull are getting it? Are we lobbying effectively for early access to new Internet connectivity services?

If good Internet connectivity is essential to your business and you have any strong feelings about this issue then please get in touch or leave comments below.

Connecting Leicester

Fantastic to read about Connecting Leicester, which appears to be a joined-up, heritage-led approach to regenerating much of Leicester City Centre.

I do hope this marks the end of the piecemeal or blank slate approaches to development which viewed each plot of land in isolation and viewed any development as good development.

I do worry about how much of this will actually happen - we've had more than our fair share of grand schemes that have come to nothing - but it's got a lot going for it.

Do go and visit the website or one of the roadshows some of which are in some fantastic buildings such as Wyggeston's House on Applegate (which I'm embarrassed to say I had not set foot in until yesterday):-