July 2007: Dopplr, where I was CTO, moves into a shared office above a pub on Hoxton Street, along with James Governor of Redmonk. I’m happy to be in the area because there are good places for lunch and I can cycle from my home in Hackney in about 20 minutes.
March 2008: Dopplr relocates to a sublet at Moo Studios, 100 City Road, directly overlooking the roundabout. We’re always bumping into startup friends in the street, the cafe life is great, and there are regular rooftop barbecues at nearby Last FM and Moo on Friday evenings.
23 July 2008: I’m chatting in the office with (probably) Russell Davies, Ben Terrett and Matt Jones. We’re talking about the neighborhoods our friends work in in other cities, and I jokingly suggest that Old Street has become Silicon Roundabout. It feels very British, slightly awkward and a bit silly. I put it on Twitter.
“Silicon Roundabout”: the ever-growing community of fun startups in London’s Old Street area
— Matt Biddulph (@mattb) July 23, 2008
24 July 2008: At the Moo Summer Party I bump into Tim Bradshaw of the Financial Times. I mention the joke and say I should draw him a map so he can write about it. I don’t expect this to happen.
25 July 2008: To my surprise, Tim emails me. He says he pitched the story to his editors and they want it. I write back with a list of the first 15 or so companies that come into my head, mostly friends:
“Here’s a list off the top of startups and agencies based in Old Street/Hoxton/Shoreditch off the top of my head:
Dopplr, Moo, AMEE, Trampoline Systems, Redmonk, Last.fm, Skimbit, Techlightenment, Kizoom, Schulze & Webb, tinker.it, LShift, Cohesive FT, Poke, Consolidated Independent.
and these are supported by the San Francisco-style cafes with late hours, available power sockets and free wifi: Shoreditch Old Station, Coffee@whitecross st and LCB Surf.
My guesses for why it’s more than a coincidence:
It’s out of zone 1, so it’s cheaper and out of the way of commercial streets full of shoppers
It’s near enough to The City, the West End and Canary Wharf to get to meetings, but has more of a casual character and streetlife
Great food
It’s mid-gentrification and there are lots of good property deals on small rooms in soon-to-be-demolished office buildings
Easy to reach if you’re living in the cheaper areas of east and south-east london like Hackney”
27 July 2008: Tim asked for a map so I made one on Google Maps and tweeted about it.
28 July 2008:Mark Prigg of the Evening Standard gets in touch after seeing the tweet and says his editor wants to do a story in the paper tomorrow.
29 July 2008: Tim blogs about the idea for the FT, and the Evening Standard sends a photographer to take a picture of me by the roundabout. I register siliconroundabout.com and point it to a generic Ning social network that Matt Jones set up.
30 July 2008: The Evening Standard redraws the map with the same companies I listed, and writes about it on page 11.
The newsagent in Old Street underground has the story headline on the boards outside the shop:
I’m a bit surprised.
Techcrunch writes it up too.
August 2008: Many startups email me asking to be added to the map. The government’s Department of Trade and Industry emails asking if they can help Old Street companies expand their business overseas. Real estate companies email me offering kickbacks if I help them get companies into office space.
After this, it’s all a bit fuzzy.
Ben Terrett created some ironic merchandising shirts with a lovely design:
Wired did a big special in January 2010 with a helicopter shot and a new map with lots of companies on it.
Tech City happened.
I moved to Berlin in November 2009 and was a bit surprised at how big the whole thing was when I came back in November 2011. The unscientific original list of 15ish companies is often used to create false measures of growth — 15 companies listed in 2008 to 400 companies in Wired’s 2010 article means 25x growth!
Since then, the name has been cited in a Victoria and Albert Museum show on British Design. Thinktanks and academics have done studies. And there’s now a street just off the roundabout called Silicon Way.
All I really did was give an emerging community/movement a silly name that they somehow rallied behind. The community in the area goes back to the first dotcom boom, and Shoreditch has been a creative hub for decades.
Strong community people like Richard Moross and Michael Acton Smith have done much more than I ever did to throw parties, get people together and use the name as a banner. I think the Tech City initiative may have done a lot to cement the name, in what amounts to a classic display of British stubbornness: “the government comes in and calls it Tech City, but it’s our Silicon Roundabout”.
All photographs used under Creative Commons license courtesy of Matt Biddulph, except the Silicon Way photograph, which is copyright Matt Webb and used with permission
 |
 |