Last month, Croydon Tech City ‘celebrated’ its six month birthday and it already has much to show for itself.
Since its conception last August – exactly a year after the Croydon riots – in my ‘Croydon – The Second Tech City’ piece, the idea has grown from a blogpost to a dynamic community of over three hundred software developers, creatives, tech founders, venture capitalists, teachers, politicians and ‘want-repreneurs’.
After the success of February’s ‘Schools Edition’ – and with twelve out of 90 primary schools already signed up to run Code Club – the long road to upskilling Croydon’s children has begun.
Now we are looking to start helping those in the Croydon Tech City community who are already on the startup journey; From the ‘want-repreneurs’ who are inspired by all they see in Croydon Tech City, have an idea, but don’t know where to start, to the those tech-startups who have an MVP and are looking to chase the elusive dream of recurrent revenue.
The Croydon Tech City Maturity Model
Croydon Tech City’s growth strategy is masterminded by Nigel Dias (Croydon Tech City, Head of Investment and Advice) who has devised a maturity model to work out how we want to grow Croydon’s tech startup community and what is required to move each startup to the next level.
This model has been incredibly helpful as it means that every time we engage with new start-ups or startup founders, we can very quickly categorise them into a particular stage and resource accordingly.
At Stage 1 (where ‘want-repreneurs’ reside), the biggest issue is knowledge (or lack, thereof); What code do I need to learn? What should I look for in a technical co-founder? What competitors are there who have products similar to my idea?
At Stage 2, usually it’s a technical or creative issue that is hindering the development of the product.
By Stage 3, as you look to acquire customers or bigger brand awareness, the problem is invariably one of either sales or marketing.
By Stage 4, whilst this is the dream – to have grown from an idea to a profitable company – all sorts of considerations begin to rear their head; HR, employment law, recruitment, etc.
Of course, the needs of the community can’t be met solely by Croydon Tech City’s management team alone, so we’ve had to develop partnerships and recruit sector specialists to support our vision to become ‘The Silicon Valley of South London’.
Croydon Tech City specialists and partnerships
Through a series of partnerships with various service providers – Croydon Tech City has built a robust network of local and central London-based experts to support the growth and maturation of the Croydon Tech City community.
These experts span many different disciplines including technical IP law (Kilburn Strode), accounting (Kingston Smith), business advice & coaching (Bryden Johnson), and marketing (Couch – an integrated agency who have recently left East London’s Tech City to move to Croydon Tech City #win!).
Encouragingly, all of them approached us first rather than us having to find them. It is a tremendous validation for Croydon Tech City that established businesses from across the capital are beginning to see the potential of Croydon to become a credible player in the European startup scene, and are consequently rushing to capitalise on this new opportunity.
It is this agglomeration affect – that has so well served East London’s ‘Tech City’ – that I was banking on and I hope will accelerate in the future.
This month, we launched fortnightly ‘tech surgeries’ where local tech experts (who are themselves successful startup founders) meet with members of the Croydon Tech City community to advise, encourage and assist them as they make their way up the maturity model.
Everything is in place now for us to become a startup ecosystem to reckon with. Perhaps this time next year, the Royals will make another visit to Tech City. Croydon Tech City that is!
The next Croydon Tech City event is on Thursday 21st March 7.30pm at Matthews Yard, Croydon. There will be a talks from 18yo two-time entrepreneur Andrew Brackin, a demo by David Lee creator of ‘Smart Dresser’ and an hour long Tech Panel Q&A. If you would like to attend, please sign up here.