Keep your Silicon Valley -- this is London's Silicon Roundabout. Named and first mapped out in July 2008 by Matt Biddulph (then CTO of Dopplr, now at Nokia), it comprised 15 startups, all based around the Old Street roundabout in north-east London.Wiredthought this might not be the full story. So we asked researcher Georgina Voss to dig further, and crowdsourced leads from users of Wired.co.uk.
We were faithful to Biddulph's original 15: we favoured independents over international branches, start-ups over big firms. The resulting 85 firms make for a new geography of UK entrepreneurship.
The hub emerged from a series of factors, says Voss. "The presence of tech and creative firms from the 80s; centrality; institutions like the BBC and the RCA; connections to San Francisco and Silicon Valley; and the dot-com boom and bust. Unlike other tech hubs, there are no direct feeds into local universities - rather a culture of self-education and mutual support."
Click to view the entire Silicon Roundabout
**Photographer:**Jason Hawkes Camera: Nikon D3S ISO: 1000 Lens: 14-24mm @ 20mm **Exposure:**1/640 @ 2.8F, shot using a stabilised mount Height: 1,100 ft Software: Lightroom 2.6 Helicopter: Twin-engined Eurocopter AS355 Time of day: 1550 hrs
Information on companies, websites and their locations on the map were correct when the February issue of Wired went to press. Sorry if we missed you...
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
