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Friday 20 February 2015

Interesting Facts About The Silicon Roundabout

You may have read before how we at FlatClub are headquartered in the heart of the 'Silicon Roundabout', or 'Tech City', but do you know how those terms came to be - and what that means, exactly?



Silicon Roundabout...Thanks Moo.com, for the culture!Oh so many years ago, before East London became known for it's enterprising tech startups, the office space was going fairly cheap around the Old Street area. Moo had outgrown their office in Clerkenwell, and settled on a huge space in the Old Street area - in order to make up for the extra costs of such a large office, they invited other company's to share the space. As more and more small, early stage startups & tech companies moved in to the shared office space, a social environment began to build.

Silicon Roundabout...thanks Dopplr, for the name!
Over these drinks in the evenings & summer parties spent together, the term 'Silicon Roundabout' was coined by Dopplr CTO Matt Biddulph, as the space had come to represent a similar tech cloister to what had sprang up in California's Silicon Valley. Starting off as a bit of a joke on Twitter, it soon took on life and became common parlance not only among the techies in East London, but all over the city. It became so popular in fact, that when our old friend Boris Johnson started referring to this area as Tech City, it just never caught on in the same way. Silicon Roundabout as a term was here to stay - sharing space with the Mayor's 'Tech City'.

Silicon Roundabout...who's there?
Tech companies are of course en vogue here, more specifically though - financial technologies, or 'fintech'. Mayor Boris Johnson has specifically encouraged development in this field, and through the entrepreneurship of the founders of these companies & support from the government, East London Tech City has become the fintech capital of the world. Some of the other big names that have came from the area are Moo.com as mentioned, Mind Candy (who founded Silicon Drinkabout, a weekly meeting for techies & startups) and TransferWise.

Silicon Roundabout...what's next?
Well, we can't see what the future holds - but it's predicted that the UK's technology economy will continue to grow with the help of works from the Mayor's office, more accelerator programs and shared office space to make sure that the costs stay low for burgeoning start ups.

We're excited to see what happens next, and we'll be right here in the thick of it in our Old Street office!

Dare we say that perhaps the next big thing to come out of the Silicon Roundabout will be FlatClub?
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