Tech Hot 100: Britain shows it can still draw in global talent

Wildfires and the pandemic have made the West Coast a less attractive destination for some founders

Credit: AFP

With many tech companies embracing working from home, London, he says, could be one beneficiary of an exodus from the Bay Area.

It’s not just founders. Kanji points to top tech talent such as Mike Huddack, who moved from Facebook in Menlo Park to Deliveroo as head of technology and is now at Monzo. He also points to Rahma Javed, a Canadian who, via Silicon Valley, is now head of engineering at Deliveroo and an angel investor in British start-ups.

‘A golden period for UK tech’

Matt Clifford, co-founder of investor network Entrepreneur First, strikes a similarly positive tone. “Against all the odds, this is a golden period for UK tech and I don’t think that will change.”

Clifford notes Britain’s universities have long attracted top talent, in particular in spaces like artificial intelligence. He adds that a visa scheme run by Tech Nation has made it easier for technical talent to head to the UK since it was launched in 2014.

However, Clifford adds Brexit could make it harder for Britain to access the very best engineers from across Europe due to the end of free movement. “It will definitely be a tricky matter,” he says.

Britain’s power as a financial hub has also not, as of yet, been totally upended by Brexit. The ranks of trainees at big banks, management consultancies and law firms are likely to include some technology leaders of the future.

Israeli entrepreneur Shachar Bialick moved to the UK and founded fintech Curve

In particular, financial firms have been a breeding ground for founders and are often their first job in the UK.

Take PensionBee, a start-up that has built an app that helps users combine their different pensions into a single plan. It was founded by Romi Savova, who was born in Bulgaria, grew up in South Africa and attended university in the US. She worked in finance in London at Morgan Stanley, and later the start-up Credit Benchmark, before founding PensionBee in 2015.

And leaving the single market does not necessarily spell disaster. Clifford says that Israel, the “original start-up nation”, has punched above its weight internationally as entrepreneurs are forced to think creatively in a small market before launching global ambitions. 

Someone who would know is Shachar Bialick. A serial entrepreneur after coming out of the Israeli Defence Force, Bialick moved to the UK and founded Curve, a fintech start-up that combines different spending apps and cards into one. 

“The pandemic has only reinforced our long-serving rationale for being based in London,” he says. “This is the best place to find the diverse group of world-class individuals we need. No pandemic can change that fact.”