Earlier this year David Cameron helped launched the Startup Britain campaign, with the aim to get more people to be entrepreneurial and start their own business. Startup Britain is a privately funded non-profit and is not government back although it did have Mr Cameron as the poster boy at launch.
I will hold my hand up and admit I dismissed it as yet another feeble attempt at encouraging startups and one that would be called ‘Startup Britain’ but in reality be ‘Startup England’ (or more likely ‘Startup London’). So as if to prove my point Startup Britain went on a summer bus tour that managed to excluded Scotland. Thankfully Allan Lloyds challenged Emma Jones, one of he eight co-founders of Startup Britain, to come to Scotland and that they did just that for an AA style meeting to chat startups in Scotland.
The event was hosted in the Microsoft Offices in Waverley Gate and in the room was a good mix of people such as John Anderson of the Entrepreneurial Exchange, Jamie McHale of Telaco, Lauren Currie of Snook, Kevin McCallum of FreeAgent, Conrad Rossouw and Melvyn Ingleson to name a few. I feel the day was a positive experience (at worst because I met a bunch of like minded people) but I hope the day will be a bit of a rocket up the backside to get things off the ground with the aim of getting more people talking and thinking about startups in Scotland. It’s also worth noting when I say talking about startups I’m (for once) not being specific to tech.
So Startup Britain was worth the trip over to Edinburgh but there was more than that going on, it was also TechMeetup night in the Appleton Tower. It was my first time going and I thoroughly enjoyed it, I managed to catch up with some familiar faces from the east of the country who I hadn’t seen in too long and there was some interesting talks. Was excellent and the even better thing is TechMeetup is coming back to Glasgow thanks to Joe Wright and Ijonas Kisselbach. First meetup is on the 26th of October and will run on the 4th Wednesday of the month there after.
I think it’s excellent that Glasgow now has a host of excellent meetups and events happening on a regular basis – don’t forget there is still the monthly RookieOven meetup with the next one on the 3rd of October.
