Letters: Sayonara, Silicon Valley
[RE: Tech firms lead business growth across Britain as one in four of all high-growth companies are start-ups, March 22]
Hazlewoods’s research sent a clear message to readers: start-ups are the beating heart of the UK economy. Unsurprisingly, Hazlewoods found start-ups make up a quarter of all high-growth firms.
The odds may be stacked against them, but every day we see start-ups attract investment, scale, and ultimately go onto redefine the sector in which they operate.
Many of the start-ups I will be watching most closely in 2022 like Graphcore, Sunlight.io and Lifebit all hail from the UK.
The days of Silicon Valley as the only focal point for founder and VC attention worldwide are long gone. Europe, with its thriving innovation hubs like London, benefits from a potent mix of world-leading universities, favourable regulations, and a strong ecosystem of entrepreneurs.
As a series A VC, at OpenOcean we see the greatest promise in the emerging data economy. Investors should be on the lookout for the next start-up to tackle the challenges of today’s increasingly digital world, from realising real-world use cases with quantum technology to pushing forward the frontier across the economy with AI. To find the next world-class founder, investors should keep their eyes trained on Europe – and not just on Silicon Valley.
Ekaterina Almasque