TLA Tech World Tour Africa focus
The ‘TLA Tech World Tour’ on 16 November, was held by Tech London Advocates (TLA) at HereEast, with an Introduction by Russ Shaw Founder TechLondonAdvocates and GlobalTechAdvocates. Moderator was Ben Thompson from BBC.
The event was also the Launch of GlobalTechAdvocates with 8 TLA sister groups, which grows TLA global membership to 5500 advocates. The event was crammed full of many great and insightful panels on the day, hence only highlights are reflected here.
Opening address by Minister for Immigration, Brandon Lewis, was that Britain’s digital economy is growing twice as fast as the wider economy but “it is absolutely critical that we don’t rest on our laurels”.
Emerging Markets Panel : The World’s fastest growing Tech Hubs’
Panelists (L to R), Suki Fuller , Miribure; Danielle Treharne, BIMA Mobile; Nana Adomako, Zazu Africa; Pete Marsden, AvivaUK; Ricardo Navarro, TDC Biometrics
Our highlight panel was ‘Emerging Markets: The World’s fastest growing Tech Hubs’ . Moderator ‘ – Suki Fuller , Miribure.
The panelists shared their insights:
1. Danielle Treharne, Business Development Manager for Africa at BIMA highlighted the challenges and opportunities facing tech companies in emerging markets. She said they have a great team and expansion plans in Ghana for their Inuretech product focused on micro business.
2. Zazu is an online African Bank and the Founder, Perseus Mlambo, was one of few shortlisted Startups to present Nov 27 in Abidjan at 6th EU-Africa Summit with The Startup Europe Comes to Africa (SEC2A) Road Trip.
3. Africa Tech growth has been fuelled by the Mobile Network ecosystem and expansion of local Accelerators and Growth Hubs.
4. “VC funding for African startups was $366 million last year, and we’re seeing real growth in the Francophone markets, especially Ivory Coast”.
How to develop startup ecosystem by JF Gauthier, Startup Genome
Highlight points:
1. Startups focused on global customers grow 2.5 x faster than startups with single nation focus.
2. Startups with greater access to broader startup eco-systems will scale and grow much faster than those that don’t have access to those eco-systems.
3. Larger ecosystems create more scale-ups & large exits trigger acceleration of ecosystem.
4. Valuation Growth vs Ecosystem Value for major cities Biggest issue: human capital and talent ecosystem
5. London, Silicon Valley and New York are “in a league of their own” when it comes to the size, scale and connectedness of their tech ecosystems. London has some serious ‘scale-up’ catching up to do with Beijing and SF.
Launch of Global Tech Advocates by Russ Shaw, TLA Founder
Russ Shaw introduced the new Global Advocate Leads, explaining that Global tech hubs can support each other and it’s not a zero-sum game.
AdvocatesS (L-R)
Jeanette Carlsson, Tech Nordic Advocates
Karena Vaughan, Tech Belfast Advocates
Naomi Timperley, Tech North Advocates
John Zai, Tech Shanghai Advocates
Teresa Martin, Tech Spain Advocates
Subhash Ghosh, Tech Singapore Advocates