Leeds has been hailed as the UK’s most ‘collaborative tech community’ but the key is getting Yorkshire to work more collaboratively because of its size.
That’s the view of Zandra Moore, CEO and co-founder of Leeds-based business intelligence and analytics software provider, Panintelligence.
Moore is one of a number of entrepreneurs who will be speaking at the official launch event for the 2023 Yorkshire Tech Climbers, which showcases the top performing product-led technology businesses in the region.
The event takes place on April 12th at Department, in Leeds Dock, and Moore will be joined on stage by Rev Murugesan, founder of Antonym; Alex Craven, co-founder of The Data City; Sam Nicholson, managing director of Equinox; Gareth Lynton Jones, Partner of BDO; Connie Smith, investment analyst at Mercia; and Jonathan Pollard, partner of Ward Hadaway.
Yorkshire’s digital industry is the fastest growing in the UK and the event will spotlight some of the best thriving startup and scaleup businesses in the county.
Panintelligence was founded in Leeds in 2014 and is one of the region’s fastest-growing tech firms, working with 400 customers globally.
Moore said: “Leeds is the most collaborative tech community in the UK. Anyone can land in the Leeds tech scene and soon be navigated around where they need to start, who they need to speak to and get all the support that they need.
“It’s really well connected and well supported from the council, local networks and startup spaces.”
Leeds is the fastest growing early stage startup city in the UK but Moore said the sheer size of Yorkshire meant the sector had to work even more collaboratively .
“We have a huge amount of space in Yorkshire and lots of places that have specialisms,” she said. “Hull has renewables and GreenTech. Sheffield has an engineering heart in many ways and there’s a lot of exciting stuff going on there.
“Leeds has been a centre for health, data, media, finance and legal tech. We have some specialist areas in different cities but the opportunity is to connect those up and create more collaboration.”
Moore is also one of the leading figures in the government-founded High Growth Enterprise Taskforce, which is tackling the gender and regional disparities across the UK.
Only 6 per cent of the UK’s high growth enterprises (HGEs) were founded by all-women or majority-women teams and Moore is the regional sub-group head for the Taskforce.
The group will make recommendations to Government on how to achieve our target of increasing the number of female entrepreneurs by half by 2030 – equivalent to 600,000 entrepreneurs.
The Taskforce is particularly focused on increasing the number of women-led high-growth businesses in regions outside of London.
“Only one per cent of all capital raised goes to female-founded enterprises and in the North of England only 0.1 per cent of all capital that is raised goes to female-founded enterprises,” said Moore.
Taskforce to boost next generation of fast-growth female founders
“There are pipeline issues. We don’t have as many female founders as male founders. There are lots of reasons for that and the challenge is to understand why.
“We also have a challenge with the amount of capital that goes in regional businesses. We have a collaborative ecosystem in Yorkshire but it’s whether we have sufficient early-stage investment, seed investment etc.
“Do we have the tech accelerators to support those early stage founders?”
Last year BigChange founder and serial entrepreneur Martin Port completed a six-figure investment into Panintelligence to help it grow market share.
Yorkshire Tech Climbers has been backed by BusinessCloud and TechBlast. Partners this year are BDO, Mercia Asset Management, Page White Farrer, Hyperact, TD SYNNEX, Ward Hadaway, Leeds City Council, Leeds Digital and STFC.
Tech businesses from Leeds, Sheffield, Bradford, Doncaster, York, Hull, Wakefield, Rotherham, Scarborough, Harrogate, Barnsley and more areas are invited to submit themselves for the 2023 list online from April 13th.