London’s famed ‘Silicon Roundabout’ might not be the best place for a tech start-up in the city, according to research.
Located on the boundary of Hackney and Islington, Old Street Roundabout’s nickname refers to the high number of web businesses located nearby.
The corner of East London is the third-largest technology startup cluster in the world after San Francisco and New York City.
But a study from recruitment specialist Talentful found Havering, further east, has the best conditions to support new businesses.
The borough has the highest start-up survival rate in London, with 91.5 per cent of tech start-ups making it through their first year intact.
Although it has a low proportion of graduates in the available workforce – only 26 per cent – the area could help companies make it through their early stages.
Elsewhere, Hillingdon had the cheapest average cost of desk space in London at only £174.79 a month. And nearly 45 per cent of the workforce in Redbridge had a degree, making it good recruitment territory – but it though it failed to claim the top spot due to a mid-range rental cost (£312.50).
In Merton – 88.21 per cent of tech companies survived their first year – and 58 per cent of the available workers were university graduates.
Richmond upon Thames has the best broadband in London, with 34.7 MB/s, making it an excellent situation for new technology firms.
Talentful used data for each of the London boroughs and the City of London, and a complete list of start-ups in 2014 – compared to how many of them survived until 2015.
Broadband speed was found through a dedicated tool. Graduate workforce was found from government data.
Desk space rental was found through Gumtree. The most and expensive desk spaces were found for each location and an average was taken. In the two locations where data was not available, an average was taken from the other locations researched.
Each metric was assigned a score between 1 and 10. The scores for each location in each metric were then combined into a single weighted average, which was used to rank the locations.
London’s FinTech sector is growing more than three times more rapidly than that of Berlin despite the decision to leave the European Union.