London Startup Map | Hacker News Reader

London Startup Map

roundabout.io

74 pointssarhus32 comments

Inspired by http://mappedinny.com/ (and the recent siliconvalley one) here's a London version. It was built as an excuse to learn about Backbone.js and play with MapBox API.

Source code available here: https://github.com/rosario/digitalmap.

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This map and many others include digital/creative agencies. They may be startups in the sense of new companies, but if we accept that definition why not include every new lawyer, restaurant, or retailer? Agencies are contractors and they don't own the value they build in a product. I hate to be bitchy and don't begrudge agencies but I think they're fundamentally different to tech startups.

As an agency developer, I agree wholeheartedly.

Is there any reason why this site is limited to London startups? Does this geographical restriction add any value over a national startup map?

Hint for Londoners: Zoom the map out at bit and it shows other places. These places have names like Bristol, Manchester, Glasgow, and are located in the areas of the UK that are not London. People live in these places, and there are startups there too.

In fact, there's already a good UK startup map: http://techbritain.com/

Andy, the only reason it's because I live here. I'm happy to see marks also in Bristol, Manchester, etc etc.

Also, the frontend code is on github, feel free to grab it, modify as you wish and add another city.

Well said, it's difficult to describe the uk vs london feeling their is right now (in most secotrs, not just start ups) but this does a good job at getting the sentiment across.

I think the reason comments like this (and mine in a lower down thread) are made is because, unlike SV, London doesn't have a 50 year history of producing tech and innovation en masse yet seems to grab a huge portion of the start up attention and energies.

Social, social, social, social, social, social.

I was expecting to see some "non-social" startups in the city...

Most non social start ups in the UK are outside London in my experience

I Agree. Where are all the entrepreneurs doing 'proper' stuff. I don't want another way to connect to a niche group of geeks using a very specific app.

London is the heart of Finance, there must be someone developing advanced trading algorithms or something cool. Perhaps they don't spend their days on twitter advertising their services so much.

There are a few of us on HN. We're not startups though :)

Amen. Finally. I keep seeing too many "social" ones, they grab all the attention. Where are the others?

Probably not trendy and useless enough to get funded :)

we[1] are a fintech startup based in london... There are a couple of others too - Seedrs are based in Shoreditch, MarketInvoice is in W1, but a few of the others are slightly further out (e.g Nutmeg is in Vauxhall from memory, we're in Crouch End.)

Edit: a few I forgot - and I'm surely missing several more - Zopa (W1), Abundance Generation (W12), and of course - Wonga (W1)...

[1] http://www.rplan.co.uk

Inspired by http://mappedinny.com/ here's a London version. It was built as an excuse to learn more about Backbone.js and play with MapBox's API.

Source code here: https://github.com/rosario/digitalmap.

Any comments and feedback are always welcome

Great tool. Thanks for this. Can already see a few neighbours I didn't know we had.

Edit: Can I suggest the addition of a "construction" category to your sector list?

yep, sure.

Any plans to add any license to that code?

Here's a couple of fairly complete ones: http://batchgeo.com/map/21737d8f2b05adc3ab1b1869979f2695

http://www.techcitymap.com/index.html

This is being done all over. Here in Miami we have http://mapyourstartup.co which is trying to do this in several locations.

This is a really cheeky one, but is (sortof) relevant. I run an IT consultancy doing the usual desktop/server support work, and have worked with a couple of startups. Both decried the lack of decent (cheap!) IT support for developers, so they could focus on developing software rather than fixing PCs, and setting up networks.

Does anyone have any suggestions where would be the best place to network with other startups or techie businesses to offer our services to them?

I've just added my hosting company - we're a little outside London though (York).

Hurray for Bytemark! :)

Glad to see a non London company added themselves - there's a lot more to the UK startup scene that what is going on in London. In fact there are many reasons against starting a company in London

Could you share some of these reasons? High rent, high salaries I'm sure, but I'd be interested to know what other reasons have.

You've hit the two main ones on the head but the third is more intangible. In London it seems (to outsiders) that people are just trying to emulate SV, this means that you're competing in an international and, most likely, saturated market that doesn't align with what the rest of the UK is traditionally best at.

The UK was built on trade and engineering that mostly started outside London to avoid the Guilds and their stupid rules. I think being outside London gets you closer to these skills and experience and makes you focus more on building a business and less on following international, sexy hype.

I say it a lot but the best place to make money is in unsexy markets, and outside London there are a shed load of unsexy markets desperate for young start ups to dive in.

Don't get me wrong, there are some incredible companies in London doing amazingly well but there is a lot of dross too.

Nice idea. But I'm either being stupid or it's barfing - have completed all fields but getting an 'all fields required' error.

It's probably a typo in the email or url field. I really need to put better validation messages. Sorry about that.

Good stuff - just added Makeshift :)

Such an exciting time to be in London; the scene here is kicking ass right now!

just clicking around and hit a link to aquafide who: "develops and distributed innovative and sustainable water treatment solutions for municipal and industrial customers" but seem to have a website that is "First Car"? very very odd.

other than that - neat idea

Nice idea, just added CircuitHub

very nice, do you think it is possible to make it available also for other cities?

Source codes available (no license though) so you could just rebrand it for another city. I've also seen similar for SF and NYC on HN.

https://github.com/rosario/digitalmap

Pusher.com isn't even listed. I sent a request.

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