Reporting from TechDay London 2017

The travel

I can't hide the fact that waking up at 3 AM doesn't sound to me like the best way to start a new day. Quick breakfast, quicker shower and I were on my way to meet Rory, my teammate. He looked, unlike me, very enthusiastic when we crossed our paths right before the sunrise at the Ławica International Airport.

on our way to TechDay London 2017

Our flight was a bit delayed, what for me sounded like "you can sleep one hour longer, my dear friend!". England welcomed us with strong and chilly winds, overcrowded buses, and few other surprises. Finally, we managed to get to the hotel, have some rest and seek for challenges.

London streets

The overview

TechDay London describes itself as the "London's Largest Startup Event," and it surely is one of the biggest I had the pleasure of attending. The plenty of business and job opportunities and free entry make the whole event a friendly destination for young job-seekers as well as early birds searching for new possibilities. With over 200 exhibitors representing different stages of maturity, great representation of accelerators, investors, and mentors TechDay is a truly full-packed exhibition, where everyone - student or entrepreneur can seek value.

Besides the exhibition, just like during other major events (like Startupnight Berlin), Live Stage has been held by new companies that were looking for their chance and putting their demos in the spotlight. The schedule was tight, and the pace was very rapid but impressive.

Techday London 2017 LIVE STAGE

11:00 AM
HARDWARE & IOT DEMOS

11:10 AM
MUSIC & MEDIA DEMOS

11:30 AM
STRIPE FIRESIDE CHAT: Building Your Startup To Scale Globally From Day Zero

12:00 PM
FINTECH DEMOS

12:15 PM
ON DEMAND DEMOS

12:45 PM
KASPERSKY LAB FIRESIDE CHAT: Empowering Your Small Business To Defend Against Cyber Threats

1:00 PM
PIPEDRIVE FIRESIDE CHAT: When Growth Engineering Meets Growth Marketing

1:30 PM
GENERAL DEMOS

2:40 PM
ENTERPRISE DEMOS

It is also worth to mention that TechDay also takes place in New York and Los Angeles.

TechDay London: trends & insights

One of the greatest values of TechDay London is the real diversity of industries as well as a balance between B2B and B2C startups. You can notice that some of the B2C projects are very "London-oriented"; fitness applications, delivery services or food ordering solutions are mostly inspired by a specific lifestyle characteristic to the Britain's capital.

The shared economy seems to be a future of B2C startup scene. As the population density grows significantly, metropolises such as London are a perfect environment for experimenting with new business models. The fact that Uber has been recently banned seems to be an irony while most interesting projects are based on the shared economy model.

TechDay London 2017 meeting

The possibilities

If I had to point out some challenges and risks of the British startup scene, I’d say that it definitely is technological conservatism. Both shores of the US are seeking for React Native developers, while Django is the leading startup technology on the continent. Despite trends, the British Isles are still aiming to create native iOS/Android apps, and many of people I spoke to admitted that backend is built with PHP or Java.

If the British startup scene is suffering due to lack of skilled manpower, nearshoring seems to be a very efficient solution. The labor market in the UK is very competitive, and some of the young enterprises seek less scalable paths of their product development.

TechDay London 2017

Exhibitions of: Yoga2me, Anvajo and KidSitter

The epilogue

That Friday was very intense. After consuming a giant English breakfast containing three sausages, a mountain of scrambled eggs and plethora of baked beans I was fuelled by carbohydrates for the next several hours. Combined with the enormous amount of caffeine drank that day (Starbucks seems to have its place at every London's corner), Rory and I gained some valuable connections and learned a lot about the British startup scene.

Michał and Rory during TechDay London 2017

After the event, we have been walking up and down the streets of Golden Lane Estate, Newington, and Whitechapel. There we finally found a proper English pub where fried fish was served with chips and ales were colder than the late October wind coming from the North Sea. Next day morning National Express bus took us to Luton Airport.

Burgers in the UK are smaller than Polish doughnuts...

Burgers in the UK are smaller than Polish doughnuts :(

Navigate the changing IT landscape

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