End of an era for London’s start-up scene with the closure of the Google campus

For young founders who wanted to set up their newest start-up, the basement café on the Google campus in Shoreditch was the right place.

Five years ago it was still a hive of activity, with plywood benches always full and often lively conversations.

Founders scribbled job advertisements for developers on pieces of paper and pinned them on a pin board. High profile visitors, including the Swedish heir to the throne, often posed for photos inside the building.

“It was such an egalitarian concept,” says Nick Levine, a financial technology consultant. “Anyone could go to this café. You didn’t even have to buy coffee, it was a novelty to buy something. “

“It felt like you could start observer very quickly and ingratiate yourself into this ecosystem pretty quickly.”

Levine was just one of many technology workers to take advantage of Campus workspaces after they were founded by George Osborne in 2012.

The seven-story building was in the heart of London’s so-called Silicon Roundabout on Old Street, with desks for up to £ 450 a month.

Hailed as a Tech City by former Prime Minister David Cameron, the area has been the epicenter of the country’s rapidly growing digital economy as low rents and easy access to financiers in the City of London attracted firms.

But the days of producing the next tech star are over. On Monday, Google announced that its campus was being scrapped before its 10-year lease expired. Instead, it announced that it would put its start-up funding programs and services online.

“The UK startup community needs less access to a single shared physical space than access to resources, mentors and programs that are available everywhere,” said Google. “And as the ecosystem evolves, so does our approach.”

It comes when companies assess the need to spend hundreds of pounds per employee on desk space in what are known as coworking offices. Covid restrictions have also dampened the appetite for in-person networking events that were once such an important part of the East London tech scene.

“When Campus started there were maybe three tech events worth attending, and they all had the word ‘drink’ in their titles,” says Eze Vidra, who ran the incubator from its inception through 2014.

“I think it served the purpose,” he says. “The offer has changed. It is good that it is no longer needed, because it happens everywhere. “

Not everyone was a fan of Silicon Roundabout and Google’s focus on East London. “I’ve never heard anything more ridiculous in my life than branding the flagship of British technology with a traffic symbol,” said David Richards, managing director of British software company WANdisco.

It had its share of successes. In the early days of its inception, a young composer named Ed Newton-Rex often sat alone building software that used artificial intelligence (AI) to create music. ByteDance, the Chinese owner of TikTok, eventually hired him and his staff to open the company’s AI lab in London.

For every successful exit that came from campus, many other start-ups ran out of funding or were sold at hammer prices. Ticket sales start-up YPlan, for example, was a high-profile early resident and raised £ 27 million in funding. The company struggled to grow and was sold to Time Out for £ 1.6 million in 2016.