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North East
With five local universities, the North East cluster has an excellent pool of accessible talent, and over 26,000 people in digital employment. Headquartered in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the cluster also boasts a FTSE 100 company in Sage. This further increases the pool of digital talent in the area, as the company continues to attract world-leading experts from around the world.
A strong industrial history mean that the North East is an established working community, the perfect basis for a digital cluster to form and 77% of digital companies feel part of it. As well as IT support and software development, gaming has been a large contributor to technology success across Newcastle, Sunderland and Teesside. Some great examples include Ubisoft Refections, Epic Games UK and CCP Games.
Within the cluster, there is a range of both public and private sector support for fledgling tech businesses aiming to grow and scale. Sunderland Software City, Campus North, Ignite (pre-seed accelerator) and VC Northstar Ventures have all been vital to the successful growth of the digital community and success in the North East.
According to companies in the area, it boasts some of the most positive cluster benefits of any in the report. With 86% of respondents supporting the view that the North East has strong social networks and with access to affordable property coming in at 70%, businesses have the perfect platform in which to grow. Strong social networks have led to great tech events being established right across the North East, such as Dynamo15, Thinking Digital, VRTGO, and The DIBI Conference.
Co-founder and CEO of Ignite 100 is enthusiastic about the spread of digital success across the cluster: “There are clusters of activity across the North East – Newcastle is the hub, but Sunderland and Gateshead also have their own communities.”
Support:
- Sunderland Software City, Sunderland Software City provides support and advice to aspiring and established software businesses in the North East of England
- Digital Catapult (North East), Digital Catapult Centre North East & Tees Valley is a local centre that aims to help innovators bring digital services and products to market.
- Business and IP Centre Newcastle – supports entrepreneurs, inventors and small businesses in the North East
- NETPark, North East Technology Park – provides a dynamic and supportive environment to accelerate the growth of ambitious, innovative, high tech companies into global markets
- Dynamo North East, growing the North East IT economy
Funding:
- North East Business Angels invests in 30 to 40 businesses a year
- Angels Den – an angel-led crowdfunding platform where angel investors and experienced business people invest in pre-vetted SMEs
- Ignite – the UK’s top angel – backed accelerator
- Gabriel Investors – a group of business women running successful enterprises who use their funds, connections and expertise to help entrepreneurs
- Let’s Grow is a new £60m Regional Growth Fund-backed programme which aims to support capital investment and R&D projects that create jobs
- Go Digital Newcastle offers up to £2,000 grant funding for capital investment in broadband and IT equipment
- North-East Technology Fund – £25m North East Technology Fund invests in technology businesses which are based in, or are willing to relocate to North East England
Saggezza is a global solutions provider that combines software development and implementation with its data analytics platform.
Reframed is a social platform which enables users to comment on videos in real time, and share their videos and comments with other users.
Perfect Image is a full-service IT provider, delivering tailored solutions and services that improve its customers’ businesses. It provides managed infrastructure and cloud services.
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