LAUNCHPAD: Future Fifty adds 25 new digirati

Looks like the government really is determined to turn London into the next Silicon Valley. Not only did yesterday’s Autumn Statement include £10m to fund research into driverless cars (cf. Google’s tests in Silicon Valley), but now Tech City UK, the government-funded organisation designed to support growth of the tech industry, has unveiled the next tranche of companies to join its ‘Future Fifty’ programme. The new list includes Naked Wines, Shazam, Moo.com and Matches Fashion.  

The Future Fifty originally launched in October by the prime minister and Tech City UK boss Joanna Shields. The blurb says it’s a ‘concierge service’ which ‘connects high-growth companies with expertise and tailored support’ from government and big business, and allows them to ‘scale rapidly and lay the foundations for their next major liquidity event’. MT isn’t entirely sure what a ‘major liquidity event’ is, but thinks it might take place at its Christmas party. Or is that a ‘major liquid event’? We’re not sure…

Anyway, among the original tranche were Mind Candy (now rumoured to be gearing up for an IPO), cab app Hailo (now rumoured to be gearing up for an IPO) and peer-to-peer lending platform Zopa (not rumoured to be gearing up for an IPO yet – bit still growing stonkingly fast). So clearly, whatever the government is doing is working.

The announcement coincides with a report published in time for Tech City’s third birthday (Happy Birthday, Tech City), which shows that since its launch in 2010 the number of digital companies in London has increased from 63,000 to just over 88,000, and that one in six jobs in the capital are now in the tech sector.

Shields said so far the Future Fifty progamme has proved ‘we have moved beyond a few digital start-ups to nurturing world-class high growth businesses across many sectors – all of which have one thing in common: they are digital at their core and they are powering ahead to generate long term sustainable growth and jobs at the UK.’

Without further ado, here’s the full list of Future Fifty newbies: