A Night at Buckingham Palace

Running a startup can be a bit tough at times as any entrepreneur knows; but a number of us who are based in London recently received invitations to an event at Buckingham Palace, which is a pretty nice thing to get in the mail! The event was put on by the UKTI TechCity folk and was hosted by HRH Prince Andrew – Mike Butcher almost likened it to a dinner put on by President Obama for a bunch of major tech players in the US.

It was the latest in a number of things that I’d been to in the last month that were focused on the entrepreneurial world building up around Old Street Roundabout, including a round table discussion with Eric van der Kleij to discuss issues affecting startups. Not surprisingly, I mentioned public sector procurement and one or two other things – I think there is a lot that can happen here. I fully appreciate that startups come with particular risks, but risk aversion in the public sector is immensely expensive, and the kind of transformation that is needed to deliver cuts while retaining some element of government efficiency really needs to incorporate the innovation that can be delivered by enterprising startups. An amazing, but true example, is where a mate running a startup called Lucidica providing IT support in London is able to regularly source IT products for his clients for up to 40% less than major universities, who you would think had slightly more buying power – but clearly not!