Could Manchester really become a global tech city?

Experts from the world of digital, including co-founder and CEO of London’s TechHub, Elizabeth Varley, and Martin Bryant, managing editor of The Next Web, discuss Manchester’s potential to be the major UK player in the tech sector.

Manchester is ideally placed to be the national engine for digital growth, with its investment and development in connectivity (including the £12m earmarked from the Urban Broadband Fund), resources and education creating an opportunity for the city to be the major UK player in this rapidly growing new sector.But how can it ensure this potential is realised, and what does the city need to do to encourage the next generation of start-ups?The Sharp Project, the new home for creative industries in Manchester, recently played host to lively debate about the city’s potential to become a global tech city. Attracting a high level panel of experts from the world of digital technology including Martin Bryant, managing editor of The Next Web and Elizabeth Varley, co-founder and CEO of London’s TechHub alongside Sharp Project tenants Global Tech and AppLearn, the debate was chaired by Ian Aspin, journalist, speaker, and blogger and Professor of Ideas for Really Good Thinking.So, is Manchester is really ready to compete at the forefront of the UK’s key emerging sector?It was widely agreed that more collaboration amongst locally based companies would make the Manchester tech scene a stronger force, helping put it on the global map. Elizabeth Varley firmly believes tech start-ups need each other and she has seen this firsthand. She explained that “When innovatively disposed people get together, ideas flow and otherwise-guarded information is shared; but most importantly, people will help each other out of the holes they’re stuck in.”The debate then moved on to funding and does it hold businesses back? General opinion was there were still plenty of potential investors in Manchester, and there’s no shame in going to London for funding. If anything, investors could be accused of being too ready to flash the cash, meaning that start-uptech companies were suffering from an inability to get modest investment.Andrew Mullett of Global Tech then led a new discussion when he put forward the radical proposition that (a) you can actually make physical, tangible things, and still be part of tech culture, and (b) that you don’t necessarily need external financial investment if you plan and budget smartly. He asked, rhetorically, what the majority of invested capital was usually spent on, and suggested that often it was paying the high wages of the owners of the business. Why not just have lower lifestyle expectations (pay yourself a little less; go without holidays) while your business is starting up and keep more of its equity? There are creative ways of paying for time and materials if you have customers waiting – sometimes you just need to use them.Shaun Fensom from Manchester Digital was next to take a panel chair. “Of course Manchester, like any city, has its faults and problems as far as getting the digital industries to become world players is concerned, but let’s not play ourselves down,” he said “we’re incredibly lucky to be here at this time in a city that is no backwater on the digital map.” He suggests that there’s no shortage of creativity up here, but we need to carry on doing things differently.Wrapping up, Ian reminded the gathering that we should be mindful of just how far our city has come in the past 20 years, and as far as the digital sector is concerned we’ve done magnificently in comparison to plenty of other similarly sized industrial cities. Martin Bryant, managing editor of The Next Web concluded: “New tech businesses will need not just ideas, but the means and networks to develop them. Without the right environment, they could struggle to survive, let alone succeed. We need to examine what can be done to develop the means, tools and environments where start-ups and business growth will flourish.”