UK tech firms unite to push against 'Texit'

Leading lights of the UK’s technology sector are trying to calm fears of a “Texit” following the result of last week’sEU referendum.

After some of Britain’s biggest tech start-ups, including business data company DueDil and foreign exchange service TransferWise, revealed they areopenly mulling an overseas relocationafter the historic leave vote, other investors and entrepreneurs have intervened to try to inject some confidence into the shaky industry.

A shared subtext runs through many of the statements: Brexit is bad for technology, yes, but the technology sector is an inherently uncertain sector at the best of times. At its core, its about generating ideas and building products that will grow to hundreds of times their initial size, and so even the negative hit from leaving the EU will be small in comparison to the biggest successes.

Technology analyst Forrester is one group arguing for a level-headed response. “While times of high-market volatility can tempt firms to panic and cut spending on customer-focused initiatives, now is the time to drive innovation in order to win, serve, and retain customers,”says Laura Koetzle, a director in the firm.

Gary Stewart, the director of Wayra UK, a startup accelerator owned by Spanish multinational telecoms firm Telefonica, issued an impassioned response on Monday afternoon. “As entrepreneurs, startup life is risky and uncertain enough; few entrepreneurs that we know had expressed much appetite for increasing their daily dose of uncertainty by disturbing the seismic macroeconomic and political factors that would be unleashed by Brexit.

“Nonetheless, while leaving the EU will impose new and perhaps unwanted challenges on the UK’s startup tech scene, it is clear that there is more that the startup community can do to help assuage these feelings of dispossession felt by so many Brits.” Stewart added: “The Brexit vote was a wake-up call that we must change this sense of despair before it gets too late, and we believe that entrepreneurship – and the entrepreneurial ecosystem more generally – have an important role to play here.”

Smaller groups also made their own pleas for government policy to take tech firms into account when negotiating for Britain’s future. Alex Hoye, cofounder of the Runway East co-working space, argued that retaining freedom of movement was crucial, whatever form a new settlement takes. “To stay as Europe’s leading tech hub we must have continued access to Europe’s leading tech talent, drawing the best from the 500 million strong population of theEuropean Union.

“However, saying that our door will remain easily openable for tech talent from the EU requires no negotiation; the government can solve the threat of large scale Texit with a word and our main concern is that they do it sooner rather than later.”

Martin Mignot, an investor at top-tier venture capital firm Index Ventures, was one of the first in the tech industry to take a positive outlook of the referendum result,tweeting just hours after it was confirmed: “We’ll obviously keep investing in the UK and EU. Like it or not, tech has no borders.”

Speaking to the Wall Street Journal a few days later, he was one making the case for Brexit being small in comparison to larger issues in the sector. ““If you lose 20% on foreign exchange, yeah it’s painful [but], your goal is not to make a 20% return. It’s to make 100x return.”

Perhapsthe pithiest responsecame from London’s Atomico venture capital firm: “Keep Calm and Code On.”

“Let’s face it: Brexit was not the result we wanted,” the team said. “For UK tech, now is not the time to make rash decisions or pack our bags.

“Entrepreneurs are resilient. We’ve seen this over and over again. Microsoft and FedEx started out in the 1973–1975 oil crisis and US recession. Skype was founded in 2002, during what was still the dotcom nuclear winter. Airbnb, Spotify and Uber were born during the 2008–2009 financial crisis.

“This, if it turns out to be a crisis, will be no different.”

(THE GUARDIAN)