Tech London Advocates: Young Entrepreneurs launched to support the next generation of tech talent in the UK
Overview
On Thursday, to celebrate its eighth year as a founding partner for London Tech Week, Tech London Advocates launched a new Young Entrepreneurs group. Led by Femi Owolade-Coombes, an award-winning 15-year old young entrepreneur himself, the group will develop a global network of young tech talent looking to start and scale tech companies across the world.
Taking place during London Tech Week at the University of Arts London: Creative Computing Institute, the launch event featured young people from the UK, China , Africa and the ASEAN regions sharing their experiences of growing their businesses and providing advice on how the next generation of innovators can access funding and expand to markets both at home and abroad. Backed by Russ Shaw CBE, founder of Tech London Advocates and Global Tech Advocates, and the group’s co-lead, networking expert Grace Owolade-Coombes, the event demonstrated the strength and diversity of the UK’s tech sector and was a positive indicator of its future potential.
Introductions by Russ Shaw, founder of Tech London Advocates and Global Tech Advocates
The evening was introduced by TLA Founder Russ Shaw who outlined the founding goals of TLA to the audience: to support London’s start ups and scale ups and deal with the challenges we face as a global tech hub. Russ framed the evening’s discussion in terms of maintaining London as a leading global tech hub in light, highlighting recent research from
Startup Genome that London is ranked the second best city in the world for tech innovation, only coming behind Silicon Valley.
Introductions by Femi Owolade-Coombes and Grace Owolade-Coombes, Co-founders of TLA: Young Entrepreneurs
Next young entrepreneur, international keynote speaker and founder of Tech London Advocates: Young Entrepreneurs, Femi Owolade-Coombes and Grace Owolade-Coombes, Future of Work leader and expert on supported pathways for underrepresented groups into the tech industry, outlined the mission of the new TLA: YE to inspire, support and connect young entrepreneurs and innovators by building an inclusive ecosystem. Informed by Grace and Femi’s work in the developing world, they explained the group’s focus on creating a better, more inclusive ecosystem aiming toward the United Nations’ sustainable development goals, to facilitate and promote young entrepreneur networks globally.
Panel: Young Entrepreneurs in Focus
The event moved on to an exciting panel hosted by Femi bringing in young entrepreneurs from a diverse range of backgrounds to discuss their experiences of starting and scaling businesses in the UK. Femi was joined by Arsema Fessehazion, founder of an early-stage recruitment start-up agency, hire.py, Joshua Uwadiae Founder and CEO of WeGym & School of Fat Loss and Giselle Frederick, Impact Entrepreneur, Founder & CEO at Sonaaar, a platform enabling Black initiatives leaders to crowdsource solutions from diaspora professionals. The discussion went over their own personal experiences as young entrepreneurs from minority backgrounds trying to break into the industry. They also provided valuable advice on how to deal with failure, the importance of community and how to access funding to help other young tech founders in the audience launch and up-scale their own businesses.
Dealing with success and failure
Nattaphol Vimolchalao, founder of SEAX Ventures and Sydney Scott Sam, CEO of Workspace Global moved the conversation onto dealing with success as well as failure. Nattaphol advised on listening to other people and to be authentic as key values for entrepreneurs. He also emphasised the importance of using data led decisions to find product market fit. Sydney’s view was more philosophical, to focus on the person you want to become rather than the company you’d like to be. For him, his failures led him to the success he is today. Both also gave valuable insight into their local markets, and the considerations companies should take when targeting the African and ASEAN markets.
Promoting Young Entrepreneurs in ASEAN Region – Fatin Arifin, Founding Chair, ASEAN Young Entrepreneurs Club
In her appropriately named Lightning talk, Fatin Arifin, Founding Chair of ASEAN Young Entrepreneurs Club delivered an impressive presentation in under 10 minutes that provided a wealth of insight into Southeast Asia spanning the opportunity, regional differences and common culture for businesses to be aware of. She also mapped out the staggering market opportunity of targeting a population of 675 million people with 475 million internet users, half of which have only just come online in the last year, and the current billion dollar valued companies attracting global investment.
Breaking into the Chinese Market – Kelly Chan, Country Head, CENTI Group
The event’s focus then shifted to mainland Asia with an insightful talk by Kelly Chan, Country Head at CENTI Group. She laid out the clear options for businesses from other countries looking to operate in China, including the pros and cons of starting your own business in China versus partnering with existing partners. Kelly also shared her knowledge of the best regions to start up tech businesses depending on industry and the importance of market research and considering local differences in human resources and international property rights to be successful.
How to Prepare for Investment – Abi Mohamed, Libra Programme Lead at Tech Nation
Abi Mohamed is the Libra Programme Lead at Tech Nation’s newest growth programme, Libra 1.0, an initiative to tackle the lack of diversity within the UK tech sector. She gave some practical tips with a series of valuable slides on how to approach funding from Seed to Series A and beyond as mobile phones snapped away around the auditorium. Another practical section went over how to create a funding-winning pitch deck with the top dos and don’ts to consider. More broadly, Abi discussed how Tech Nation is addressing diversity challenges in the tech industry, with advice for female black founders resonating particularly strongly.
Micro Masterclass: Promoting your Business on TikTok – George Nikolau, Community Programmes & Events Lead at TikTok.
George Nikolaou, Community Programmes & Events Lead at TikTok, delivered a fun masterclass on how to promote your business on TikTok. He went over useful pointers on how to set up a profile, take the best pictures and use hashtags correctly. George also highlighted the importance of educational content to engage with business users and making content relatable to your audience.
Summary
The event was a great success that provided a valuable platform for conversations that carried on long into the networking sessions afterwards. Future events are in the works that will ensure the next generation of young tech leaders have better access to the investment, talent and commercial skills they need to realise their potential.
Tech London Advocates: Young Entrepreneurs 