December ‘19

Hi all - this is the email of support I sent to the panel for the Scottish Tech Startup Awards in November 2019. We were nominated for the Ecosystem Award (which we won!), but what was great was sitting down and thinking about what it is a space like CodeBase does in an ecosystem. I thought I'd share a slightly edited version as it gives an idea of what we've been doing for the last few years, and where we want to go next.

Hi Startup Awards judges. This is Oli, from CodeBase.

This little essay is about CodeBase, what we do, how we've evolved since we started, and what's next for us.

We started building CB in 2014. Cast your eyes back, Jamie, Stephen, Colin, and myself were trying to do something we really had no right to - build a physical incubator space from scratch. We were fiercely proud of the fact we had no funding, and (in)famously known to be determined to build our own thing in our own way.

During this time, we didn't interact with the ecosystem as much as we should have. Partly our stubbornness, but also just being frail humans with limited bandwidth. We spent our precious work hours building CodeBase (often physically - I estimate we personally peeled up 45,000 carpet tiles), experimenting with what works for a community, ramping up our events, mentorship, business support. Our product.

But, you can only look inwards for so long. As the team grew (25th person joining this week!) and the dust literally settled on building a space, we started looking outside the building. Partly spurred by the key hire of Steven Drost, partly by the resilience built up by a strong community, we increased our interaction with the wider ecosystem - locally, nationally and internationally. This is the future of CodeBase - not to be leading an ecosystem, but to be the hub, linking in startups, scaleups, academia, government, third sector, corporates, creatives, students.. anyone who is interested in startup thinking.

I'll focus on the bigger projects we're working on. As a hub, our calendars are all full with constant tours of the space, talks about ecosystems/startup culture, events to host and attend (in short, trying to sell Edinburgh as a successful startup destination).. but I don't want to bore you with granular details.

Let's start with Creative Bridge, our fully funded creative industries accelerator. This project has so far proved rather successful in terms of a joint delivery between us and The University of Edinburgh/Napier University/Creative Edinburgh, and it's only just getting started. Tech ecosystems need creatives, and we've been sorely lacking in those interested in building products or working at startups. We've been delighted to have the opportunity to fly in speakers from San Francisco, New York, Dublin, and Australia, who are building lasting mentorship relationships with the cohorts. It's also evidence of how a huge organisation like the UoE can work successfully with a scrappy business like us.

LawTech Bridge, in partnership with Barclays, has become the go to place for the world's largest law firms and cutting edge LawTech startups to interact - we've been shipping our tenants down to London and are now doing the reverse for LawTech Bridge Edinburgh. We've now connected several Edinburgh companies, including some not based at CodeBase who we love anyway, to the innovation leads at these legal firms.

Speaking of Barclays, did you know that they outsource the mentorship of their 24 Eagle Labs to us? Team CodeBase and some of our mentors regularly visit these spaces, to help with what we know, but also connect startups to relevant people in our growing network.

As for government interaction, although Stephen got his OBE and now has to spend half his time at Downing Street and the Scottish Parliament helping shape the future of the UK economy via the Tech Competitiveness Study, we'd rather take this opportunity to talk about our relationship with Scottish Enterprise. We've become significantly closer to SE in the last two years.. Team CodeBase nearly all have regular time scheduled to meet with their respective person there (be it joint events, marketing, inward investment, referrals for SE programmes etc.). We're working on building a much more joined up and mature private/public ecosystem.

And lastly, let's talk about third sector. Prewired is still attracting about 40 kids a week to learn to code, every Wednesday. Digital Skills 4 Girls (a CB Stirling creation) is starting in Edinburgh soon. For years we joked Prewired was our recruitment funnel.. and then it started happening, the kids were 18 and getting internships at CB companies. Success! We have also worked with Maggie's Centres, the Turing Trust, North Edinburgh Arts, Saheylia, to name a few brilliant groups.

So, beyond Edinburgh, and the UK? The team are spending a huge amount of their time on the road at various conferences around the world learning how other ecosystems thrive and keeping our tools sharp. Our goal at these is to build Edinburgh's brand and persuade people to come back with us to level up the community. Whether it's a simple lunchtime AMA or being a speaker on one of our programmes, we're connecting more globally than ever before. We've now got strategic contacts at Stripe, AWS, Twilio, Google, .. all of whom are keen to be super connectors to the world's fastest growing scaleups.

So that's us. CodeBase, 2014 - present. We're still a startup, and figuring out our product market fit, but we know for certain it is as a connector and curator of all good things in tech.