The waterfront in Bristol harbour on a sunny day. England, UK. Photo taken on: August 03rd, 2014
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Population: 440,000
Mean annual salary: £24,900
Amount that creative industries in Bristol and nearby Bath add to the UK economy each year: £660m

Bristol’s fierce independence can make the cookie-cutter hipsters hanging around east London’s tech cluster seem tame. The riverside city has been famed for its creativity since the days of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the engineer whose railway line linking Bristol to London was a marvel of Victorian Britain. The city is now one of the fastest-growing tech destinations in the UK, with a bustling start-up scene whose strengths in media, gaming and robotics are putting it on the map.


The case for:
Bristol’s liveability is a draw for start-ups’ staff, who relish the glut of independent bars and the affordability compared with London. Incubators such as the Engine Shed offer a focal point for founders and investors, while the SETsquared partnership between the region’s universities is helping to commercialise research. Links to the big regional aerospace and animation sectors — including Wallace and Gromit creator Aardman Animations — promote creative cross-pollination, along with research labs run by Hewlett-Packard and, soon, Chinese telecoms group Huawei. The city got a boost earlier this year when Twitter bought SecondSync, a local outfit that measures people’s use of social media in response to television programmes.


The case against
: Despite the strong tech credentials of nearby universities, Bristol’s start-ups can find it challenging to interact with local academics. Founders complain that hiring people with business skills can be
a challenge. Private office space is also running low. London exercises a pull on talent, while international investors still need a primer on Bristol’s location.


Local heroes
: Ultrahaptics creates touchable holograms. A spinout from the University of Bristol, it has developed a system that uses ultrasonic pulses directed at users’ hands to simulate the feeling of objects in mid-air. The technology presents a new way to interact with games, and the company envisages it being integrated in household products ranging from clocks to cars.

Wriggle provides last-minute activities for things to do. Like London-based competitor YPlan, the idea is to help businesses sell spare capacity.


Show me the money
: There is a good supply of early-stage seed money and government grants from the likes of Innovate UK and the West of England Local Enterprise Partnership to get your business started. The going gets tough for investments of about £500k, though, as many of the bigger players prefer to invest millions of pounds.


How to get there
: Bath’s flourishing tech scene is a short train trip or an easy half-hour drive, while London takes under two hours by train.


What the locals say
: Caroline Norbury, chief executive of advice and investment group Creative England, says Bristol has grown “partly because it has always had a very strong BBC base with spending power and partly because of its independent-minded arts scene — from the famous Bristol music scene in the 1980s through to Banksy”.

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