5 reasons to base your tech start-up in Manchester

Way back when in 2011, we launched our Agency from the humble beginnings of the living room of a rented flat in Fallowfield. Over the last 5 years we have worked hard, often working 7 day weeks and throughout the night to become an award winning development studio operating from Manchester city centre offices and employing a team of 11.

Obviously for us, all the blood, sweat and tears have been worth it but both my business partner Calvin and I agree, that we owe at least part of our success to our choice of location, in Manchester.

When we founded the company 5 years ago, we made the conscious decision to uproot ourselves from the comfort of our home town in North Yorkshire to relocate to a city we thought would offer us a more scope in terms of clients and be a solid starting block for our business. In hindsight we can now reflect on why we think this city makes such a perfect base for a start-up.

1. Locality

Manchester is big enough to have several different districts (apparently there’s officially 11) but not so vast that you can’t walk across the centre in a reasonably short amount of time. In a day I can be in the offices of several of our clients, back to my desk and home to my apartment without sore feet and without the need for several tube rides or in fact any transport costs. There’s a further benefit to this, because so many organisations and businesses can afford city centre office space here, you will often bump into clients and potentially useful contacts, it can definitely make getting a foot in the door easier.

The social events on the tech scene are really frequent and because of the close knit community there’s usually a familiar face or two meaning ‘networking’ is less daunting, especially in the early set-up days. There’s a bit of a community spirit in Manchester, other organisations and businesses based here want to see their neighbours succeed. We’ve witnessed this ourselves, with clients recommending us time and time again resulting in almost all of our work at Webantic being gained through a referral.

In addition, if you do need to get further afield the transport links from Manchester are excellent. London is just over two hours by train, and you can fly from Manchester airport to just about anywhere in the world.

2. Business Opportunity

For us this was the main reason for choosing Manchester over another UK city. After London, it is one of the most popular homes to globally trading companies (the likes of Co-op, The Peel Group and Umbro to name a few) alongside hundreds of companies choosing it as their UK Head Office or as their Regional Office.

There’s a big corporate scene with many of the banks, legal and accountancy firms choosing to either base themselves or have a presence here and also quite a strong historic link to fashion and textiles with several newcomers such as Misguided and Boohoo.com launching in the last few years.

Manchester already has some brilliant start-ups coming through such as Hiring-Hub, DueCourse, Fatsoma and Wakelet to name a few, who are quite literally making history in the industries they work. There are also the bigger established tech companies such as UK Fast and Late Rooms. Obviously Media City has had a positive impact too creating thousands of jobs in the creative and media industries.

3. Support

Manchester is becoming quite well known as a creative and digital start-up hot spot. For that reason it’s gained a lot of publicity and interest lately from investors and supporters. The British Library chose to open their third Business and IP centre here, the first outside of London. The Business Growth Hub, Tech North, and The Ignite Accelerator schemes all provide support, links to funding and investment / general guidance on the start-up scene.

There are also loads of great events emerging (e.g. Business Rocks, VentureFest) and opportunities to meet and network in the tech sector and beyond. There are some fantastic co-working spaces dotted around the city (OGSWorks, SpaceportX, MadLab, BeehiveLofts, to name a few) some of which have more of a tech focus and some tend to attract more creative industries. This in itself leads to collaboration and the opportunity to share your start-up journey with others which can be hugely beneficial.

4. Cost

I can’t argue that Manchester is the cheapest city in the UK to base your start-up. However, according to Hometrack UK the average house price comes in at almost ⅔ less than the London average and even the highest quality city centre office space costs around 50-60% of the cost of London workspace according to Colliers. It is a much more cost effective option if your funds are low, which of course they often are with a start-up!

5. Quality of life

This one is obviously a bit subjective but it’s a well known fact that Manchester offers plenty in terms of entertainment outside of work. There are loads of excellent and diverse restaurants, a thriving bar and music scene with new venues popping up all the time. The Northern Quarter and Ancoats area is home to lots of quirky independent bars and obviously you’ve got an impressive arts and theatre scene here too.

Another massive plus point is the city’s close proximity to beautiful countryside. It’s really easy to ‘live in the hills’ and commute into work here in half an hour which is very different to a lot of cities. Many suburbs have a nice village-y feel but are easily commutable with the added benefit of usually getting a seat on the train in the morning.

Although I’ve sung its praises there are things that could be improved in this city to enable more start-ups to get off the ground. The city needs to be better at attracting investors in from outside the region and promoting itself internationally. Some cities have done this really well of late (e.g. Berlin and Dublin) and are becoming well known for their level of investment in start-ups. It is inevitable that as the amount and success of start-ups launching here continues to grow, the investors will follow.