On the second floor of a shared workspace in East London’s Shoreditch, where tech workers in Converse sneakers usually stare into laptops while sipping chai lattes, a different crowd — this one in formalwear — is packed into a room. It’s so hot the sandwich lettuce at the back is wilting. But people don’t seem to mind; they’re excited to hear about the latest effort to turn Britain into a global tech hotspot.

It wasn’t so long ago that the UK was ahead of the US on tech, Tom Adeyoola, a British tech entrepreneur who’s now working with the government to provide grants and loans to startups, tells the assembled venture capitalists and policymakers: “People here had mobile phones 18 months before Americans.” But the excitement around London’s “Silicon Roundabout” 15 years ago didn’t pan out. “These things happen in waves,” he says.

© Bloomberg