Start Here. Scale Here. Stay Here.
In September, The Digital Forge asked whether the North could reindustrialise. The answer in the room was clear. It can, it is, and the question that matters now is different.
Not whether companies can be built here. Whether this is the best place in Britain to build them.
This edition makes the case for South Yorkshire. Not the sentimental case. The commercial one.
The UK's first Investment Zone is here, with £1.2 billion of investment behind it. The world's first Advanced Manufacturing Innovation District is here, with Boeing, Rolls-Royce and McLaren already in it. Runway Park is adding a hundred acres of innovation space on the old airport site. And through the city centre runs the Innovation Spine, a corridor from Sheffield Station to the University of Sheffield, built to turn two universities' research and a generation of start-ups into companies that scale.
That is the infrastructure. The evening is about whether it works for you.
The format
Start here. What it takes to start a company in this city, who is doing it, and what they find when they arrive.
Scale here. The capital, the customers and the space to grow, and whether South Yorkshire can supply all three without a company having to leave.
Stay here. What makes a business put down roots rather than move its headquarters the moment it succeeds.
Keynotes from the people responsible for the region's growth plan and its start-up infrastructure. A panel of founders, investors and operators who chose South Yorkshire and can say why. Five companies on the Foundry floor, each starting, scaling or staying here, with two and a half minutes to show it.
Speakers announced as they confirm.
What to expect
Keynotes from civic and ecosystem leaders making the case for the region
A panel of people who chose to build here
Five companies on the Foundry floor
Food, drinks and time with the founders, investors and civic leaders in the room
Who should be in the room?
If you are deciding where to start a company, where to scale one, or whether to stay, this evening is for you. If you are an investor who wants to understand the region's pipeline, it is for you. If you are from outside South Yorkshire and have heard the name but not the case, it is especially for you.
Founders. Engineers. Investors. Operators. Civic leaders. People from anywhere who want to know whether the next thing they build should be built here.
Start here. Scale here. Stay here.
No hype. No silver bullets. Just the work.