It has a Silicon Valley vibe and can help launch your business skyward
This Gloucestershire town has the feel of San Francisco’s famous entrepreneurial community and is both inspirational and a launch pad for UK cyber businesses; it's 'dared to do something truly bold'.
Dear Readers,
We hope your week has gone well. We’ve been beavering away on a couple of cyber-related big-read stories this week, one of which is below. The other we might just publish tomorrow (Friday 14 June).
Those who follow the sector closely will know that a trade mission of exciting cyber businesses from the North of the country came to Cheltenham last week at the invitation of CyNam. We’re forever writing about how we in Gloucestershire are the ‘cyber capital of the UK’, so we thought it would be a good idea to see what they think. ‘Is it true’, was one question?
We think their opinions will surprise you, hopefully put you in a good mood for the weekend, and are certainly a huge insight into how effective CyNam, Hub8, the Golden Valley, Cheltenham Borough Council, HBD and others are in the county - and the collaborative working certainly ties in with the article by our expert columnist, Simon Merrell.
Merrell offers up his thoughts on something that is key to the newly published Gloucestershire Economic Plan working (the business plan for the county for the next 10 years unveiled in May) and that is partnership working. ‘Together we’re stronger’, and all that. But just how do you make them work? That’s the question Merrell gives some thought to, and his answers are applicable to businesses everywhere.
You can find that story linked below, along with news that after 60-plus years working and half a century helping build one of the biggest and most successful businesses Gloucestershire has ever seen, its founder is winding down. Well, just a little bit.
We’ve kept today’s post free to all. We usually paywall the Thursday editions for the benefit of our members. Please do consider joining them (£2.30 per week! Less if you pay for two or more people at once). You’ll be helping make this community interest compay sustainable and able to continue doing what it does, providing real journalism to support the county’s business, charity and education and training sectors and help create community.
We hope you enjoy.
Please do continue to bear us in mind for your stories and ideas. Contact andrew.merrell@raikesjournal.co.uk or telephone 07956 926061.
* Everything you read on The Raikes Journal is made possible by our incredible Founding Partners: QuoLux, Willans LLP, Gloucestershire College and Merrell People; our sponsors: Randall & Payne and Hartpury University and Hartpury College; our Founding Members and all our wonderful paying subscribers. If you upgrade to paid too, you’ll be able to see beyond the paywalls we place on many of our second and third email editions of the week and that lock our archive after two weeks. You will be able to view our rolling Top 100 Businesses in Gloucestershire series comment on our stories and you’ll be helping to make possible this community interest company dedicated to supporting the county, its businesses, charities and education and training providers — all for just £2.30 per week!! Cheaper if you buy a group subscription (when two or more people subscribe at once) For commercial opportunities visit our About us page or email andrew.merrell@raikesjournal.co.uk.
Will you go to the ball with me?
🤝🏻 This is something of a follow-up to the thread of stories we’ve delivered on Gloucestershire’s new economic plan. Gloucestershire County Council unveiled the plan in May and has begun to invite business people to join a new board for economic growth to help make it all happen. Key to its success, as the document itself spells out, will be partnerships - and more so, making them work. Just how do you create meaningful partnerships, be you an economic growth board or a business? What sort of questions do you need to ask yourself? Luckilly we have Simon Merrell, of Merrell People, on hand to explain how to unlock the answers. Find out more here.
The Raikes Journal is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support the work of this community interest company, please consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Your briefing notes…
👏🏼 Renishaw: Sir David McMurtry, one of the founders of one of Gloucestershire’s most successful home-grown companies ever, Renishaw plc, will step down as executive chairman of the business from next month (July). Sir David, now is in his 80s and a man who continues to win wards for his outstanding contribution to engineering, founded Renishaw with John Deer more than 50 years ago.
The Wotton-under-Edge-headquartered operation has remained committed not just to Gloucestershire, but engineering excellence and innovation ever since and created thousands of jobs in Gloucestershire and more around the world. It’s also reportedly earned its co-founder a personal fortune worth £1.25 billion.
Sir David will remain a non-executive director with senior independent director Sir David Grant assuming the role of interim non-executive chairman while the board searches for a permanent successor. Sir David’s son, Richard McMurtry, will also be appointed as an additional non-executive director.
📉 Superdry: Julian Dunkerton’s proposed rescue package for Superdry has cleared its latest hurdle with the founder of the fashion brand remaining determined to stave off the Cheltenham headquartered business entering administration. Creditors reportedly voted in favour of the plans, which pins the hopes of a revival on the label’s fortunes on rent reductions across 39 stores, raising equity and a delisting from the stock market. Dunkerton’s plan to take the company private fell through this year. Shareholders will now vote on the delisting of the firm and on the ‘equity raise’ at Friday’s annual general meeting (June 14). If that goes to plan the process moves to the High Court on Monday 17 June to get the plan sanctioned.
🏆 Deadline approaching! This is the deadline is tomorrow (Friday, 13 June) for anyone who wants to nominate a business or individual for the Believe in Gloucester Awards, which return this year for the first time since pre-covid courtesy of the city’s BID (Business Improvement District). Headline sponsors are WSP Solicitors and Gloucester Quays. There are 15 categories, ranging from business of the year, small business of the year and new business of the year to best retailer, best customer service, best bar or pub, community project, event and charity. Find out more here.
📢 Attention hospitality businesses!!! No one who runs a hospitality business needs telling that Christmas is key to success. What they might need help with, however, is a plan to get the most out of the occassion. According to experts the cost of living crisis continues to have a significant impact on consumer behaviour and is disproportionately affecting independents in the sector. Those businesses need to squeeze as much value as they can from the festive opportunity. In which case this should help… Daniel Jenkins, of Wagada Digital, Aimee, the head of creative from Christmas Makers, and Samantha Walker and Andy Barr of marketing supremos 10 Yetis, are coming together to stage a special seminar to make sure everyone’s plan is as good as can be. Find out more here.
It has a Silicon Valley vibe and can help launch your business skyward
This Gloucestershire town has the feel of San Francisco’s famous entrepreneurial community and is both inspirational and a launch pad for UK cyber businesses; it has ‘dared to do something truly bold’.
By Andrew Merrell
It is like San Francisco and it’s a launch-pad for cyber businesses into one of the most potentially lucrative sectors in the UK economy - and beyond - and it is right here in Gloucestershire.
Sometimes you can talk about something for so long – like how Cheltenham is about to become the UK’s ‘cyber central’ courtesy of the Golden Valley Development – that you begin to wonder whether we need a reality check.
If ever you were going to get such a thing you could do worse than invite a few friends from out of town, perhaps from the North East; friends who also happen to understand just what business, cyber and the digital economy is all about.
Which is exactly what CyNam did, the Cheltenham-based group that represents Gloucestershire’s cluster of cyber-related businesses here in the county - it invited its friends from CyberNorth down for the town’s science festival.
Raikes was intrigued to hear what they had to say, for all the reasons we outlined above. The feedback was fascinating.
“What really struck me in particular is there is a real focus in your area, a natural bias towards cyber - for obvious reasons,” said Ed Bartlett, already au fait with the way those of us living in the shadow of GCHQ respectfully, but barely, acknowledge its presence.
“We don’t have that (GCHQ) in the North East. We do have Government departments, but we are talking about HMRC and the DWP (Department of Work and Pensions).
“In Gloucestershire, it seems very connected and it is apparent how businesses in the area have managed to engage with government agencies to generate opportunity.
“We certainly learned a few tricks of the trade in how to build that community.
“And having dedicated locations and facilities where people can meet, formally and informally, share ideas and collaborate, we don’t necessarily have that yet,” he added, referring to the Hub8 workspaces at the Brewery Quarter and Gloucestershire College’s Cheltenham campus, plus the forthcoming MX Centre.
Bartlett is chief executive officer of Durham-based Hicomply, a business he and co-founder Nick Graham started in 2019, which has become known as an expert in software that makes achieving information security certifications simple for businesses and organisations.
For the representatives of the relatively new cyber cluster from the North, that is already making inroads into penetrating the diverse sectors across its own region and developing its community, the Cheltenham visit was about how to do that as much as it was about business connections.
And CyNam’s invitation to drop in at the Cheltenham Science Festival to meet Tim Peake had a special attraction.
“There is a massive opportunity in that sector. Cyber security is a current issue. We have the space (industry) clusters in the North East. That is something we took away,” said Bartlett.
“And you could say we see Cheltenham as a bit like a ‘launch pad’ into the industry as a whole.
“It is not just the location and all that offers, it is like a funnel through which various communities can pass, a touch point for everyone in cyber.
“It reminded us how cyber is actually a global opportunity and that we will really only capitalise on it by all working together. That’s why we wanted to understand it.”
It was Danielle Phillips, of communications consultancy Inside Out, and director and lead for CyberNorth and , who delivered the town possibly its most glamorous compliment, by comparing its spirit to a city known world-wide for its innovative, digital and technical entrepreneurs.
“It has a very San Franciso feel; let’s try something, let’s innovate. If you walk around Cheltenham it all looks very nice, but when you talk to people it feels like there is an in-built desire to be better and bigger and more successful; you get that sense from the way everyone is willing to meet, to work together, collaborate.”
She added: “The strategy seems to be about sharing. Cyber can be very closed. We are often quite suspicious and reserved because of the type of work we do, but what struck us in Cheltenham was the community, the collaboration, the sharing, the ability to work with local government, government and across business.”
CyberNorth and CyNam are part of a network that has grown to 17 such clusters UK-wide, all part of the government-funded programme and organisation called UKC3 – which literally means UK Cyber Cluster Collaboration. CyNam can now claim 5,000 members, CyberNorth 1,000 with the sector nationwide estimated to be worth just shy of £12 billion annually.
According to the government’s cyber security analysis there are an estimated 3,391 offices in the UK for 2,091 firms employing an estimated 60,689 full time equivalent staff (a third in small, medium and micro firms) that fit into the cyber sector, with eight per cent of those in the South West and three per cent in the North East.
“Cynam was the first cluster, for obvious reasons around GCHQ,” said Phillips, and that is one of the reasons it was further on in its development and ideas.
“Simple things like the benefits of having a mixture of managed hubs for people to work together, to meet for a coffee, to get to know one another and collaborate; that happens in Cheltenham, but it does not necessarily happen in other places in the UK.”
She added: “We set up CynerNorth for people working in cyber in the North East, to collaborate, to share, to grow together. Becoming a member I liken to building your own little black book and being able to add to it.
“As well as coming to Cheltenham we are also working with clusters in Scotland, in the North West in Yorkshire (YCSC). We have good links to the Department for Business and Trade and we are looking at other opportunities for North East businesses.
“There is perhaps a view of the North East as something to do with shipbuilding. We haven’t built a ship here for years.
“We have cyber and tech here, we have a a renewable energy sector, automotive sector is thriving, we are looking to develop the film industry here.
“There are really lots of opportunities. But we are a long way from where Cheltenham has got to.”
What she was also referring to mirrors the messaging those connected to the Golden Valley will now tell you too; it is now about helping us all recognise how cyber and digital is part of every business and that the sector needs to look outwards and be among all types of industry.
Through talking about what the sector does in this holistic way CyberNorth hopes to help tackle some of the other broader challenges those battling with policy and strategy for Gloucestershire’s economic future are familiar with too.
Phillips said: “We have the highest number of STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) graduates in the country - Durham attracts lots of STEM students, for example - but then we open the door and they leave when they graduate.
“A lot of them come from outside the area and return home when they have graduated. We have an opportunity to encourage them to stay if we can show them what is really here in the North East.
“We already work very closely with the automotive sector in the North East to support and provide security and we are speaking to a couple of councils about Smart Cities.
“That is what caught all of our attention - the connectiveness in Cheltenham. You can see people working together for the betterment of the sector and the region.
“The collaboration between teams is phenomenal. There will be new business opportunities for people in our group as a result.
“I think the connections with CyNam and the council and large organisations and central government is all singing very, very nicely in Cheltenham right now.
“The Golden Valley is a direct result of all that collaboration. What is fantastic is the big picture; Gloucestershire has dared to do something that is really rather bold.
“The visit and friendships we made are hugely beneficial and it was thanks to CyNam that brokered those meetings.
“And to be able to do that against the backdrop of Cheltenham Science Festival which has also bought into bringing that community together, and to be keen to learn what is happening outside its own community too.”
Tomorrow Raikes plan to publish more insight into cyber - this time from inside HBD, the developer in charge of the Golden Valley Development.