CodeBase: the heart and soul of Scotland's tech scene, by Nick Freer

No one in the room was surprised when CodeBase lifted the Ecosystem award at the recent Turing Fest-run Scottish Tech Startup Awards in Edinburgh. Since launching in 2014, the tech incubator in Scotland’s capital makes a strong case for being the heart and soul of the city’s startup scene and in many people’s eyes the Scottish tech scene overall. 

Deliveroo's Scotland lead Andy Robinson is one of the tech incubator's many plaudits: "CodeBase's value to the Edinburgh tech ecosystem cannot be understated. It's been a fantastic source of advice and support for hundreds of individuals for years, so it's great to see their enormous value recognised." 

Shame on the naysayers (I have met a few) who have branded CodeBase a “property play” over the years - it was always so much more than that and in 2020 it is a bona fide tech cluster and a veritable beacon for so much of the great stuff going on in Scottish tech. Again, no surprise that big name corporate brands like Barclays and PwC have fallen over themselves to secure tie-ups with CodeBase - which now has three core sites in Edinburgh, Stirling and Aberdeen - PwC announced a partnership with CodeBase in March 2017 and Barclays Eagle Labs, a platform to connect the UK’s entrepreneurial ecosystem and drive digital skills development, was launched in Scotland at CodeBase in January 2018  

The team has carefully built a culture partly by design and, as I’m sure the guys would admit, partly by way of evolutionary flow at Argyle House in the shadow of Edinburgh Castle. Like it was yesterday, I remember the day of the official launch when Scotland’s First Minister opened the building and we ushered in press and photographers when the paint was still drying on app developer Kotikan’s shiny new HQ (Kotikan was a keystone tenant at CodeBase and was subsequently acquired by fantasy sports site FanDuel in 2015). [You can read the BBC's coverage of the March 2014 launch here].

As the saying goes, the sum is greater than the parts and CodeBase tenant companies have collectively raised over £600 million to date. Other metrics show how much has been achieved - over 400 companies are currently being supported and the CodeBase team is delivering programmes and mentoring across 24 cities in the UK.  

Catching up with Edinburgh tech ecosystem mainstay Russell Henderson last week - Russell, former Director of Growth at mobile app and web developer Bemo, has helped to organise tech community initiatives like ProductTank, ScotStartups and StartupSurf (aka CodeBase’s surf club) - Russell shares his views on the subject in more eloquent terms: “The Scottish startup scene has gone through a phase change and CodeBase has been present throughout; sometimes as a catalyst, often as a champion, invariably as a protector and most importantly as a curator of community. Theirs has been a unique perspective which means they are now increasingly recognised as the go-to repository for all things startup.”

In May, CodeBase launched a creative industries accelerator - Creative Bridge - in partnership with University of Edinburgh, Napier University and Creative Edinburgh - and in November the team brought LawTech Bridge, which had already tasted great success in London, to Scotland offering a opportunity-rich environment for collaboration between law firms and startups. Watch this space for further industry sector announcements in 2020.

CodeBase’s Head of Partnerships, Oliver Littlejohn explains: “2020 is going to be a pivotal year for CodeBase. We're putting together these meetups as part of a larger effort to work much more closely with partners from the whole tech ecosystem. The meetups will be a place where startups, scaleups, creatives, corporates, academia and the public sector can all get together to learn startup thinking.”

Over the next fortnight alone, alongside yoga classes and coffee mornings, a couple of events taking place at CodeBase catch the eye. On the 23rd, coding initiative Digital Skills 4 Girls (established by CodeBase Stirling) rolls into Argyle House. Claire Wheelan from CodeBase's marketing team explains a bit more about DS4G which is supported by Deliveroo Engineering: "We're so excited to launch DS4G in Edinburgh, it's a safe space for girls to explore a range of creative digital skills and get them thinking about where they fit into the digital world. What's also interesting is that we have also seen an increase in the number of girls attending our mixed coding club since we launched DS4G and we now have a 50/50 split."

The following week, on the 28th, the first in a new series of CodeBase Edinburgh Meetups kicks off aimed at bringing the tech community together to discuss best practice in building startups. Tech.eu’s Natalie Novick, Dropbox’s Abhishek Lahoti, Bemo’s Matt Farrugia and Creative Edinburgh’s Briana Pegado feature on the panel for this month’s inaugural event. You can sign up to a monthly newsletter from CodeBase that has more detail on this and all the other wonderful things taking place in Edinburgh, Stirling, Aberdeen, London and elsewhere.  

An edited version of this article appeared in The Scotsman on Monday 20th January 2020