The A B C according to Moritz by Nick Freer

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The A B C according to Moritz by Nick Freer

Sir Michael Moritz, doyen of all things tech and chairman of lofty investment firm Sequoia who backed Skyscanner in 2013, recently blogged about the need for Europe to step up its act and start to produce the kind of technology giants that really only the US has managed to spawn over the last decade or two.  Rather than punishing Facebook and Alphabet (Google’s holding company) for clever tax planning across Europe, our leaders should pay closer attention to how these mammoth corporates got to dominate so much in their various markets.  Moritz listed the two European exceptions to his rule as Germany’s SAP and the UK’s Arm Holdings...

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Shaping a tech nation by Nick Freer

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Shaping a tech nation by Nick Freer

As we near the end of 2015, the rude health of our tech sector really is reason to be jolly.  It’s been a remarkable year for the digital scene in Scotland, one in which a country much better known for petroleum, golf, whisky and a rain-soaked arts festival in August increasingly attracts the attention of investors and commentators from every corner of the globe.  Only a few weeks’ back, former University of Edinburgh spin-out pureLiFi - led by Bavarian professor Harald Haas - went viral across the world’s media on the back of its patented technology that allows internet use via off-the-shelf LED bulbs.  I’ll try to exhaust the superlatives early on, but it’s nothing short of incredible that if you go back 5 years in time very few people were talking about Scotland’s fledgling tech ecosystem.

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