In the California Silicon Valley, the bar is set by the big local bigshots – the Googles and Facebooks – not the struggling start-ups still living in a garage. However throughout the rest of the world, the bar is Silicon Valley as a whole, with the startup mentality, the business creativity and the culture of risk and, sometimes, payoff. So it is not surprising that outside of California and America, other emerging tech cultures seek to style themselves around the Silicon Valley model. Meet the Silicon Roundabout in London, England and Spoonfed, a London web startup that’s building a name for itself and the area.

A map pinpointing the offices of the tech and media start-ups in London shows a scattershot grouping around Old Street in East London, an area that has become colloquially known as the Silicon Roundabout in homage to the Silicon Valley of California. Moo, Last.FM and Dopplr are a few of the homegrown start-ups that have already caught international business eyes. More recently, Spoonfed, a local events listing site in the vein of Yelp or Trusted Places, emerged as another one-to-watch in the Silicon Roundabout.

Basheera Khan of TechCrunchUK writes in her review of Spoonfed, “the kicker is that it’s location- and preference-specific; tell Spoonfed which parts of London you hang out in, give it a general idea of the types of entertainment you’re into, and hey presto, you’ve got a customised guide to upcoming events….[Spoonfed has] influencers with top notch experience in social networking, big brand advertising, B2B publishing and corporate governance backing a couple of 25-year olds who pitted their combined life-savings of £8,000 against the problem they and their friends shared — never being able to find high quality information about upcoming events across all of London from a single trusted source.”

Spoonfed is ready to take on traditional listings giants with the message that it should be easy and fun to find events you will enjoy locally however their message is two-fold. In addition to a web service that engages Londoners with their local area and events, they also remind world that the Silicon Roundabout and the emerging UK tech scene is certainly one to watch.

Google Map of the Silicon Roundabout:



View Larger Map

Read the full TechCrunch UK Review of Spoonfed

Visit Spoonfed.co.uk

This article is writen by Meaghan Fitzgerald, a Silicon Valley native now living and working in the UK.  Please feel free to republish or link to this post on your blog, or share with your friends using the links below.

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