Revealed: first look inside Nottingham tech hub

A dedicated hub for growing technology businesses will open in Nottingham next week – and this is the first glimpse of how it will look.

Accelerate Places Nottingham represents part of a £40m investment in the city by Blenheim Chalcot, a venture builder which invests in disruptive early stage digital technology businesses and uses its expertise to help them grow.

Based on Wollaton Street close to the city centre, Accelerate Nottingham features dedicated workspace for new tech companies and a café and meeting space based on a concept successfully trialled in London.

It will be officially opened next Tuesday by Dan Cobley, the former managing director of Google in the UK who is now one of the four lead partners in Blenheim Chalcot and head of its fintech (financial technology) group.

He said: “I’m really looking forward to the launch of Accelerate Places Nottingham. It’s an important moment for a city which has become a serious player in the digital space, especially fintech.

“We’re investing substantially in Nottingham because we’ve launched and grown a number of businesses ourselves here. We hope people nationally and globally will get to know more about the city’s reputation as a place to build digital tech and the part Blenheim Chalcot is playing in helping it grow.”

Accelerate Places Nottingham will offer businesses a mix of desk space and meeting rooms, supported by its ground floor café with areas for meetings and events. Desk space membership of Accelerate Nottingham is available for less than £300 a month.

One of the early member businesses at Accelerate Places Nottingham is Cronofy, which has developed an API [Application Programming Interface] which securely synchronises calendar-based activities across different platforms. It is run by tech entrepreneur Adam Bird and employs eight people.

He said: “The reason we’ve come to Accelerate Places is the quality of the space – that’s what’s been missing in the city. When you’re creating a high-growth business you can’t afford to concern yourself with the state of the internet connection or other building facilities.

“Because I don’t have to worry about any of that it’s a low-friction environment for Cronofy. Everything I need is in here, so we can focus on being successful rather than being sidetracked by issues which are not central to what we do.

“As a team, we’re now really looking forwards to working alongside other ambitious businesses that are inevitably going to be attracted to work space of this quality.”

Accelerate Places is being led by Mark Sanders, the former CEO of TDX Group in Nottingham.

He explained: “Our own experience tells us that tech entrepreneurs like to work in an environment where they can share experiences and benefit from the expertise of other businesses doing similar things.

“Blenheim Chalcot has several of its own businesses based in Accelerate Nottingham and we will also be holding events designed to create a sense of community for digital technology businesses.”