These days it seems that with each passing day another startup or two springs up in the capital. Indeed, over the past year London has seen brilliant startup after amazing startup, after tremendous startup be set up and this trend looks set to continue.
London has always been a city that welcomes innovation and adventure and it seems that entrepreneurs are now making the most of what the city has on offer, with more startups than ever setting up their HQ there.
This trend has not gone unnoticed. Indeed many investors are recognising London’s status as a hotbed of innovation and are making themselves widely available to the hard-working, wily and willing crowds of entrepreneurs.
What many may not realise is that Amazon, the e-commerce giant, also operates a cloud commuting division which goes by the name of Amazon Web Services (AWS). With the advent of London’s startup crowd, it should perhaps come as no surprise that the tech giant is now looking to get in on the action.
The company has recently announced that the AWS division is going to be opening a physical space, called the ‘‘Loft’’, in London between 10th September and 29th October, with the aim of giving startups an area in which they can be nurtured, trained and supported.
The ‘‘Loft’’ will provide startups with a number of different training opportunities, whether people are after courses or boot camps. The ‘Loft’ will also provide people with a space in which they can just mingle with others entrepreneurs or just sit on their own, in peace and quiet to finish off some important work, i.e. app development.
A number of ‘‘Loft’s’ already exist in the US, for instance in both San Francisco and New York but this will be the first one in the UK (and possibly the rest of the world!) CTO and Vice President of Amazon.com, Werner Vogels explains why the ‘‘Loft’’ is coming to London: “The UK is a hotbed of innovation and London is one of the main places where we see talented, ambitious entrepreneurs coming together to test ideas and start new businesses that leverage cloud computing.”
Vogels explains how Amazon sees the London ‘Loft’ as an opportunity to bring together “some of the brightest and most creative minds in the industry” and how it will be the perfect place to help give UK startups the advice and support they need to be a success. He states that Amazon “look forward to working alongside the next generation of UK businesses and helping them to reach their full potential.”
Vice President of Platform and Technical Operations at Hailo, the London cab app, Feidhlim O’Neill has nothing but praise for the ‘Loft’, stating: “We built our business on AWS and everything we do is in the cloud. We look forward to…sharing some of our experiences of growing an international business on AWS and some of the advice we would give to other startups on the same journey we were on only a few years ago.”
The opening of the ‘Loft’ will, no doubt provide Amazon with the opportunity to do some advertising of its own regarding its cloud services platform and perhaps some startups will even choose to team up with AWS. After all it already boasts a number of successful startups as its customers, such as Playmob, GoSquared and Yoyo Wallet.
One thing is for sure, Amazon would not be making the effort to open the ‘Loft’ if it did not recognise the potential of London’s startups.