We kicked off the project today at
Manchester Digital's Emerging Tech Conference - and keep an eye out tomorrow for our new report on how we build a great regional tech funding ecosystem.

Class: One of the great underdiscussed and researched issues in the ecosystem - where a lack of clear data masks barriers for working-class founders.

Race: The 18% of the UK that is from an ethnic minority background find it much harder to raise capital for tech businesses.

Black founders have raised only 0.24% of venture funding over a decade.

Gender: Despite continued amazing work from a huge number of community orgs and fantastic female founders, majority-female founding teams receive just 11% of equity funding and fully-female founded teams get less than 2%.

Founders outside London and the Golden Triangle: 72% of startup investment goes to London, while nearly half of funded startups are based there.

We can do better all the way along the funding journey for regional founders.

We'll looking at four clearly 'underfunded' groups:

...as well as devising some new policy answers to ensure that only blocker to starting and growing a tech business in the UK is whether you have the vision and drive to build the next great British company.

There are so many amazing community organisations who are laser-focused on these problems, and we hope to work in concert to shine a further policy light on the issues (and solutions many groups have already provided)...