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EDITION 19, 2020 DEMYSTIFYING TECH GAMES LEGEND ON CREATING TECH LEGACY FOR UK Fashion tech ZapGo investigation Virtual events 1 2 EDITOR’s intrODUCTION Getting creative ’ve interviewed many impressive The story behind the failure of battery cell technology entrepreneurs over the years, but firm ZapGo reads more like a Hollywood blockbuster Ifew can match the CV of Games than a business collapse. Executive editor Chris Workshop founder Ian Livingstone Maguire goes behind the scenes for a special CBE. investigation (p41). I grew up reading his Fighting In her first Insights column for BusinessCloud, FinTech Fantasy books. The first example of leader Valerie Moran – the first black female to make branching narrative literature, they the Sunday Times Rich List – discusses the importance allowed you to choose your own path of constantly looking to your next project (p29). through an adventure via multiple choice and sold more than 20 million As Starling Bank tops the second annual 100 FinTech copies. Disrupters ranking (p9), we take a look at how digital banks – the poster-children of the UK’s FinTech scene As Ian recounts (p4), they also provoked the ire of the – hope to eventually turn a profit (p21) in our interview Evangelical Alliance – and allegedly caused a child to with founder Anne Boden MBE. levitate! We also have reports on payments tech (p64) and virtual The concept of giving children agency in the learning events (p60), while our Tech Counsel advice feature process did not desert him throughout a stellar career (p74) highlights the tech crucial for working from home. in video games and ultimately saw him launch the computing curriculum in UK schools. Concerned that In our ‘On the money’ guest column (p69), Skymind creativity and independent thinking is being stripped Global Ventures’ Adam Gibson ponders the pros out of the education system, he is now opening a and cons of UK chip-maker ARM’s potential $40bn specialist academy using games as a contextual hub for acquisition by Nvidia. learning. London’s first chief digital officer Theo Blackwell This edition of BusinessCloud is packed with MBE talks through the challenge of embedding smart fascinating businesses from the creative tech scene. technology into a 2,000-year-old city (p56); London Tech The ventures of Grammy-winning musician Imogen 50 winner HoloMe is beaming holographic catwalk Heap (p24) come into focus, while start-up Andrson is models and musicians into people’s homes (p52); harnessing machine learning to categorise unsigned and coding school Cypher (p71) has moved from the artists’ songs against existing hit records (p30). classroom to Zoom. On the audio side of things, Adelicious (p48) is looking Finally, our first Under Review column takes cycling to build the UK’s premier podcasting advertising safety app Busby for a spin (p59) while Gadget Gavin marketplace while Dap Dip founder Guy Kilty reveals (p76) says the trends accelerated by COVID-19 are here the hardware and software you need to record a quality to stay. podcast at home in our new ‘Tech Checklist’ feature (p33). Enjoy the magazine. High-end fashion is an industry slow to embrace Jonathan Symcox technology despite the clear potential for improving Editor, BusinessCloud supply chain, sales and sustainability. However our report (p36) highlights an industry now trying businesscloud.co.uk technology on for size. @jonsymcox @jonathansymcox CONTACT US Editor Jonathan Symcox: 07826 517 423; [email protected] Executive editor Chris Maguire: 07826 517 409; [email protected] Multimedia journalist Alistair Hardaker: [email protected] Advertising & sponsorship: [email protected] Designer: Richard Salisbury | Writer: Jenny Brookfield Subscriptions: businesscloud.co.uk/subscribe Address: BusinessCloud, Archway 3, Birley Fields, Manchester M15 5QJ 3 CONTENTS Q3 2020 04 FEAT U R ES INTERVIEWS 09 100 FinTech Disrupters 04 Ian Livingstone CBE UK’s leading InsurTech, compliance and Games industry legend on importance financial technology disrupters revealed of games in education 41 ZapGo investigated 21 Starling Bank Collapse of battery cell tech firm reads Anne Boden MBE on quest to turn a profit like a Hollywood script 24 Creative Passport 51 Tech 50 Tech ventures of Grammy-winning Regional innovation rankings for music disrupter Imogen Heap London and the Midlands 30 Andrson 64 The Explainer AI making sound decisions in Payments tech demystified in music industry six questions 48 74 Adelicious Tech Counsel How podcast sector is turning to tech Platforms and advice for WFH to grow advertising revenues 52 HoloMe Meet firm beaming holograms into people’s homes 4 71 41 36 60 52 56 Theo Blackwell MBE INSIGHT London chief digital officer on creating a 2,000-year-old smart city 29 Valerie Moran Why you should never rest on your laurels 71 Cypher in business Coding school moving from the classroom to Zoom 33 Tech Checklist: Guy Kilty What do you need to record a successful podcast at home? REPORTS 59 Under Review: Busby We take cycling safety app for a spin 36 Fashion tech Meet entrepreneurs improving supply 69 On the Money: Adam Gibson Will ARM-Nvidia deal create new chain, sustainability and profitability ‘King of chips’? 60 Virtual events 76 Future of business events, education, Gadget Gavin training and entertainment COVID-19 changes are here to stay 5 INTERVIEW Ian Livingstone CBE has blazed A trail in the UK games industrY for more than 40 Years. AS digital industries become increasinglY crucial to the nation’S prosperitY, he saYS it’S time we stopped stripping creativitY OUT of the National Curriculum Words: Jonathan Symcox 6 INTERVIEW “I like the social interaction of games and to learn through solving problems,” crucial skill he explains. “After we Ain the workplace is that of launched the Workshop, problem-solving: the ability to we used to run ‘games days’. A book editor analyse an obstacle and figure at Penguin, Geraldine out how to bypass it. Cook, was amazed to see thousands of people Many of us acquire this ability through playing D&D and asked years of experience. So why is it not if we would write a book taught as a fundamental part of our about the hobby. education? “Rather than doing that, It is a question Ian Livingstone we wrote ‘The Warlock CBE has pondered for many of Firetop Mountain’: a years. “Learning should be about book to give people that empowering kids, not turning them same feeling of playing into passive receptors able to the game. It was the very regurgitate stuff that you’ve told first branching narrative them. It doesn’t work: they’ll forget book, with a game system that stuff,” he tells BusinessCloud. attached, and it didn’t sell “When you’re next flying across very well at first. Then we the Pond, think about how the pilot appeared on Radio One, learned to fly. Would you prefer that reading out the options they learn by reading a book, or using and encouraging children simulation software? Do you want to phone in with their them asking ‘Now what was that I read choices - and suddenly it on page 23 again?’ went absolutely ballistic “But teachers were beginning to and sold out everywhere! “Using simulation software - understand the value of these books - effectively a game without the scoring “Because they were interactive, they they enabled critical thinking because - is a way of using our hands to get were empowering: they gave children children were trying to find the an engagement, which is critical in agency. The multiple-choice system optimum way through the book. They learning. And that seems to have allowed them to play in many, many increased literacy, they found later, by been forgotten about in traditional ways, and fail - but they would then nearly 20%, because children really education.” want to start again.” wanted to understand what each word meant, because it had a significance.” As co-founder of Games Workshop He adds with a smile: “At first, they in 1975, Livingstone launched the were criticised because they were infamous Dungeons & Dragons and called Fighting Fantasy ‘gamebooks’: Warhammer board games in the UK. the word game always sends people GODFATHER OF Also the author of 15 Fighting Fantasy into an apoplectic frenzy because LARA CROFT gamebooks – which sold around 20 they think children are doing frivolous million copies worldwide – he has things rather than using their time Livingstone then got in on the ground seen the value of ‘learning through constructively. floor of the UK’s video game industry, discovery’ first-hand. which witnessed a meteoric rise in the “There was an eight-page warning 1980s. He would serve as executive guide put out by the Evangelical chairman of legendary developer Alliance which said that interacting Eidos from 1995-2002, launching with demons in the books was bound TAKING CONTROL the 75 million-selling Tomb Raider to see children become possessed by franchise. These ‘choose your own adventure’ the devil! And a worried housewife in books, which I devoured myself as a deepest suburbia phoned a local radio “Through the whole period I’ve been youngster, gave the reader the chance station to say that, having read one of in video games, there’s always been to choose their own destiny at every my books, her child levitated. The kids the sense that games are in some way turn – which often led to their doom. were thinking, ‘for £1.50, I can fly?’ trivial at best and probably harmful for 7 parameters until you have a successful theme park. “Anyone can become successful over time. There’s no sense of feeling ‘I’m a failure’; whereas an exam is an arbitrary moment in time where, if you don’t answer a question right, you’re less able than others.

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