Incubating Success: in conversation with Steven Drost
Past event: Monday 29th January 2024
Catch up with Steven Drost and Matt Farrugia discussing reflections on Steven’s recent visit to China, kindly hosted by the University of Edinburgh Business School.
Steven was invited to speak in Lingang and visit Shanghai at the World Top-performing Incubator Forum 2023, as well as discussing progress on building the ecosystem in the UK.
While his head was still fizzing with reflections and lessons learned we wanted to provide an opportunity to hear his thoughts first hand.
Some of Steven’s initial observations:
Ecosystem building is a massive global concern; it’s the way most economic development will happen
Everyone he met locally was open, kind, keen to collaborate
He had to rethink / relearn what “build it, and they will come” means
In China lots of creative deeptech thinking and doing going on and my goodness, are things turned around quickly
WeChat is pretty awesome (hot take of 2023, I know..)
With Steven working at the heart of Codebase there is no-one better to find out what is happening at the UK’s largest tech incubator and if we are making progress on the recommendations from the 2021 Logan review.
Steven was reunited with Matt Farugia for the conversation - recreating the successful Startupification podcast.
For anyone interested in economic growth, startups, investments and global development in the tech world - this event is a must!
About Steven Drost
Steven is a two time entrepreneur, once successful, once failed. He has extensive experience of hiring, building revenues, selling companies, fund raising, and more. He has the scars and war stories to prove it.
He is currently the Chief Strategy Officer at CodeBase and sees many startups per year. He loves to help business grow and network founders with peers, customers and investors. He is a former Trustee of the David Hume Institute and current Trustee of the Edinburgh Futures Institute.
About Matt Farrugia
Matt is a 3-time founder with both technology and commercial experience in early stage tech startups.
He is mentor and fractional advisor for a number of Scottish and international startups at the preseed and seed stages - as well as an experienced podcaster.
