In the new series of One to One, in which some of our most respected broadcasters follow their personal passions by talking to the people whose stories interest them most, Fi Glover meets some of the men and women who've founded new tech companies that are putting Silicon Roundabout in East London on the map.
Living locally, Fi's been fascinated by the way this area of Hackney has rapidly become the third most important technical start up centre in the world.- after Silicon Valley and New York. As a magnet to some of the most enterprising and innovative internet companies, Old Street Roundabout has been renamed Silicon Roundabout.
This generation of entrepreneurs are bringing back some old British business values: they're inventive, risk taking and barrier breaking. In the first programme she meets a veteran of Silicon Valley, Dan Crow . Now the chief technology officer at Songkick, he's had the expected triumphs and disasters in internet start-ups but feels this quiet revolution, that's happening now in Hackney, may have a real impact in changing the economic fortunes of Britain.
He explains to Fi why this should make us cheerful: a survey from the Boston Consulting Group recently put the UK as the leader of the G20 nations in our internet economy - so we are top at something after all .
Producer: Lucy Lunt.