Venture on the rates

Why a Lancashire hot spot is blazing a trail in economic activism

Hello Rainmakers,

We like to surprise you from time to time.

Today, a road trip to Lancaster for a little bit of a history lesson, but also a diversion into someone’s career choices.

If you want a glimpse of bustling startup ecosystem of the North West, then there are few places that have more energy and buzz than Fraser House in Lancaster, based at the front end of White Cross business park, on the site of one of the city’s former factory sites where they used to make linoleum.

While the knowledge economy has struggled to fill the gap that once thriving manufacturing industry occupied in our heartland towns and cities, the green shoots of economic revival will come in places like these.

Today’s story has some fascinating human elements to it. In particular how one young man has forged his own career between tech and venture finance.

But first, a little history lesson.

Lancashire has a unique place in Britain’s economic history as being the original home of muscular local government backed economic activism.