A Chat With: Steve Rackley at Silicon Brighton

By Donna Fielder and Sarah Cronk

This month, Chalk Eastbourne caught up with Silicon Brighton. They are a similar organisation to us, just along the coast. Further ahead on their journey, we wanted to find out what triggered the launch of Silicon Brighton and how it’s going. We spoke to co-founder, Steve Rackley, to find out more.

Steve Rackley, Silicon Brighton

Chalk: What’s your background and where did Silicon Brighton all start?

Steve: “I came to Brighton for uni and decided I wanted to settle here. I discovered that the city wasn’t as strong industry-wise as other bigger cities, but it had a strong SME vibe.

“I fell into recruitment and was skilled at it. I worked for a couple of firms before starting my own company, James Chase, a few years ago.

“After seven or eight years, I realised there was a saturation point in how much I could grow the company here. I read an article about Brighton being the next big tech hub, with companies starting up here en-masse and London firms relocating. But I realised that hadn’t really happened.

“I began to learn why that was. A lack of investment, companies not working together and collaborating, and a strong freelance services sector. The Chamber and Wired Sussex are great for people who like networking. But a lot of business owners in digital companies aren’t motivated to do this.

“As a recruiter, I could see the lack of collaboration was affecting their businesses. Companies were doing similar projects and not learning lessons from one another. To grow the economy, all companies need to succeed.

“The growth of individual skillsets also needed to be better supported. People come out of uni with cutting-edge skills, so we should help them continue to grow these, implementing schemes similar to those offered in larger cities.”

“We did consider moving the recruitment business to another city. But we soon realised we would have to relocate our families too, and we wanted to stay put. So instead, we thought about what we could do to address the issues we’d identified. We were quite uniquely placed to bring people together, as we knew a lot of the companies and a lot of the tech people. So we went ‘all or nothing’ and started Silicon Brighton.”

How did you kick it all off?

“We created the Silicon Brighton brand. We started running large events, paying speakers, connecting businesses and pulling in favours. The speakers that came could take back the story of what we were doing to their own locations. Everyone we knew came and we had 100+ people attending from the start - and it snowballed from there.

“The large events helped to shape a connection between people. We’re now running groups with 80-90 CEOs to chat through what is going on in their businesses. We started to show existing meet-up groups what could be achieved - they were keen to know how we grew so quickly.

“We’re now running monthly events, but mostly providing logistical support to other tech meet up groups. We’ve just launched membership, where companies pay a fee to support our events. Everyone is still welcome to come to events and access content, even if they aren’t a member. We’ve used the funds to buy tech equipment too.”

Tell us more about the meet up groups!

“We generally help the meet up groups to find venues, and with messaging and branding. But we do more for some than others. We supported Brighton R to start up and we support their facilitation. We help them with numbers, speakers, branding and promotion. The shift to online over the pandemic helped us to source a greater range of speakers too.

“We’ve identified and filled gaps for specific tech areas, sales skills, marketing and gaming. A few more meet up groups are waiting to kick off once we’ve got leaders for them.”

What other projects does Silicon Brighton get involved in?

“We want to use our platform to support others, so we have done some community initiatives. We raised money for the NHS by asking people to pay a small amount for our online talks during lockdown.

"We started a project 18 months ago to keep the culture of Brighton the same after the pandemic. Volunteers from the tech community supported struggling independent stores. We helped 36 independents in the end, bringing together SME digital businesses.”

What has been your biggest lesson learned over the years?

“The only thing we could have been more aware of was the amount of work it takes! We’ve been running the company from 9-5 and then doing the rest for Silicon Brighton outside of work. But it’s been great to see more companies working together. I have learned so much from meeting different people. It’s great developing relationships with other community networks too.”

“Silicon Brighton really gave us this Halo effect. As James Chase, we do not recruit at these events. By keeping that separation, companies are happy to share events with their staff. Now we hire staff dedicated to Silicon Brighton.”

What advice would you give to those wanting to get into the tech industry?

“Meet others in the community, speak to others, receive support from other people down here. We have some wonderful, amazing people in the town. Find out your interests and go along to some groups to develop your skills - there are so many groups and opportunities to learn. If you find a spark in a particular area, then you can upskill. Be proactive and don’t expect things to happen for you - nothing’s a given in this life. The opportunities that will open up will be everywhere.”