Like many of east London's digital firms, Dodsworth shares a large open-plan office with about a dozen other small internet companies, including SoundCloud and MobileRoadie. Perhaps if we were just around the corner in Silicon Valley they'd have just snapped up the team, moved them in and that's it." " if a company is looking at acquiring smaller companies, they don't just have to look at the US. "We weren't bought for £2.50 – we have shown that it's not just a little acquisition and I think that's quite meaningful," Dodsworth says, the confetti still fresh around his desk from Wednesday's announcement. While the Old Street landmark does not host offices for Apple or Yahoo – and its gritty urban surrounds compare unfavourably with the rolling Californian landscape – Silicon Valley tech titans are increasingly looking to Shoreditch for their next acquisition. The term Silicon Roundabout was – in typically British self-deprecating style – coined two years ago as a riposte to accusations that London could never foster an environment to rival San Francisco. We are now Twitter, and we happen to be in London – it's significant that Twitter understands the benefit of having something outside of San Francisco." It's quite a big deal that we were even bought in the first place. "It feels like there's something meaningful there.
"It feels like a really big win for London," says Dodsworth. The big-money deal is the clearest sign yet that the firms clustered in the area are capable of attracting talent that could match those of California's Silicon Valley, the heartland of technology firms such as Facebook and Google.
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