Amsterdam 4th Best Tech City in the World?

Amsterdam the 4th best tech city in the world? Real-estate agency Savills thinks so. According to Savills Tech Cities index which measures 30 cities from around the world against 100 individual metrics, ranging from the volume of inward venture capital investment through to the cost of a flat white coffee, why, you ask? To try and establish which cities are the most “successful homes” for tech and start-up companies.

Their data isn’t all coffee prices. A lot of their data measures a city’s liquidity when doing business at home and abroad, the number of venture capitalists licking their lips at the sight of a particular city. How a real-estate agency use a few hundred “metrics” to define an entire city’s implementation of technological advancements? Tech, in this case, meaning, young, talented and attractive to international businesspersons. Amsterdam has a rep for having a great quality of living.

Chinese Tech Cities have ranked higher than last year and now account for a higher share of VC investment than their US counterparts. Beijing recorded an average of $34 billion of VC p.a. in the last three years. That’s 89.589.150.000,00 euros in just three years.

So let’s just hash out the numbers and get to the meat of Savills’ “tech cities index”.

Using the cost of renting a co-working space as a measure of how innovative a city is, seems a bit crude. Other real-estate pricing, sure, but for instance, people might rent the space because they don’t have a printer, something small. According to Savills, “the expansion of coworking space has gone hand in hand with the growth of the global tech sector”. Variables like a city’s “wellness”, “youthfulness” and “higher education” “immigration and talent attractiveness” – a whole lot of jargon like this merits Amsterdam’s tech sector as very attractive to global investment. The venture capitalist’s aphrodisiacs when looking at prospective cities even includes “city-buzz” so a lot of this is preferential.

“The average coworking-cost for a desk in a private office is $590, and is highest in San Francisco at $1,050”. Measuring a city’s progressiveness on what they charge for a co-working space seems crude, the less they charge the more collaboration and idea sharing they supposedly encourage.

According to Savills’ index, co-working space in New York is meagerly priced and thus a yardstick of the city’s talent pool, eagerness to collaborate and furthermore attractiveness to investors. One site asks $150 a month for a co-working studio space in Brooklyn. A few years ago Dutch Review compiled a list of Amsterdam’s best co-working spaces if you’ve ever feeling studious or creative.

If Savills is to be believed, New York is the biggest tech city, followed by San Fransisco, London and then Amsterdam. It’s not so hard to believe with Amsterdam growing so much, new buildings springing up businesses moving from the UK to the Netherlands.

To view the world’s most tech-savvy cities according to Savills index, click here.

What are your thoughts on big Tech cities? Is Amsterdam there yet? Leave a comment below!