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One major investor says businesses need to look beyond success and embrace the city’s inequality. Lucy Tobin gets the lowdown

- Lucy Tobin

“LONDON,” declares Saul Klein, one of Europe’s most successful investors and entrepreneurs who has backed firms including Wise, Nanopore and Zoopla, “is still one of the top three places in the world to access the capital, customers, and talent to innovate.” Among headlines of tech apocalypse and political gloom, Klein shrugs off talk of the capital’s demise.

“We have the infrastructure and we’re a place where founders can get advice, funding, and support.” But entrepreneurs, Klein asserts, must look beyond the success of their own businesses.

“We need to acknowledge and address the inequality in our city. In the area around our own office [Klein’s Phoenix Court Group is based in Somers Town, next to Euston and St Pancras, an area he has dubbed the new Palo Alto] is one of the most valuable square miles in the world from the perspective of the depth of knowledge, AI, genomics, creativity, plus capital and innovation — but it also contains one of the poorest neighbourhoods in London.”