Old Street is no longer an experiment. It is the place where London tech companies go when they are serious about scaling.
If you are weighing up a move in 2025, the question is not whether the area has peaked. It is whether you can afford to ignore where the strongest tech demand is actually landing.
How has Old Street moved from hype to proven demand?
Fifteen years on from the first “Silicon Roundabout” headlines, the numbers show real staying power. The Evening Standard business team reports that the area around Old Street has seen a significant rise in office demand since 2009. In fact, the area has gained around five times more demand than it has lost over that period. Across wider London, the rate is roughly half that.
That resilience is now priced in. Oktra’s 2025 London office cost report puts Grade A Shoreditch and Old Street space at about £75 to £82.50 per square foot.
That keeps it well below West End levels, which sit between £120 and £160 per square foot. It still sits clearly above emerging zones like Canary Wharf, where rates are closer to £50 to £60.
What is the data telling office hunters?
Recent leasing numbers show where demand is concentrating and what today’s office hunters prioritise. The data points to growing interest in creative districts, stronger appetite for high-quality space, and a noticeable shift toward refurbished stock.
Here’s what stands out in the latest Q2 2025 figures:
- Tech, media, and telecoms occupiers drove about 14% of all London leasing in Q2 2025 according to Oktra.
- Those tech deals focused on creative hubs such as Shoreditch, Southbank, and Farringdon.
- More than 70% of London take up in Q2 2025 was in new or comprehensively refurbished buildings, linking to a clear “flight to quality.”
- Most new supply in central London is arriving through retrofit schemes. This trend fits well with Old Street’s mix of character buildings and modern upgrades.
Put simply, this is no longer a speculative cluster. It is a mature tech ecosystem where demand is concentrated in high-quality space that helps companies attract people back into the office.
This leads to the next decision for founders and hiring managers: How can a premium Old Street address help you solve the startup talent equation?
How does a premium Old Street address solve the talent puzzle?
Wharton professor John D. Kim and his co-authors show that early non-founder hires influence a startup’s performance for at least a decade. Their research also finds that losing these early team members has a long-term negative impact on both revenue and headcount.
That makes every early hiring decision a long-term bet. Old Street helps tilt that bet in your favour.
A high-quality space near the roundabout puts your team in the center of a dense tech network of meetups, partners, and future hires. It also offers a relaxed, creative feel that many engineers and product teams prefer over more corporate districts.
This concentration also speeds up hiring. A recognisable Old Street address can widen your candidate pool from day one. It also reduces drop-off between the first interview and a signed offer. It lowers the chances of losing candidates to roles that promise a better office experience.
While paying top market rates in the area sounds high, it is often cheaper than matching corporate pay elsewhere, especially once you factor in faster hiring and better retention. In other words, the location premium behaves much more like talent acquisition return on investment than a simple real estate cost.
The next step is working out what quality and size of space actually fits your growth stage, which is where flexible, well-specified buildings start to matter more than sheer square footage.
How should you match Old Street space quality to your growth stage?
With around 60% of UK startups closing within three years, locking into a long, rigid lease in Old Street is a big bet. That is why flexible workspace operators now take much of the local space.
You can scale up or down as headcount and funding change while still giving your team a credible, central base.
As hybrid working beds in, the office is less about rows of desks and more about days together. Scaling teams now want project rooms, informal collaboration areas, strong video meeting setups, and a few quiet corners for deep work.
Wellness features like natural light, plants, and decent air quality are no longer nice-to-have in a market where candidates compare experiences.
When should you prioritise quality over size?
As teams rethink how often they meet in person, many businesses are choosing better-quality space instead of simply taking the largest floor plate they can afford. The right building can support hiring, culture, and client perception in ways that extra square footage often can’t.
Situations like these make quality the smarter trade-off:
- Your team is mostly hybrid so you only need peak capacity on anchor days.
- You are hiring senior or specialist talent who care about building quality and amenities.
- Clients and partners visit the office regularly and first impressions matter.
- You plan to grow into nearby space rather than hold empty desks for years.
New energy rules will also reshape the area by 2030. Many older buildings need significant upgrades to hit modern efficiency standards, so refurbished offices with better insulation, modern services, and strong digital connectivity are likely to hold value and attract talent.
Making these choices early sets you up to treat your Old Street office as a growth asset not just a place to sit.
How ADAPT turns an Old Street address into a growth asset
Old Street is now the grown-up choice for tech. But, the hard part is working out what you really need and which buildings will actually help you hire and keep great people.
That’s where ADAPT steps in: as a free partner that helps you cut through the noise and turn “we want Old Street” into a smart, stage-appropriate office move.
Instead of pushing one provider or a long lease, ADAPT starts with your hiring plans, funding runway, and hybrid pattern. We then build a curated shortlist of Old Street and nearby options. These can range from high-spec flexible spaces to character-filled retrofits, all balanced for address, quality, and room to grow.
You see only spaces that make sense for your team, not endless generic listings.
ADAPT also helps you avoid expensive mistakes. These include over-committing on size, under-investing in quality, or choosing a building that may fall short of upcoming energy and workspace standards.
We compare total costs against the likely hiring and retention benefits. We also arrange viewings, sense-check layouts — including meeting rooms, focus areas, and collaboration zones — and support negotiations. All of this is provided as a free service to you.
After 20+ years in the market, we’ve seen fast-growth teams from 2 to 100+ people use the right Old Street office to speed up hiring, reduce fall-through on offers, and build a workplace people actually want to come into. That’s the bar we hold your options to.
Paying a premium for Old Street only makes sense if it moves the needle on talent. Our job at ADAPT is to take that big, messy market and guide founders to spaces that work from day one and still make sense when the team doubles.
Chris Meredith, ADAPT CEO & Founder
What can you do to get ahead of the Old Street talent race?
If you’re planning a 2025 move, ramping up hiring, or stuck in a lease that no longer fits how your team works, now is the time to look again at Old Street.
The right flexible space doesn’t just look impressive on a job ad – it makes interviews smoother, office days better, and headcount planning less stressful.
ADAPT can help you find a smarter, more flexible Old Street (or nearby) office that fits your size, budget, and culture today, with clear options to grow tomorrow. It’s a completely free service for occupiers, from first conversation to move-in. That’s the ADAPT difference.
Explore your next workspace with ADAPT.
