The Evening Standard placed another feather in the London startup tech industry’s increasingly decorative cap yesterday when it named Tech City CEO Eric van der Kleij among the 20 leading new influences in London.

Tech City is the support organisation set up to support the ever expanding technology hub in the heart of the capital’s East End which goes by teh same name. As a government-backed project, the area of Tech City is an attempt to mirror the success of Silicon Valley, a technological centre for excellence in California.

The area, which incorporates Old Street, Shoreditch, Liverpool Street and the Olympic site in Stratford, is home to over 500 tech companies, ranging from two-man startups to blue chip enterprises. Tech City is flourishing – as The Cloud Circle saw firsthand when it attended the bustling Silicon Milkroundabout job fair for startups on 31 October – and the man pulling the strings behind the scenes is, evidently, starting to get recognition for it.

Eric van der Kleij is, as the Evening Standard refers to him, “a serial entrepreneur with a record of building technology businesses.” He has now been entrusted with turning East London into the digital capital of Europe and all signs suggest that the work he and his team are doing at the Tech City Investment Organisation (TCIO) is working.

It has been a little over a year since David Cameron announced his intention to launch the Tech City initiative and in the intervening 12 months the project has gone from strength to strength. The area is acting as a hotbed for technological activity, it is the must be place for all innovative startups as well as becoming an increasingly attractive prospect for household names like Vodafone, Google and Facebook who, all now have bases within Tech City.

Supported by names such as Queen-to-be Pippa Middelton, Chelsea manager Andre Villas-Boas, TV chef Lorraine Pascale and singer Jessie J, van der Kleij is in illustrious company. And with Tech City’s growth showing no sign of slowing down, there is a good chance that its CEO will become more influential by the time the Evening Standard releases its list for 2012.

Are you a tech startup in London? Get in touch and tell us what you do. Email dom.pollard@thecloudcircle.com.

Click here for an interview with Dan crow, CTO of Songkick – one of the first young companies to set up shop in Tech City.