

Startup climate in Oxford/Cambridge? - vieso

Hey guys/girls,<p>I was wondering if any of you knew what Oxford and Cambridge (or anywhere else in the UK I guess) are like for startups? I graduated from Oxford about a year ago and have since moved away. I remember there being a supposedly decent society for entrepreneurs at the time but other than that I don't really know anything about the climate there for new companies.<p>Does anyone have experience looking for seed funding in either Oxford or Cambridge? I say those two as the company I'm interested in starting is in the area of software verification and both of those cities are pretty good hubs for academic research in that area and so seemed like perhaps good places to locate. I will probably self-fund (with a friend) for about a year but eventually some sort of seed funding will probably be necessary as I'd rather not invest too much time in consulting or other side tasks.<p>Cheers
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hackerblues
Cambridge apparently has quite a good culture. There are a couple of groups
which run events/weekly lectures/brainstorming things:

<http://cue.org.uk/> <http://www.cutec.org/>

In particular, Silicon Valley comes to Cambridge is being held in a month and
should be quite large:

<http://www.svc2c.com/>

I went to the cutec recruitment event and according to some metric the area is
ranked third best in the world.

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chrisaycock
Said Business School runs a number of events:

<http://www.oxfordentrepreneurs.co.uk/>

They host the Idea Idol campaign as well; give that a look if you're
interested.

Also try to get ahold of cperciva on here. He's another Oxonian who started
his own company, albeit back in Canada. He might be able to give some
perspective.

