

Young Brits in Silicon Valley - kul
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/nov/14/ready-steady-startup-silicon-valley

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jackgavigan
IMO, the key difference between London and Silicon Valley is the "Pay it
Forward" attitude prevalent in the Bay Area - people are prepared to help you
out without any expectation that they'll receive anything in return. In
London, there's more of a "What's in it for me?" attitude.

One of the reasons I started organising the LDN2SFO trips was to expose more
Brit entrepreneurs to the collaborative culture in the Bay Area in the hope
that they would bring it back to London.

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irremediable
The London startup scene is interesting. I think it's fair to say startups
here are usually less ambitious than in SF or the US in general. But they also
tend to be more practical -- there's less pie-in-the-sky thinking.

I've seen firsthand a surprisingly large number of startups that make a profit
from day one. And a lot of startups that were funded from nonwealthy founders'
savings. My impression is that we do stuff on a smaller scale, but it tends to
be more reliable.

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eli_gottlieb
Funny. The only London startup I've heard of was _ridiculously_ ambitious, and
has largely been succeeding, since it came out of academic research. They did
manage to get bought by Google, at the very least.

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spacecowboy_lon
ever here of boo :-) for the younger hn readers that was a fashion startup
based in London that crashed and burned hard back in the 2000's

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softdev12
there's a book by the founder of boo.com that tells the whole story. well
worth a read.

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spacecowboy_lon
mm must htry an dfind a copy I remember seeing the boo crew preenting at a
first tuesday and was shocked how poor they where.

I copuld have picked 3 first level managers from BT at rendom and woould have
done a better job

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georgespencer
Support network in London is great, because people want to see a huge success
story. But actually that's not what people need most (IMO). They need
mentorship and support from people who have done it before.

We were lucky to share our office with a YC company when we raised our Series
A. I must have bugged one of the founders every day for advice on terms and
which partners were cool. But now we're all just scaling like crazy and there
isn't that shift up the chain towards new mentors who have gone from e.g. £10m
p.a. to £100m p.a. revenue. Those people are rare overall, but concentrated in
the Valley.

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jeffwass
Did you start in London and move to SV? Where was your London office located
that you felt had a good support network?

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georgespencer
No we are happily still in London and UK only.

We were in Royal London House with GoCardless and Smarkets. They were (and
probably are still) about 1.5 yrs ahead of us in many ways. We also are lucky
to have an early investor who is on the board of Zopa.

Most founders I know who have progressed for a few years have at least one or
two founders under their wing informally.

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askinakhan
The UK will never be able to foster the same atmosphere as Silicon Valley.
We're a conservative bunch and always will be; it's almost embedded in our
culture. This isn't a problem because it means we're more prudent when it
comes to investing hence why we rarely get VC/Angel investment for startups
unless they have an already successful business model.

The best way to put it is: In the UK we mostly invest in 1 - n whereas in
Silicon Valley they also invest in 0 - 1. After all, it's the birthplace of
true capitalism.

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madaxe_again
This is true, and it's still most readily manifested in the way that
entrepreneurs are viewed and treated in this country - as crazy outcasts, who
are best avoided, as you might catch the horrendous disease of independent
thought.

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jarek
This really isn't the case in London in my experience

See: the hundreds of people who attended Silicon Milkroundabout yesterday

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spacecowboy_lon
Unfortuntly I think CP Snows two nations is still intact and its not the
technical/sceintific side that has the whip hand - in the UK techies are
regarded as greasy engineers not fit to press our nose against the window (to
quote tom jones) to look at the other professions.

~~~
madaxe_again
That's the one. Same thing as causes my parents (and myself) to tell people
that I'm unemployed, as it's easier to explain than "I run a successful
startup with multi-million pound net profit" \- as they then realise it's one
of these technology things, and that puts me on the same rung as, say, a
waste-water engineer. Actually, they're up a few rungs, as they deal with
"real" things. Techies are all viewed as "the IT guy", and are there to be
blamed for anything and everything, and to be belittled at every opportunity.
"You wouldn't know what it's like to run a business!", says the guy who runs a
pair of holiday lets, to the guy who employs 50 people and powers £1bn+ of
commerce p.a.

Being involved in the web in the UK is akin to having social leprosy - the
only other people who will accept you or even talk to you without peering down
their noses at you are other people with leprosy - sorry - other web
professionals.

This extends even to investors and VCs, as their view over here is that
entrepreneurs/technologists are a necessary evil that you have to deal with as
part of the process of making money by magic.

~~~
spacecowboy_lon
Quite I once took a call for my dad (who's an EE) from some one who wanted a
house rewiring I had to tell him oh he's working as a consultant for London
underground on the upgrade to the Tube's power systems.

Thers an story that the no2 at BT labs (the place that designed and built
colossus) was asked what sort of cars he worked on :-(

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bengale246
I keep getting the urge to hop on a plane to SV (from the UK) and see what
happens. Wish it was that easy.

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EliRivers
If you do, when they ask you what you're there for, just say tourist. Don't
say tourist going to SV to look at it. They'll assume you're there to work
illegally and it won't go well for you.

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yarper
I think what he's saying is that most brits don't have the opportunity to go
over there and work, the visas rules appear to be tightening up if anything.
That and most of us are unwilling to drop what we have on the off chance that
we'll get a visa to go work in SV. Especially now that we can legally work
anywhere in the EU without a visa..

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zeeshanm
OK - in NY - as an entrepreneur, my days are a lot unsexier than these guy.
Wake up, read HN, write code, talk to customers, write more code, read HN,
read programming books to learn, write more code. May be it's the Valley vibe
where being an entrepreneur is like cloud9.

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GolfyMcG
> from nobody to millionaire in weeks

This is what's wrong with media today...

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yc1010
Well its nice to see article like this as opposed to "Young Brits in Syria"

