

The European startup ecosystem arrived - lfittl
http://eu.techcrunch.com/2011/01/27/the-european-startup-ecosystem-arrived-but-paul-carr-wasnt-paying-attention/

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ladon86
The first comment is correct - this is the UK scene more than the european
scene.

My real problem with the UK scene is the relative lack of talent available to
startups. Where do talented graduates from the UK want to work? Banks,
consultancies and accountancies. How much do they want to be paid? About £40k
starting, please.

With the cost of living being so high in London, why wouldn't they?

Unless you can raise enough money to pay these people, your chances are far
more limited. And London VCs are still far more risk-averse than SV VCs. To my
mind that makes entrepreneurship in London a rich (and older) man's game
compared with SV.

Of course there are counter-examples, but I think they've succeeded despite
London. I'm sure this situation will improve (it has already been doing so),
but in the meantime I plan to move to SV. I just think it will improve my
odds.

~~~
zeemonkee
I do get a fair amount of job offers from startups in London, but they are
very inflexible about remote working (I'm in Scotland). Want me to move to
London ? Sure, double whatever salary you're offering and I might consider it.
Otherwise it would be a big drop in my standard of living - nice big apartment
up here for cardboard box down there.

There is a lot of good talent in the UK, the problem is we have a massively
over-centralized economy, which is bad for London (way too expensive to live
for average workers, and infrastructure straining under excess population) and
bad for the rest of the UK (no jobs). Contrast with Germany, which has a more
distributed (and far healthier) economy - Berlin, Munich, Hamburg etc.

Remote working would help redress the imbalance but some startups for good and
bad reasons are reluctant. And no, I could care less about twin monitors or
aeron chairs.

~~~
narag
I've been planning to move from Spain to London for some months. You're
scaring me. Is £40.000 not enough for a decent flat and once a month flight
back home?

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barrkel
Assume about 1000 GBP/month if you want somewhere half-decent to live. If you
want accommodation to be 30% of your before-tax salary, then you need to make
40K per year.

If you're willing to compromise - live in a room in a shared house, almost
like a student, or somewhere dodgy (e.g. tower block with lifts that smell
like piss) or with poor transport links, you'll be able to reduce that by 50%
or more.

Between myself and my GF, we make about 90K GBP, and we're fairly comfortable.
But we live in Bow in the East End, don't have kids, and barely feel middle
class.

~~~
ig1
You say that as if living in a shared house was some sort of social stigma.

Most single young (under say 35) professionals in London share flats, and I'm
including lawyers, investment bankers, doctors, etc.

One reason is that price drops disproportionately with the number of rooms,
for example for a 1-bed flat you might pay £200/week but for a similar 2-bed
you'd pay only £240/week. You could pay 1000/month for a "half-decent" 1-bed
flat, or alternatively you could share a great 2-bed flat for the same price.
And many people chose to make the second decision. Also it makes much more
sense in terms of buying household products and makes "luxuries" such as
hiring a cleaner much more affordable.

If you really want to live on your own it makes more sense to live in one of
london commuter belt suburbs where you can get a flat for 600/month.

~~~
barrkel
Living in a shared house (assuming no relationship with co-sharers) is a
massive PITA, especially if you're as misanthropic as me. Sharing bathrooms,
kitchen cleaning protocols, awkwardness / potential conflicts having guests
stay over, ugh; it sucks. It's like living at home with your parents; better
in some ways, worse in others, but a huge step below having one's own place.

But if you have a significant other, then I agree, sharing is a whole heap
better.

We live in a 3-bedroom, two-story house with a back garden that runs down to
the canal, and a view directly onto Victoria Park past the canal. It's about
25 minutes from almost anywhere in central London by scooter (to my mind, the
best way to get around London). The house runs to only slightly more than
1000/month.

~~~
JonnieCache
It massively depends on who you're living with. There is a big difference
between living with a bunch of people you just met on gumtree and living with
your closest friends you've known for years.

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jacquesm
In my opinion one thing that is very different from the US compared to Europe
is that labour laws here are pretty favorable to employees. This has the
downside (from a start-ups perspective) of having a workforce that is mostly
happy.

Happy people are in a strong position to negotiate and will also not easily go
and leave their happy well paying jobs in order to be 'repeatedly punched in
the face' (that's not mine).

So besides the obvious advantages that an ecosystem like Silicon Valley offers
you can bet that if you see a European start-up that the people behind it are
extremely well motivated and probably have some funding. As opposed to the
'throw stuff against the wall and see what sticks' strategy employed in
Silicon Valley. Typically European start-ups have a higher rate of success
than their American counterparts but the magnitude of the individual successes
is lower.

This is all from my limited perspective so apply salt liberally.

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yalforreca
Go to Portugal. Great weather with amazing beaches and country side, low cost
of living and lot's of engineers that can speak fluent English. Also the
government has subsidies for tech companies, specially in the IT sector. Spain
is ok as well, but I find that people there have a hard time with English and
like to party a bit too much. And the comments about London are true. It is
very expensive to live here and the quality of life is appalling. Many people
who start out in sexy industries ( games, web, etc... ) gravitate to finance
because they can't afford to live an adult life here on the wages of those
industries.

~~~
fun2have
Come and join us. Read our post about opening our R&D office in Portugal.
<http://blog.webnographer.com/2010/10/an-rd-office-in-lisbon/>

Portugal salaries maybe lower but if you have not lived in Portugal for 10
years you can apply for non-habitual status which means you pay a flat rate of
tax of just 20%!

Also you have the sun!

~~~
yalforreca
I left Lisbon around 7 years ago and moved to Barcelona for games programming
gig. Moved to London 3 years ago and life has become less flexible so moving
back to Lisbon is just a wish for now. But I do think about it a lot. The
quality of life is just great. Miss the Ocean. I know some great people there
if you need some references.

~~~
fun2have
As you have lived out of Portugal for more than 5 years you would probably
qualify for the non habitual tax status, which means you would only pay 20%
income tax if you moved back here. You would definitely get a standard of
living boost.

[http://www.allbusiness.com/legal/tax-law-tax-treaties-
agreem...](http://www.allbusiness.com/legal/tax-law-tax-treaties-
agreements/13340855-1.html)

The more contacts I have the better so yes please get in touch.

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echubb
Here in Ireland we're constantly hearing about "the knowledge economy" but I
think it has yet to materialise. Ever since Intel set up shop here we've
managed to attract the biggest movers in technology to set up their European
HQ.

So much so in fact that the bigger European countries constantly bitch about
us, citing our 12.5% corporation tax rate to mask their own failure in
attracting these investments. The real reason probably has to do with the fact
our spoken English is the best in the world and years of "free" fees for
college places have resulted in a hugely educated population.

Producing indigenous firms which don't serve niche markets is still beyond us.
This is probably due to a conservative funding community with the "spend way
more than you need, we'll refund it after" model, as well as university
students majoring in "safe" subjects like arts, languages or business rather
than mathematics and computer science.

Even for those students majoring in compsci, they gear you towards getting a
job, not starting your own company.

~~~
nfg
> Producing indigenous firms which don't serve niche markets is still beyond
> us.

I'm not sure about that, I've been in Havok (<http://www.havok.com/>) for
several years now, very successful Irish startup in the Games/Entertainment
space (hardly a niche), acquired by Intel three years ago ($100m+). Granted
there's room to improve in terms of the number of indigenous startups, but
there are success stories out there.

~~~
dkersten
In my opinion, Havok is an outlier success story though. Sure, there are a few
other Irish startups that achieved phenomenal global success, but they are
relatively few and far between when compared to the more startup-focused
places like SV.

~~~
nfg
True, I was mostly responding to the notion that:

> Producing indigenous firms which don't serve niche markets is still beyond
> us

It certainly isn't "beyond us", but as you say it's not happening as much as
one would hope.

~~~
dkersten
Ah, I agree. Perhaps I misunderstood what you meant the first time around.

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notahacker
The article highlight for me was "Silicon Valley has been around a lot longer
than London and is more mature".

Possibly our very European sense of perspective is what's holding us back...

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StudyAnimal
People earn far too much in Germany to be attracted by startup salaries.
Still, once I finish my part-time masters, and my wife goes back to work too,
I wouldn't mind getting into the scene. Got a few ideas, but would probably
rather be a technical co-founder alongside an ideas/business guy.

Still, if anything is happening in Cologne in the mean time, give us a holler.

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thisisfmu
He obviously has a vested interest in lauding his backers. If the European
ecosystem is actually so great then why did it take the author three years to
raise $1.3m?

~~~
ig1
I believe GroupSpaces raised an angel round in 2008 and only started looking
for the VC round in 2010.

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thisisfmu
seedcamp invests about $80k, which is nowhere near enough to fund a London-
based startup with 3+ people for more than two years. although the official
story may very well be that they "only started looking" in 2010 this does not
match up with this simple fact very well.

Occam's Razor therefore suggests to me that it actually took forever to raise
a round (despite nominally ideal conditions, such as a well-connected founder
with a CS degree from Oxford, trip to SV, liked by startup media, simple to
understand product, etc).

~~~
ig1
GroupSpaces wasn't funded by Seedcamp, are you thinking about another company
?

