

“Early stage VC funding is a myth in the UK” - scottallison
http://scott-allison.net/2011/10/11/early-stage-vc-funding-is-a-myth-in-the-uk/

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bmahmood
Having lived in the UK for a year, I can completely attest to the sentiment.
The lack of seed funding appeared largely cultural to me: many of the angels I
interacted with were risk-averse and old-fashioned, looking at rubber-stamps
and degrees rather than actual merit. It seemed impossible to get funding as a
young entrepreneur (under 25), given the heavy emphasis on traditional
industry experience. From talking to other entrepreneurs, there was no
tolerance for failure as there is in the Valley, and an utter focus on IRR and
incremental businesses with short-term returns, rather than more risky bets
with longer time-horizons.

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dirtyaura
Anil is great, he's very smart, has a wide experience of M&A from clean tech
to web sector and on top of that is really fun guy to hang out with. Great to
have him investing in European startups.

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scottallison
Agree all round; it will be great once his fund is up and running. The key
thing about it is that they will be doing seed investing, and that's where the
greatest need is (and he would argue, the greatest returns). It sounds like
they intend to be quite innovative in terms of how they assess deals as well,
presumably the intention is to comb the whole of Europe for the best unfunded
startups.

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jlees
Fantastic news. There is a huge funding gap in the UK that people bridge with
grants, government money, and even loans. Early stage investment from someone
like Anil will really help.

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martinkallstrom
Anyone knows who has replaced Anil as M&A manager for Google EMEA?

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scottallison
Good question, but i don't think they have. Partly why Eric Schmidt was over
here in July doing an event for VCs and angels, the goal was to build closer
relationships

