

I'm calling a 'time of death' for London's Internet startup industry - daleharvey
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/jul/10/not-safe-for-work-internet-london

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axod
>> "maybe I've fallen so in love with my new home in San Francisco"

I think perhaps you're in the epicenter of a bubble now (SF). Unless it's a
$20million investment for a twitter based replyBot, it looks lame.

Meanwhile, plenty of people in the UK (And everywhere else) are building
profitable online businesses quietly, just as they have done for years.

One thing that has always seemed weird to me is how companies who announce
they've "won $Xm in funding" seem to be 'rated' higher than companies that are
making modest profits and growing fast. IMHO "winning" investment just means
you convinced someone to give you some money. Whereas a company that's
profitable and growing fast, you've proven your business model - far more
impressive than convincing a handful of people to give you some cash.

Much as I hate a lot of what 37signals have to say, when URL shorteners,
twitter crawlers, etc getting millions in funding, you have to ask yourself if
that's a good thing, impresive, or just the sign of a large bubble that will
burst pretty soon. Building a business on top of another unproven business -
is _anyone_ doing any sort of risk assessment here? Or even thinking about
business models? Or are they just hyping up the hype to the next level and
taking the easy investment money. There's a lot to be said for just being a
quietly profitable startup without all the hype+glitz+bs.

Just my 2p.

~~~
pxlpshr
IMO, so many entrepreneurs have made it that they are paying it forward and
reinvesting in the ecosystem. So while many of these companies may fail — like
many do regardless of geographic location, they'll produce talent that has
experience and a better understanding in the next cycle. I agree that there is
hype, thats the nature of the beast with popularity and seemingly
unavoidable... but it contributes to maintaining the ecosystem in SF.

Also, I've concluded most investors prefer investing in strong teams over
simply a new idea. Many of the 2.0 startups are stacked with guys from 1.0
era.

~~~
axod
The measurement is all off though. Who is doing well in 2.0? Twitter???
Seriously?

IMHO startups are being judged mainly on 'hype' and how much investment they
get rather than usual sane business metrics.

~~~
icey
I agree 100% - I have a hard time remembering when the metric for success was
profitability, at least as far as internet startups are concerned.

Google comes to mind, but only because such a huge deal was made of their IPO.
I think prior to that everyone considered them successful based on their
popularity alone (figuring that Google was barely breaking even before their
financials were released).

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danw
Perhaps the startups that are doing well arent going to the same self
congratulatory parties and meetups as Paul Carr types are.

Far too many of the popular London events are overwhelmed with social-media-
enterprise-consultants and as such those who do have snuck away into smaller
lesser known events and are doing their best not to invite the flotsam.

~~~
kierank
I agree with you in the sense that most people at the kind of events this guy
talks about are doing web-apps/social media of some sort.

He needs to go to some of the more tech-based events where people are
genuinely innovating.

~~~
digispaghetti
Totally agree, and it's a pity he only talks about London. Up here in
Edinburgh we have <http://www.techmeetup.co.uk/> held within the local Uni,
but all are invited and there are some clever folks there.

This meet used to be packed with techies and social media types, but recently
the latter have seemed to tailed off - a few are left but seem to have a few
genuinely good ideas.

I have noticed however the angel investor types aren't showing up as much but
certainly there also seems to be plenty innovation funding going around within
the Uni and organisations like NESTA, 4IP and EPIS.

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robk
Paul Carr just enjoys writing controversial headlines to stir up the pot. I
think his statements are just as valid for many Web 2.0 businesses frankly,
around the world, not just London. Things that aren't successful will
naturally die. There are no shortages of businesses here in the UK and across
Europe that are doing well and getting funded accordingly. Of course the
volume overall is lower than Silicon Valley but that doesn't mean thing here
are much different than elsewhere in the world.

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paulodeon
Of course all this has been discussed at great length by PG, not specifically
to London but generally SV vs anywhere else.

The fact is that London has most of the ingredients to be a successful startup
hub: capital, talent, location, and plenty of potential exit targets. What it
needs is some sort of catalyst.

AFAIK London has never claimed to be some sort of startup mecca though, so I
really don't know what his point is.

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praptak
Seriously, I almost gave up in the middle of the third paragraph and I regret
not having done it.

This guy goes on and on and on about parties he's been to, champagne, tiny
bits of cow on sticks and the state of his liver. Total waste of bandwidth.

~~~
alain94040
You must have missed the irony. Those parties and tiny bits of cow on sticks
is what he is making fun of. I have to say that I agree with his point. I
don't know the London scene, but I keep an eye on the Paris scene, and that
article might as well have been written for Paris. Same problem.

He makes one point in passing that is very telling: visiting big UK companies
is not going to matter for the startup scene. Europe has a tendency to have
large legacy companies, but not much of an entrepreneurial angle.

~~~
icey
It's how the London scene was when I was working out there in 2000-2001. If it
wasn't a problem then, it probably isn't a problem now. I got a definite sense
of "work hard and play hard... but first work hard" when I was there.

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swombat
I'm writing up an email to this guy (since he asks for it at the end)... Of
course, it all depends on your definition of dying. After all, we're all gonna
die some day, the question is, how late can you push it back? :-)

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vaksel
what always gets me, is why in this day and age we are still stuck on
localizing everything. In this day and age, you should be able to run
everything from a small village in spain from your iPhone.

Teleconferencing with investors and other CEOs, having programmers work
remotely, etc. Instead the culture is so localized that everyone is pretty
much expected to go to SV.

~~~
Goronmon
_having programmers work remotely_

From my fairly limited experience, not having the people you work with in the
same physical space is a huge annoyance.

~~~
hwijaya
I second this. It makes the team much harder in coming up with innovative
solution. Instead of taking 3 days, it might takes 2 weeks.

