I'm not sure London is the best place in the UK for a startup. Office and accomodation rent is among the highest in Europe. And in just about every other respect it's an insanely expensive place to live.
Unless your clientiele requires you to be in London (e.g. you do work for the city, or one of the big media companies) you'd be better off elsewhere in the UK if you want a decent runway.
It seems counter intuitive at first, but it's the same way in Canada and the US. Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, San Francisco, New York, etc.; they're all the best places to grow companies. Rent is a fraction of what start-ups pay in salaries and the talent pools are often focused around those areas. You're right that you'll save money if you're bootstrapping or have a remote team, but if you're taking money and/or growing and hiring, higher rent is just the cost of being in a good location for everything else.
Yeah but by the same logic you could argue the following, yet you would be wrong:
"I'm not sure San Francisco is the best place in North America for a startup. Office and accommodation rent is amongst the highest in North America. And just about every other respect it's an insanely expensive place to live.
Unless your clientiele requires you to be in San Francisco you'd be better off elsewhere in the US if you want a decent runway."
There's a reason HP started in a garage in Palo Alto, not in San Francisco. The city is markedly more expensive yet draws on largely the same talent pool as the valley—there's no shortage of people who commute either direction (including me). I don't think the city makes sense for a startup unless you're planning to interact heavily with Big Media, and there it's hard to argue against a branch in New York instead.
Sure. But high cost of living means higher salaries for your developers too. I've turned down numerous jobs because they're London based (and won't do remote). It's just not worth the drop in income.
And frankly, London isn't California. It's a grim place to live on low pay.
Unless your clientiele requires you to be in London (e.g. you do work for the city, or one of the big media companies) you'd be better off elsewhere in the UK if you want a decent runway.