9 ms·

Facebook couldn’t have been British

18 points by yangyang 16y ago

ig1 16y ago
Refutation - British Y Combinator startups by university: Cambridge: Immad Ahkund (Heyzap), Jude Gomila (Heyzap), Rahul Vohra (Rapportive), Martin Kleppman (Rapportive), Sam Stokes (Rapportive), Ian Hogarth (SongKick), Pete Smith (SongKick), Michelle You (SongKick) Imperial: Tim Davey (SnapTalent), Sumon Sadhu (SnapTalent), Niall Smart (Echodio), Nathan Chong (NewsLabs) Oxford: Peter Nixey (Clickpass), Harjeet Tagger (Auctomatic), Kulveer Taggar (Auctomatic) Bristol: Tom Riley (Fabricly) Kent: Mike Laming (Propable) (Apologies if I've missed anyone/misspelt any names as I'm writing from memory)
- Caligula 16y ago
  But they went to America to pursue their startup. Their incorporation is in America and they live/operate in America. They left Britain to pursue their startup. So I think your refutation is the opposite of what you intended it to be.
  - ig1 16y ago
    Well I guess there's two issues at play here: 1) Is it due to cultural reasons that Britain isn't producing young tech entrepreneurs 2) Are British young tech entrepreneurs going abroad to start companies. I think my argument refutes the first but supports the second point. While there are young tech entrepreneurs in the UK (Mashable for example was started by a 19 year old, numerous indy gaming studios are led by 20-somethings) a lot of the more talented ones who are aiming at global consumer markets are clearly head abroad.
devmonk 16y ago
At first the American side of me read this post title and agreed. It just didn't seem likely. But after reading the post, I don't think it did a very good job of describing why Britain hasn't produced more successful startups. The primary reason that Britain doesn't accel at more, I think, is both opportunity and size of the population. If Britain were at least the size of the U.S. with otherwise the same ratio of opportunity to excel vs. the U.S. counterparts, they should have produced at least one startup-gone-global-household-name by now.
- Goladus 16y ago
  I'm not so sure. Silicon Valley draws worldwide talent. It's not just the pool of available Americans that drives the tech startup culture there.
- zeemonkee 16y ago
  The article mentions the Victorian times - you don't need to go that far back - Richard Branson, Alan Sugar, Clive Sinclair come to mind, although that was the 1980s. But why haven't there been any huge new successes in the last decade or so ? I can think of a few (over-generalized) reasons: - over-emphasis on banking and finance. The City is where the big money was made, and is disproportionately important to the UK economy (even now) so that's where the polymaths -our homegrown Zuckerbergs and Brins and Gates - went to make their fortune. - class system. Business and government leadership comes from a very narrow circle of ex-public school and/or Oxbridge graduates who share a common disdain for science and technology. Time and again scientists and engineers have left for the US and elsewhere because they couldn't get funding at home - businessmen and politicians simply didn't "get" the potential of research. - over-centralization. If you think Hacker News is bad with its Silicon Valley-centric worldview, come to the UK. If it's not happening in London, it's not happening. London however is a horribly expensive place to live, pushing up salaries, office costs, etc - not the ideal place for a startup. Start your business in the "provinces" however and nobody will notice you. - bureaucracy. Both UK and EU legislation have increased the amount of paperwork needed to get started - for example employment legislation. Not sure how this compares to the US (which varies state to state) but it hasn't helped.
  - alexyoung 16y ago
    Maybe another reason is too many British people think in terms of the government solving the problem, or starting projects funded by quangos: "what we need is a startup scene, therefore we need government funding!" Getting startups in touch with funding sources and getting the word out that you can fund your ventures without living off baked beans for 18 months might help encourage more people to take the leap of faith.
    - 16y ago
retree 16y ago
it is taboo to drop out of universities, which remain poor incubators This is definitely true. I'm currently at a top UK university, and there is very little incentive to start a startup. Whilst a friend a Stanford has access to an entrepreneur group with a budget of half a million dollars just for having a good idea, we have business plan writing competitions. The very idea of dropping out of universities is met with horror, by other students, staff and relatives. They would rather you just go through uni and get a job at a nice bank or accounting firm somewhere. Starting a startup as a student isn't the norm, there seems to be too much friction. There also appears to be much less of a can-do atmosphere and much more aversion to risk in the UK for current university students. This isn't to say there isn't a good startup scene here - but it's mostly hardware/biotech; most of the other stuff seems started by mid-30s ex Goldman Sachs bankers. Edit - I've just found this article - http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/rorycellanjones/2010/07/uk_tech_is_anyone_listening.html http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/rorycellanjones/2010... from Rory Cellan-Jones of the BBC which is a good read as well
- alextgordon 16y ago
  Completely true. In the UK there's a lot of emphasis put on what's seen as the normal progression from school to higher education to employment. Startups are rarely mentioned in the media, and mentioned even less outside it. The only exception I can think of is Dragon's Den on the BBC, where people with little experience and even worse ideas sell half their business for a pittance in order to entertain the country. I guess that about sums it up. I think another issue may be the different views on business. In the UK, businesses are seen as entities that must be restrained, otherwise they will do Bad Things. This is reflected in the immense amount of legislation regulating businesses, employment, consumer rights, etc. There's much less of this in the US - businesses are an integral part of the culture, and you can't really go anywhere without being reminded of that. In a way it's comparable to the mild distrust of government in the US: just as Americans look to the constitution to protect them from government, Brits look to the government to protect them from businesses.
  - ig1 16y ago
    I disagree, the UK is one of the flexible places in the world to start/run a business. The World Bank ranks the UK as the 5th easiest place to do business in the world (the US is 4th). I don't think I've met a single startup in the UK whose main problem with the UK was legislative or regulatory.
mooism2 16y ago
On the "universities are poor incubators" claim: Cambridge is probably the top UK university. Every single Cambridge college is (legally) a charity. This means it is illegal to conduct business activities on college premises; in particular, it is illegal to conduct business activities in your college accommodation.
- retree 16y ago
  It's true, my college tenancy agreement explicitly says "The student agrees ... not to use the room for any professional trade or business." Not only businesses, but any jobs are forbidden at Cambridge as well. If you're not allowed to work behind a bar for minimum wage, it's sort of implied that they're hardly going to look kindly upon you running a business are they?
  - auxbuss 16y ago
    But I bet you are allowed investments, sit on boards, and draw funds from a trust. If so, what a horrible throw back to ancient times. Are you sanctioned to work during vacations? While creative accountancy can sidestep some of your restrictions -- say, pay yourself a dividend, take a director's loan -- this hardly solves the entrepreneurial issue at hand. Unless, of course, Cambridge students are expected to legitimately subvert the regulations, thereby preparing themselves for a lifetime of sailing close to the wind :)
- ig1 16y ago
  Realistically how often is that enforced ? In the US most startups probably start in residential buildings which aren't zoned for businesses. Techcrunch was running out of Mike Arrington's house a long time after it was a multi-million dollar business before the neighbours complained about the violation. As long as you're not doing anything stupid or annoy your neighbours, no-one's going to care if you're running your startup out of your accommodation. I ran a fairly successful social networking app off my university network, and no-one really cared until it started impacting server performance (~300k visitors/month) at which point I moved it off to a commercial server.
adrianscott 16y ago
I dunno... I'm British and I founded Ryze, a pioneering social network which was a huge influence on Friendster, which in turn led to MySpace and Facebook. And I never went to high school. But then again I never lived in Britain, so maybe the article's hypothesis is fine, just not the headline... ;) And there is the example of Bebo also...
- ig1 16y ago
  By that logic Y Combinator's also British because Paul Graham is Welsh...
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]

18 points by yangyang 16y ago

ig1 16y ago

Refutation - British Y Combinator startups by university: Cambridge: Immad Ahkund (Heyzap), Jude Gomila (Heyzap), Rahul Vohra (Rapportive), Martin Kleppman (Rapportive), Sam Stokes (Rapportive), Ian Hogarth (SongKick), Pete Smith (SongKick), Michelle You (SongKick) Imperial: Tim Davey (SnapTalent), Sumon Sadhu (SnapTalent), Niall Smart (Echodio), Nathan Chong (NewsLabs) Oxford: Peter Nixey (Clickpass), Harjeet Tagger (Auctomatic), Kulveer Taggar (Auctomatic) Bristol: Tom Riley (Fabricly) Kent: Mike Laming (Propable) (Apologies if I've missed anyone/misspelt any names as I'm writing from memory)

Caligula 16y ago
But they went to America to pursue their startup. Their incorporation is in America and they live/operate in America. They left Britain to pursue their startup. So I think your refutation is the opposite of what you intended it to be.
- ig1 16y ago
  Well I guess there's two issues at play here: 1) Is it due to cultural reasons that Britain isn't producing young tech entrepreneurs 2) Are British young tech entrepreneurs going abroad to start companies. I think my argument refutes the first but supports the second point. While there are young tech entrepreneurs in the UK (Mashable for example was started by a 19 year old, numerous indy gaming studios are led by 20-somethings) a lot of the more talented ones who are aiming at global consumer markets are clearly head abroad.

devmonk 16y ago

At first the American side of me read this post title and agreed. It just didn't seem likely. But after reading the post, I don't think it did a very good job of describing why Britain hasn't produced more successful startups. The primary reason that Britain doesn't accel at more, I think, is both opportunity and size of the population. If Britain were at least the size of the U.S. with otherwise the same ratio of opportunity to excel vs. the U.S. counterparts, they should have produced at least one startup-gone-global-household-name by now.

Goladus 16y ago
I'm not so sure. Silicon Valley draws worldwide talent. It's not just the pool of available Americans that drives the tech startup culture there.
zeemonkee 16y ago
The article mentions the Victorian times - you don't need to go that far back - Richard Branson, Alan Sugar, Clive Sinclair come to mind, although that was the 1980s. But why haven't there been any huge new successes in the last decade or so ? I can think of a few (over-generalized) reasons: - over-emphasis on banking and finance. The City is where the big money was made, and is disproportionately important to the UK economy (even now) so that's where the polymaths -our homegrown Zuckerbergs and Brins and Gates - went to make their fortune. - class system. Business and government leadership comes from a very narrow circle of ex-public school and/or Oxbridge graduates who share a common disdain for science and technology. Time and again scientists and engineers have left for the US and elsewhere because they couldn't get funding at home - businessmen and politicians simply didn't "get" the potential of research. - over-centralization. If you think Hacker News is bad with its Silicon Valley-centric worldview, come to the UK. If it's not happening in London, it's not happening. London however is a horribly expensive place to live, pushing up salaries, office costs, etc - not the ideal place for a startup. Start your business in the "provinces" however and nobody will notice you. - bureaucracy. Both UK and EU legislation have increased the amount of paperwork needed to get started - for example employment legislation. Not sure how this compares to the US (which varies state to state) but it hasn't helped.
- alexyoung 16y ago
  Maybe another reason is too many British people think in terms of the government solving the problem, or starting projects funded by quangos: "what we need is a startup scene, therefore we need government funding!" Getting startups in touch with funding sources and getting the word out that you can fund your ventures without living off baked beans for 18 months might help encourage more people to take the leap of faith.
  - 16y ago

retree 16y ago

it is taboo to drop out of universities, which remain poor incubators This is definitely true. I'm currently at a top UK university, and there is very little incentive to start a startup. Whilst a friend a Stanford has access to an entrepreneur group with a budget of half a million dollars just for having a good idea, we have business plan writing competitions. The very idea of dropping out of universities is met with horror, by other students, staff and relatives. They would rather you just go through uni and get a job at a nice bank or accounting firm somewhere. Starting a startup as a student isn't the norm, there seems to be too much friction. There also appears to be much less of a can-do atmosphere and much more aversion to risk in the UK for current university students. This isn't to say there isn't a good startup scene here - but it's mostly hardware/biotech; most of the other stuff seems started by mid-30s ex Goldman Sachs bankers. Edit - I've just found this article - http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/rorycellanjones/2010/07/uk_tech_is_anyone_listening.html http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/rorycellanjones/2010... from Rory Cellan-Jones of the BBC which is a good read as well

alextgordon 16y ago
Completely true. In the UK there's a lot of emphasis put on what's seen as the normal progression from school to higher education to employment. Startups are rarely mentioned in the media, and mentioned even less outside it. The only exception I can think of is Dragon's Den on the BBC, where people with little experience and even worse ideas sell half their business for a pittance in order to entertain the country. I guess that about sums it up. I think another issue may be the different views on business. In the UK, businesses are seen as entities that must be restrained, otherwise they will do Bad Things. This is reflected in the immense amount of legislation regulating businesses, employment, consumer rights, etc. There's much less of this in the US - businesses are an integral part of the culture, and you can't really go anywhere without being reminded of that. In a way it's comparable to the mild distrust of government in the US: just as Americans look to the constitution to protect them from government, Brits look to the government to protect them from businesses.
- ig1 16y ago
  I disagree, the UK is one of the flexible places in the world to start/run a business. The World Bank ranks the UK as the 5th easiest place to do business in the world (the US is 4th). I don't think I've met a single startup in the UK whose main problem with the UK was legislative or regulatory.

mooism2 16y ago

On the "universities are poor incubators" claim: Cambridge is probably the top UK university. Every single Cambridge college is (legally) a charity. This means it is illegal to conduct business activities on college premises; in particular, it is illegal to conduct business activities in your college accommodation.

retree 16y ago
It's true, my college tenancy agreement explicitly says "The student agrees ... not to use the room for any professional trade or business." Not only businesses, but any jobs are forbidden at Cambridge as well. If you're not allowed to work behind a bar for minimum wage, it's sort of implied that they're hardly going to look kindly upon you running a business are they?
- auxbuss 16y ago
  But I bet you are allowed investments, sit on boards, and draw funds from a trust. If so, what a horrible throw back to ancient times. Are you sanctioned to work during vacations? While creative accountancy can sidestep some of your restrictions -- say, pay yourself a dividend, take a director's loan -- this hardly solves the entrepreneurial issue at hand. Unless, of course, Cambridge students are expected to legitimately subvert the regulations, thereby preparing themselves for a lifetime of sailing close to the wind :)
ig1 16y ago
Realistically how often is that enforced ? In the US most startups probably start in residential buildings which aren't zoned for businesses. Techcrunch was running out of Mike Arrington's house a long time after it was a multi-million dollar business before the neighbours complained about the violation. As long as you're not doing anything stupid or annoy your neighbours, no-one's going to care if you're running your startup out of your accommodation. I ran a fairly successful social networking app off my university network, and no-one really cared until it started impacting server performance (~300k visitors/month) at which point I moved it off to a commercial server.

adrianscott 16y ago

I dunno... I'm British and I founded Ryze, a pioneering social network which was a huge influence on Friendster, which in turn led to MySpace and Facebook. And I never went to high school. But then again I never lived in Britain, so maybe the article's hypothesis is fine, just not the headline... ;) And there is the example of Bebo also...

ig1 16y ago
By that logic Y Combinator's also British because Paul Graham is Welsh...
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]