9 ms·

The European startup ecosystem arrived

79 points by lfittl 16y ago

ladon86 16y ago
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.
- zumda 16y ago
  Out of curiosity, what do you consider the other startup hubs in Europe? Guessing from your comment that this is the UK scene, there should be others.
  - milestinsley 16y ago
    Berlin has a very active, vibrant startup scene.
    - JonnieCache 16y ago
      It's also a much nicer place than london. And they managed not to make the mistake of having an entirely speculative property market like the UK has.
    - loluyede 16y ago
      I'm curious about the salary ranges comparing to london's. Do you know anything about that?
  - jkaljundi 16y ago
    At Garage48.org, we look at the Baltic-Nordic region as one strongly tied together scene, as the countries and cities themselves are all tiny. During the last year, the change towards a more vibrant startup scene has been visible in all the region's capital cities, no need to single out any of them.
  - stefanobernardi 16y ago
    That was my comment. I'm not stating that there are other "hubs". Europe still doesn't have a central hub, which btw I think would be a great thing, but I'm not sure London can take that role. UK is surely not the California of Europe, and I sincerely fail in finding another candidate.
  - tomh- 16y ago
    There is a lot going on in Copenhagen, Denmark is also often ranked as the best country to start a business as the costs of starting one are low (living there is not) see http://www.prosperity.com/entrepreneurship.aspx http://www.prosperity.com/entrepreneurship.aspx. In my country, Holland, many people mention Amsterdam, I don't agree with that in the sense that it is a hub. The up and coming region here is Utrecht, it has a province and university backed business incubator Utrecht Inc. and a government backed gaming incubator, which both enabled some startups with national or global impact. The startup scene is still behind that of other countries and the numbers of 'me too', 'Y for X', 'X for social media' or 'X which doesn't suck' ideas are huge.
    - nickbarnwell 16y ago
      >There is a lot going on in Copenhagen, Denmark is also often ranked as the best country to start a business as the costs of starting one are low (living there is not) The fact that living here is not means that while it may be cheap to start a company, you have to pay some very, very high salaries to attract people in the first place if they wish to maintain a decent standard of living. You also have to consider that while CPH is a great city with a ton going on for its size, it is never going to be a huge multi-cultural mecca like London or SF have become. Denmark is simply too insular and opposed to much immigration, and that is a culture that's not going to change anytime soon.
- bnastic 16y ago
  From personal experience, talent is to be found outside of London. But it's difficult to get them to move to London, they just don't think it's worth a hassle. There is a reason why so many successfull UK hardware companies are based in Hampshire, Oxford or Cambridge.
- zeemonkee 16y ago
  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.
  - fedd 16y ago
    watching The Social Network, i saw some wordless hackers that were happy to work for early facebook when they only had $1000 in bank to pay for servers. is it something different in American climate?.. :)
    - borism 16y ago
      is it something different in American climate?.. :) one can live in a cardboard box in California but not in Scotland?
      - arethuza 16y ago
        Scotland would probably be one of the worst places to try living in a cardboard box - cold enough to be dangerous if you are outdoors but not cold enough to be dry. Combine that with rather unpredictable weather and rapid temperature changes (we've had temperatures changing 20C in a few days recently) and you would have a pretty miserable time in a cardboard box.
        JonnieCache 16y ago
        Unfortunately there are a lot of kids living on the street in scotland. It really surprised me the first time I went to Edinburgh, how many young people there were sitting in doorways. A lot of them didn't look like they'd been there long either.
- jkaljundi 16y ago
  Are you saying there is more lack of talent in UK than in Silicon Valley?
- bad_user 16y ago
  Then hire from remote locations all over Europe. Give me your email if you want my LinkedIn profile; all I want is £30k :-)
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  And London VCs are still far more risk-averse than SV VCs. This is the real problem. Most US startups pay considerably more than 40k GBP = $63k USD. $63k USD would be considered laughably low for anyone besides perhaps a middle-of-the-pack recent graduate. So it seems that startups need to either generate revenue quickly move to where the money is (NY and SV, apparently).
  - david927 16y ago
    Or consider alternate compensation, such as alternating remote work. London is a cheap hour flight away from most countries in Europe. Most big companies in London simply don't allow, say, a week remote and a week on-site. Be flexible and you might find a much bigger talent pool.
  - true_religion 16y ago
    But 63,000 USD is far above the US media income (44,000 USD). Granted, I made that just out of college as well but I was living a whirlwind life of monthly travel, and daily partying. For a single person 63,000USD is a lot of money---money enough that when I cut back on partying I could easily consider taking on a mortgage for a house with my discretionary income.
- eftpotrm 16y ago
  How much do they want to be paid? About £40k starting, please. Best of luck to them. I know few (non-contractors) who pull in even 90% of that with substantial experience. Idle wandering of mind a while back, I came to the conclusion that if I wanted to do a startup I'd base it in Northampton. Relatively cheap area by UK standards but livable, hour by train to both central London and Birmingham/West Midlands (about half the size of London so a substantial catchment area in its own right), good N/S and E/W road transport links and if I advertised for experienced devs at USD50k (equivalent) I'd be beating them away with a stick. I don't have any plans in that direction mind you, but it's that sort of thing that makes me wonder why anyone bothers setting up in London.
  - kgutteridge 16y ago
    I am in Northampton for the transport links you mention, the reason to setup in London is however simple the majority of good people in Northampton are commuting to London. As you say its about 50-70% of the cost of living in London but still accessible
    - eftpotrm 16y ago
      A good part of that though is circular; it's where the 'good' jobs are so people go there for the jobs so the companies set up there because that's where the 'good' people are and... I've worked in enough much smaller towns that could still draw good staff from the surrounding area. Note 'good', I'm not convinced it's more than perception. The distances I've known people commute over the years horrify me; I know I would take a lower-paying job if it in return saved me something of the 90 minutes per day or or 8-9000 miles a year I've had to drive. From the staff I've known commuting between towns over the years, I find it hard to believe that a company offering good work and reasonable pay in a large town couldn't draw the staff and within a reasonable commuting radius of Northampton as the town in question you've easily got a 1m population, maybe more, let alone the 200k or so as the immediate local work force, keen to cut down the commute. EDIT: I should add part of the company location suggestion is ease of reach for clients / partners, rather than staff lifestyle. Give yourself a hypothetical 10AM meeting and look at the percentage of UK business you can reach without an obnoxiously early start. London and West Midlands obviously, Thames Valley, pretty much the whole home counties, much of East Anglia, Oxfordshire, Leicester / Derby / Nottingham area, even up as far as Sheffield or Stoke.... Get yourself on the morning flights out of Luton and you've got Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dublin, Paris, Amsterdam and Brussels too at little more cost. A very powerful reach and in a cheap, densely populated area.
- alain94040 16y ago
  I live in Silicon Valley but organize an incubator in Paris (with other branches in other European cities). I argue these issues daily with our founders. To hire someone in Silicon Valley, plan on spending a minimum of $80K. A senior engineer will cost you $130K easy. So I don't understand why salaries would be a barrier to hiring in Europe, people work for cheap there. One of the barriers I see is the lack of super-angels. I don't want money from dentists and doctors, I want to raise money from entrepreneurs who know what it's like to start a company. The problem is that in France (and Europe in general), even the successful entrepreneurs tend to hide, because it's not polite to talk about being successful/rich. In Silicon Valley, there is an endless stream of entrepreneurs with serious cash who are interested in hearing your story.
estrelinya 16y ago
I will take years until this ecosystem will arrive the middle east...meanwhile we continue to breath smoke and hope that Europe will bring the change. Frank - Bingo Sites- http://www.newbingosites.org http://www.newbingosites.org
echubb 16y ago
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 16y ago
  > 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/ 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 16y ago
    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 16y ago
      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.
yalforreca 16y ago
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 16y ago
  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/ 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 16y ago
    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 16y ago
      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-agreements/13340855-1.html http://www.allbusiness.com/legal/tax-law-tax-treaties-agreem... The more contacts I have the better so yes please get in touch.
- 16y ago
notahacker 16y ago
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...
StudyAnimal 16y ago
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.
thisisfmu 16y ago
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 16y ago
  I believe GroupSpaces raised an angel round in 2008 and only started looking for the VC round in 2010.
  - thisisfmu 16y ago
    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 16y ago
      GroupSpaces wasn't funded by Seedcamp, are you thinking about another company ?
jacquesm 16y ago
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.

79 points by lfittl 16y ago

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.

zumda 16y ago
Out of curiosity, what do you consider the other startup hubs in Europe? Guessing from your comment that this is the UK scene, there should be others.
- milestinsley 16y ago
  Berlin has a very active, vibrant startup scene.
  - JonnieCache 16y ago
    It's also a much nicer place than london. And they managed not to make the mistake of having an entirely speculative property market like the UK has.
  - loluyede 16y ago
    I'm curious about the salary ranges comparing to london's. Do you know anything about that?
- jkaljundi 16y ago
  At Garage48.org, we look at the Baltic-Nordic region as one strongly tied together scene, as the countries and cities themselves are all tiny. During the last year, the change towards a more vibrant startup scene has been visible in all the region's capital cities, no need to single out any of them.
- stefanobernardi 16y ago
  That was my comment. I'm not stating that there are other "hubs". Europe still doesn't have a central hub, which btw I think would be a great thing, but I'm not sure London can take that role. UK is surely not the California of Europe, and I sincerely fail in finding another candidate.
- tomh- 16y ago
  There is a lot going on in Copenhagen, Denmark is also often ranked as the best country to start a business as the costs of starting one are low (living there is not) see http://www.prosperity.com/entrepreneurship.aspx http://www.prosperity.com/entrepreneurship.aspx. In my country, Holland, many people mention Amsterdam, I don't agree with that in the sense that it is a hub. The up and coming region here is Utrecht, it has a province and university backed business incubator Utrecht Inc. and a government backed gaming incubator, which both enabled some startups with national or global impact. The startup scene is still behind that of other countries and the numbers of 'me too', 'Y for X', 'X for social media' or 'X which doesn't suck' ideas are huge.
  - nickbarnwell 16y ago
    >There is a lot going on in Copenhagen, Denmark is also often ranked as the best country to start a business as the costs of starting one are low (living there is not) The fact that living here is not means that while it may be cheap to start a company, you have to pay some very, very high salaries to attract people in the first place if they wish to maintain a decent standard of living. You also have to consider that while CPH is a great city with a ton going on for its size, it is never going to be a huge multi-cultural mecca like London or SF have become. Denmark is simply too insular and opposed to much immigration, and that is a culture that's not going to change anytime soon.
bnastic 16y ago
From personal experience, talent is to be found outside of London. But it's difficult to get them to move to London, they just don't think it's worth a hassle. There is a reason why so many successfull UK hardware companies are based in Hampshire, Oxford or Cambridge.
zeemonkee 16y ago
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.
- fedd 16y ago
  watching The Social Network, i saw some wordless hackers that were happy to work for early facebook when they only had $1000 in bank to pay for servers. is it something different in American climate?.. :)
  - borism 16y ago
    is it something different in American climate?.. :) one can live in a cardboard box in California but not in Scotland?
    - arethuza 16y ago
      Scotland would probably be one of the worst places to try living in a cardboard box - cold enough to be dangerous if you are outdoors but not cold enough to be dry. Combine that with rather unpredictable weather and rapid temperature changes (we've had temperatures changing 20C in a few days recently) and you would have a pretty miserable time in a cardboard box.
      - JonnieCache 16y ago
        Unfortunately there are a lot of kids living on the street in scotland. It really surprised me the first time I went to Edinburgh, how many young people there were sitting in doorways. A lot of them didn't look like they'd been there long either.
jkaljundi 16y ago
Are you saying there is more lack of talent in UK than in Silicon Valley?
bad_user 16y ago
Then hire from remote locations all over Europe. Give me your email if you want my LinkedIn profile; all I want is £30k :-)
yummyfajitas 16y ago
And London VCs are still far more risk-averse than SV VCs. This is the real problem. Most US startups pay considerably more than 40k GBP = $63k USD. $63k USD would be considered laughably low for anyone besides perhaps a middle-of-the-pack recent graduate. So it seems that startups need to either generate revenue quickly move to where the money is (NY and SV, apparently).
- david927 16y ago
  Or consider alternate compensation, such as alternating remote work. London is a cheap hour flight away from most countries in Europe. Most big companies in London simply don't allow, say, a week remote and a week on-site. Be flexible and you might find a much bigger talent pool.
- true_religion 16y ago
  But 63,000 USD is far above the US media income (44,000 USD). Granted, I made that just out of college as well but I was living a whirlwind life of monthly travel, and daily partying. For a single person 63,000USD is a lot of money---money enough that when I cut back on partying I could easily consider taking on a mortgage for a house with my discretionary income.
eftpotrm 16y ago
How much do they want to be paid? About £40k starting, please. Best of luck to them. I know few (non-contractors) who pull in even 90% of that with substantial experience. Idle wandering of mind a while back, I came to the conclusion that if I wanted to do a startup I'd base it in Northampton. Relatively cheap area by UK standards but livable, hour by train to both central London and Birmingham/West Midlands (about half the size of London so a substantial catchment area in its own right), good N/S and E/W road transport links and if I advertised for experienced devs at USD50k (equivalent) I'd be beating them away with a stick. I don't have any plans in that direction mind you, but it's that sort of thing that makes me wonder why anyone bothers setting up in London.
- kgutteridge 16y ago
  I am in Northampton for the transport links you mention, the reason to setup in London is however simple the majority of good people in Northampton are commuting to London. As you say its about 50-70% of the cost of living in London but still accessible
  - eftpotrm 16y ago
    A good part of that though is circular; it's where the 'good' jobs are so people go there for the jobs so the companies set up there because that's where the 'good' people are and... I've worked in enough much smaller towns that could still draw good staff from the surrounding area. Note 'good', I'm not convinced it's more than perception. The distances I've known people commute over the years horrify me; I know I would take a lower-paying job if it in return saved me something of the 90 minutes per day or or 8-9000 miles a year I've had to drive. From the staff I've known commuting between towns over the years, I find it hard to believe that a company offering good work and reasonable pay in a large town couldn't draw the staff and within a reasonable commuting radius of Northampton as the town in question you've easily got a 1m population, maybe more, let alone the 200k or so as the immediate local work force, keen to cut down the commute. EDIT: I should add part of the company location suggestion is ease of reach for clients / partners, rather than staff lifestyle. Give yourself a hypothetical 10AM meeting and look at the percentage of UK business you can reach without an obnoxiously early start. London and West Midlands obviously, Thames Valley, pretty much the whole home counties, much of East Anglia, Oxfordshire, Leicester / Derby / Nottingham area, even up as far as Sheffield or Stoke.... Get yourself on the morning flights out of Luton and you've got Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dublin, Paris, Amsterdam and Brussels too at little more cost. A very powerful reach and in a cheap, densely populated area.
alain94040 16y ago
I live in Silicon Valley but organize an incubator in Paris (with other branches in other European cities). I argue these issues daily with our founders. To hire someone in Silicon Valley, plan on spending a minimum of $80K. A senior engineer will cost you $130K easy. So I don't understand why salaries would be a barrier to hiring in Europe, people work for cheap there. One of the barriers I see is the lack of super-angels. I don't want money from dentists and doctors, I want to raise money from entrepreneurs who know what it's like to start a company. The problem is that in France (and Europe in general), even the successful entrepreneurs tend to hide, because it's not polite to talk about being successful/rich. In Silicon Valley, there is an endless stream of entrepreneurs with serious cash who are interested in hearing your story.

estrelinya 16y ago

I will take years until this ecosystem will arrive the middle east...meanwhile we continue to breath smoke and hope that Europe will bring the change. Frank - Bingo Sites- http://www.newbingosites.org http://www.newbingosites.org

echubb 16y ago

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 16y ago
> 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/ 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 16y ago
  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 16y ago
    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.

yalforreca 16y ago

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 16y ago
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/ 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 16y ago
  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 16y ago
    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-agreements/13340855-1.html http://www.allbusiness.com/legal/tax-law-tax-treaties-agreem... The more contacts I have the better so yes please get in touch.
16y ago

notahacker 16y ago

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...

StudyAnimal 16y ago

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.

thisisfmu 16y ago

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 16y ago
I believe GroupSpaces raised an angel round in 2008 and only started looking for the VC round in 2010.
- thisisfmu 16y ago
  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 16y ago
    GroupSpaces wasn't funded by Seedcamp, are you thinking about another company ?

jacquesm 16y ago

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.