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A few observations from person experience of working in small startups, and large companies. Being part of companies that were sold, and being both ends of att

A few observations from person experience of working in small startups, and large companies. Being part of companies that were sold, and being both ends of attempted takeovers, all in comparison to what I've seen in US companies. 1. In terms of sensible investment, what I've seen is that success breeds success - one success creates wealthy individuals with experience that can lead or by part of the next round. 2. UK markets are quite conservative, cautious and by and large dominated by people who don't understand science and technology, compounding the problem. They tend to want to drip feed money rather than go for the big win. 3. Following on from 1 & 2. There is a culture of selling early, rather than building really big, and if you don't have anyone big in the UK to sell to then it goes abroad. 4. UK government appears to welcome, nay have pride in, the acquisition and destruction of some of the UK's biggest companies by opportunists. 5. UK business leaders typically lack global ambition, nay ego/hubris. 6. UK stock market is rather short term, preferring dividends to inward long term investment - the sort of investment typically required to grow. So what you get is lots of interesting small to medium size companies - often started in concert with the strong UK academic sector, and/or diaspora from previous successes - and very few transitions to global players. ARM was one of the few - that's why it's so disappointing to see it sold first to Softbank and now possibly NVidia. The only silver lining is any change is likely to create a diaspora eager for new opportunities - so in the case of ARM - lots of experienced well off engineers ( more able to take a risk ) in one of the worlds best academic centers of excellence.

ChuckNorris89 6y ago
>2. UK markets are quite conservative, cautious and by and large dominated by people who don't understand science and technology, compounding the problem. Haha, me laughing then crying in underpaid German conservatism that dwarfs the British one. You guys don't know how good you have it. Brexit aside, London is still Europe's biggest tech capital by a long shot and devs there can make way more than anywhere in Europe bar Switzerland.
- DrScientist 6y ago
  I think software is a little different than other tech/science companies. Typically they need less upfront investment ( unless you go the buy customer route a la Uber etc - but the jury is out on whether they will ever pay back their investors ), and can grow much quicker and so are less constrained by institutional investors. London is certainly very good for things like Fintech which employs a lot of software people on good salaries in London. But then city investors understand Fintech. My experience is mostly hard science tech, rather than software per se. I'd consider quite a lot of the software 'tech' companies to really be business model innovation companies rather than 'software' innovations ( ie software that's really hard to write ). The tech bubble classic example in London was lastminute.com - a holiday clearing house website - who's founders didn't understand the technology side. One technical area the UK is strong in is ML - Googles deepmind started in London, and machine learning for Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft all worked on up the road in Cambridge. Again seeded by small companies bought by larger foreign companies.
laurencerowe 6y ago
> So what you get is lots of interesting small to medium size companies - often started in concert with the strong UK academic sector, and/or diaspora from previous successes - and very few transitions to global players. In my view the biggest reason for the difference in success between UK/EU tech companies and US ones is simply the sheer size of the US market. Particularly for the current set of big-tech incumbents which are largely consumer focussed. The creation EU Single Market (in which ironically the UK played a large part) was an attempt to compete, but while larger and having greater regulatory uniformity in many areas than the US, different EU countries speak different languages and have a less integrated culture than the US. This makes it harder to grow companies to the size they might in the US.
- DrScientist 6y ago
  Scale of home market is definitely a factor - but you could argue that the UK should have a big advantage here - lots of software type startups could effectively treat the US as a home market, but don't seem to.

ChuckNorris89 6y ago

>2. UK markets are quite conservative, cautious and by and large dominated by people who don't understand science and technology, compounding the problem. Haha, me laughing then crying in underpaid German conservatism that dwarfs the British one. You guys don't know how good you have it. Brexit aside, London is still Europe's biggest tech capital by a long shot and devs there can make way more than anywhere in Europe bar Switzerland.

DrScientist 6y ago
I think software is a little different than other tech/science companies. Typically they need less upfront investment ( unless you go the buy customer route a la Uber etc - but the jury is out on whether they will ever pay back their investors ), and can grow much quicker and so are less constrained by institutional investors. London is certainly very good for things like Fintech which employs a lot of software people on good salaries in London. But then city investors understand Fintech. My experience is mostly hard science tech, rather than software per se. I'd consider quite a lot of the software 'tech' companies to really be business model innovation companies rather than 'software' innovations ( ie software that's really hard to write ). The tech bubble classic example in London was lastminute.com - a holiday clearing house website - who's founders didn't understand the technology side. One technical area the UK is strong in is ML - Googles deepmind started in London, and machine learning for Apple, Amazon, and Microsoft all worked on up the road in Cambridge. Again seeded by small companies bought by larger foreign companies.

laurencerowe 6y ago

> So what you get is lots of interesting small to medium size companies - often started in concert with the strong UK academic sector, and/or diaspora from previous successes - and very few transitions to global players. In my view the biggest reason for the difference in success between UK/EU tech companies and US ones is simply the sheer size of the US market. Particularly for the current set of big-tech incumbents which are largely consumer focussed. The creation EU Single Market (in which ironically the UK played a large part) was an attempt to compete, but while larger and having greater regulatory uniformity in many areas than the US, different EU countries speak different languages and have a less integrated culture than the US. This makes it harder to grow companies to the size they might in the US.

DrScientist 6y ago
Scale of home market is definitely a factor - but you could argue that the UK should have a big advantage here - lots of software type startups could effectively treat the US as a home market, but don't seem to.