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Counts by country: 54 United Kingdom 18 Germany 14 France 8 Netherlands 6 Switzerland 4 Sweden 4 Spain 2 R

Counts by country: 54 United Kingdom 18 Germany 14 France 8 Netherlands 6 Switzerland 4 Sweden 4 Spain 2 Romania 2 Norway 2 Lithuania 2 Finland 2 Estonia 2 Cyprus 2 Belgium United Kingdom is definitely over-represented. Bad sampling by Sifted? Or is the climate in UK genuinely more favorable to start-ups?

varispeed 6y ago
UK had great laws geared towards mobile workforce and specialist contractors could claim business costs against their tax - this combined with little bureaucracy and use of de facto lingua franca was a recipe for success. From April next year this will end as government was looking for extra money and decided to adjust IR35 (a law that essentially says if you work as an employee you should be taxed as employee, but without having any employment rights), so that now the client has to determine whether contractor is a deemed employee or not. The problem is that the penalty for doing wrong determination only exist if you declare that someone is not a deemed employee, but investigating civil servant finds the opposite. That means risk averse companies change their contracts so that the contractor will always be deemed an employee to avoid getting fined (the fine plus all taxes that would have to be paid even if contractor already paid all the taxes). This still wouldn't be a problem if the rules about deemed employment were clear - but after so many years HMRC still keep losing cases where they get the determination wrong themselves. What this means for contractors? They essentially become employees without rights and the effective tax rate they will pay may be even around 54% plus they won't be able to deduct any business expenses (except what employee could have deducted - but that is essentially dead). Suddenly the market for IT specialists in the UK became unattractive and companies who are struggling to find people working for severe pay cut start to look overseas. edit: if you want more spice to this, then imagine that our Chancellor is married to woman that her and her father have substantial stake in Infosys.
- MrBuddyCasino 6y ago
  Same development as in Germany, its getting harder for freelancers. They say its for "protecting workers", but it really is about funding for social security systems. When someones offers "to take care of you", first check your wallet.
  - baq 6y ago
    kind of same thing, though. remember that people died fighting for the 40-hour work week...
  - distances 6y ago
    Can you give a bit more info or pointers about changes in Germany? Edit: or do you mean the already existing legislation where companies practically can't keep freelancers long-term?
    - jamil7 6y ago
      I would also like to know more about this, it's never been an issue for me personally but I contracted with a quite a few other freelancers who said it was rarely an issue in practise. I think you can keep freelancers long-term but they have to be willing to pay into a pension fund themselves if more than X amount of their income comes from a single client.
- raverbashing 6y ago
  And with Brexit making access to talent harder and adding barriers to product/service trades, expect some downsides there. (There might be some upsides as well and some companies might have a branch there - but most in paper only)
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
crstin 6y ago
Are you determining these numbers simply by a site search? That's just wrong. In case of Spain this even returns 3 and there are effectively 2 unicorns in this list.
- LittlePeter 6y ago
  I extracted the inner text inside a <p class="foo"></p> using Python & BeautifulSoup, print to stdout, then cut, sort, uniq, and sort again. It looks like the counts from this voodoo are incorrect: they are all twice as much. However, proportions are still correct.
deltron3030 6y ago
Too much friction I guess. Keyboard layouts suck for coding (makes it harder to start with what you have), not enough english skills for proper autonomous learning and searching, a lot of bureaucracy that makes starting and running a software business more difficult, and people thinking that they have to be math geniuses to succeed. This reduces the overall amount of talent, so you're basically left with entrepreneurs who can't code and full-blood C++ programmers who started at five years old.
agd 6y ago
From my experience it’s more favourable to startups. The investor regulations are good so there’s a decent amount of capital, and the English language makes it easier for talented employees to immigrate to the UK. The existing financial hub in London makes a great environment for fintechs in particular.
Pyramus 6y ago
I'm the German founder of a UK startup: It's a number of environmental factors: 1. Funding: UK has 3-4x total deal volume compared to Germany [1]. I've heard somebody say UK (London) is comparable to NY, which is a 2nd tier US VC market. 2. Tax incentives: Early-stage investors get significant tax reliefs under the UK government's Enterprise Investment Scheme (S)EIS. They made a big difference when fundraising, almost every startup I know has used EIS. I see nothing of the sort in Germany. 3. Policy backing: My understanding is that around 2010 the startup sector was seen as a strategic investment both by UK and local governments, in particular the City of London. Which lead to the establishment of Tech City ('Silicon roundabout') as we know it today. In Germany, on the other hand, most politicians aren't aware of how bad the current state is. Of course there is a lip service, but in a way the success of the 'Mittelstand' (SMEs) never made it a necessity to foster startups. 4. Culture: One factor is risk aversion, for certain, but also how Germans perceive innovation plays a big role. I would describe it as an incremental view of innovation rather than disruptive technology, like a new type of car paint that dries 30% faster. I'm not a pessimist at all, but that's really one of the things that makes me bearish for Germany going forward. [1] https://news.crunchbase.com/news/european-venture-report-vc-dollars-rise-in-2019/ https://news.crunchbase.com/news/european-venture-report-vc-...
bzb6 6y ago
Why do you think the UK left? The EU is not much more than a regulatory burden to them.
- raverbashing 6y ago
  London didn't vote for Brexit (especially not The City) and a lot of founders and employees wouldn't be there if it wasn't for the EU.
- M2Ys4U 6y ago
  The places where you'll find the unicorns based all voted Remain...
sparrc 6y ago
Where are you getting these numbers from? I only see 2 for Spain and 9 for Germany...
- LittlePeter 6y ago
  You are right... everything has been inflated by a factor of two: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25192244 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25192244

varispeed 6y ago

UK had great laws geared towards mobile workforce and specialist contractors could claim business costs against their tax - this combined with little bureaucracy and use of de facto lingua franca was a recipe for success. From April next year this will end as government was looking for extra money and decided to adjust IR35 (a law that essentially says if you work as an employee you should be taxed as employee, but without having any employment rights), so that now the client has to determine whether contractor is a deemed employee or not. The problem is that the penalty for doing wrong determination only exist if you declare that someone is not a deemed employee, but investigating civil servant finds the opposite. That means risk averse companies change their contracts so that the contractor will always be deemed an employee to avoid getting fined (the fine plus all taxes that would have to be paid even if contractor already paid all the taxes). This still wouldn't be a problem if the rules about deemed employment were clear - but after so many years HMRC still keep losing cases where they get the determination wrong themselves. What this means for contractors? They essentially become employees without rights and the effective tax rate they will pay may be even around 54% plus they won't be able to deduct any business expenses (except what employee could have deducted - but that is essentially dead). Suddenly the market for IT specialists in the UK became unattractive and companies who are struggling to find people working for severe pay cut start to look overseas. edit: if you want more spice to this, then imagine that our Chancellor is married to woman that her and her father have substantial stake in Infosys.

MrBuddyCasino 6y ago
Same development as in Germany, its getting harder for freelancers. They say its for "protecting workers", but it really is about funding for social security systems. When someones offers "to take care of you", first check your wallet.
- baq 6y ago
  kind of same thing, though. remember that people died fighting for the 40-hour work week...
- distances 6y ago
  Can you give a bit more info or pointers about changes in Germany? Edit: or do you mean the already existing legislation where companies practically can't keep freelancers long-term?
  - jamil7 6y ago
    I would also like to know more about this, it's never been an issue for me personally but I contracted with a quite a few other freelancers who said it was rarely an issue in practise. I think you can keep freelancers long-term but they have to be willing to pay into a pension fund themselves if more than X amount of their income comes from a single client.
raverbashing 6y ago
And with Brexit making access to talent harder and adding barriers to product/service trades, expect some downsides there. (There might be some upsides as well and some companies might have a branch there - but most in paper only)
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

crstin 6y ago

Are you determining these numbers simply by a site search? That's just wrong. In case of Spain this even returns 3 and there are effectively 2 unicorns in this list.

LittlePeter 6y ago
I extracted the inner text inside a <p class="foo"></p> using Python & BeautifulSoup, print to stdout, then cut, sort, uniq, and sort again. It looks like the counts from this voodoo are incorrect: they are all twice as much. However, proportions are still correct.

deltron3030 6y ago

Too much friction I guess. Keyboard layouts suck for coding (makes it harder to start with what you have), not enough english skills for proper autonomous learning and searching, a lot of bureaucracy that makes starting and running a software business more difficult, and people thinking that they have to be math geniuses to succeed. This reduces the overall amount of talent, so you're basically left with entrepreneurs who can't code and full-blood C++ programmers who started at five years old.

agd 6y ago

From my experience it’s more favourable to startups. The investor regulations are good so there’s a decent amount of capital, and the English language makes it easier for talented employees to immigrate to the UK. The existing financial hub in London makes a great environment for fintechs in particular.

Pyramus 6y ago

I'm the German founder of a UK startup: It's a number of environmental factors: 1. Funding: UK has 3-4x total deal volume compared to Germany [1]. I've heard somebody say UK (London) is comparable to NY, which is a 2nd tier US VC market. 2. Tax incentives: Early-stage investors get significant tax reliefs under the UK government's Enterprise Investment Scheme (S)EIS. They made a big difference when fundraising, almost every startup I know has used EIS. I see nothing of the sort in Germany. 3. Policy backing: My understanding is that around 2010 the startup sector was seen as a strategic investment both by UK and local governments, in particular the City of London. Which lead to the establishment of Tech City ('Silicon roundabout') as we know it today. In Germany, on the other hand, most politicians aren't aware of how bad the current state is. Of course there is a lip service, but in a way the success of the 'Mittelstand' (SMEs) never made it a necessity to foster startups. 4. Culture: One factor is risk aversion, for certain, but also how Germans perceive innovation plays a big role. I would describe it as an incremental view of innovation rather than disruptive technology, like a new type of car paint that dries 30% faster. I'm not a pessimist at all, but that's really one of the things that makes me bearish for Germany going forward. [1] https://news.crunchbase.com/news/european-venture-report-vc-dollars-rise-in-2019/ https://news.crunchbase.com/news/european-venture-report-vc-...

bzb6 6y ago

Why do you think the UK left? The EU is not much more than a regulatory burden to them.

raverbashing 6y ago
London didn't vote for Brexit (especially not The City) and a lot of founders and employees wouldn't be there if it wasn't for the EU.
M2Ys4U 6y ago
The places where you'll find the unicorns based all voted Remain...

sparrc 6y ago

Where are you getting these numbers from? I only see 2 for Spain and 9 for Germany...

LittlePeter 6y ago
You are right... everything has been inflated by a factor of two: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25192244 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25192244