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> The app will continue I really doubt that after less than 5 years it will be rolled into Via. Is there any thriving UK startups still around acquiring US co

> The app will continue I really doubt that after less than 5 years it will be rolled into Via. Is there any thriving UK startups still around acquiring US companies? It seems that the news I see is US company acquires UK startup when I don't see the other way round. Really makes the UK startup scene just a european HQ for US companies at a discount.

nicoburns 4y ago
JustEat (which bought GrubHub and now seems to have merged with the Dutch takeaway.com) is the only example I can think of.
eloisant 4y ago
Waze isn't from the UK, but it still exists 10 years after being acquired by Google.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
dzonga 4y ago
compared to Israel, yeah UK tech scene seems to be underperforming. there's massive technical talent in the uk, favorable laws and common language with the us. I think what let's the uk down, is a lot of places lose focus, talent is lost to consulting shops, bureaucracy slows a lot of things down. a counter point is look at game studios - uk seems to be delivering there. it's just other products where uk is underperforming. uk i.e london should be ahead of places like austin in terms of # of startups
- _dain_ 4y ago
  London is a really unattractive place when you consider salary vs housing affordability. Most of the high tech salary goes straight into the pocket of landlords. And you can forget buying. But London is where most of the innovative high-paying firms are. So tech workers are in a bind: move to London for a nominally high-paying tech job but get fucking hosed on rent and travel costs, or stay in the regions and work in a lower paid, less interesting firm. There isn't much real difference to your standard of living. It's not just the absolute level of rent either; it also goes up faster. People don't want that kind of liability, you need a raise just to stay in place, and raises aren't forthcoming lately. And it's not easy to get a London-tier salary while working remotely from rural Yorkshire or something. They've been tamping down hard on that kind of thing. The housing market is rigged for boomers and it's strangling Britain's growth. Forget freedom of movement with Europe; I'd like freedom of movement inside my own fucking country first. (And all of the above sounds similar to NYC and SF -- it is, but London's salary upside is nowhere near as high as those places. And Americans have several big metropoles to choose from, we only have the one.)
  - iamben 4y ago
    I don't think the UK particularly encourages startups either. It's all very well saying you want to be a "science and technology superpower" but everything feels like buzzword bingo - quantum! AI! Corp tax is going up, entrepreneur's tax relief went from 10m to 1m... I'm just ranting. I don't know the answer, I don't know what they should be doing. But there's a ton of people doing cool things (or trying to!) and absolutely as you say, it's a whole lot harder to take any risks when London costs as much as it does and bills and expenses are doing what they're doing.
  - notahacker 4y ago
    At some point more startups have got to be tempted by Birmingham unless they really need to network with the City. Has the big city stuff except glamour, close enough to London when the sales or fundraising effort needs to be there, and even the entry level devs can afford their own flat.
    - _dain_ 4y ago
      it has a population over million and doesn't even have a metro. and it's ugly as fuck. I don't know how it works out for startup economics but I wouldn't move there. there's also our sad little "Silicon Fen" around Cambridge, again rubbish because of housing affordability and lack of good transport links. it's a national tragedy that there isn't a direct railway link between Oxford and Cambridge (thanks Dr Beeching).
    - jack_riminton 4y ago
      "except glamour" lol, understatement of the millennium I say this as someone that used to live and work in London (and spent a small time living in Birmingham as a child), Birmingham has a HUGE way to go to convince anyone like me to live there It may be big, but attractive it is not
      - notahacker 4y ago
        Glamour is relative though. It's even more of an understatement to say Brum is unlikely to be a tourist mecca, but startup salary London isn't Belgravia and the Queen and the West End, it's renting a room in a bog standard Victorian house shared with four strangers in Clapham and cramming onto the Tube for half an hour to get into a Wework whilst dreaming of an exit big enough to own 25% of your own home. You might actually feel more glamorous with your own place in a posh suburb with an overground or a shiny city centre flat even if that city is Birmingham, and the format of the Wework doesn't change much. If you plonked Old Street roundabout onto the edge of Birmingham's inner ring road it'd fit in seamlessly, and for the many hipsters that love the er... bohemian nature of Shoreditch's grimy canals and rail underpasses, sketchy tower blocks and yuppie flats next to crumbling graffiti-covered Victorian buildings turned into bars to sell young trendy people expensive drinks.... just wait until they see how much of that lot Brum has!

nicoburns 4y ago

JustEat (which bought GrubHub and now seems to have merged with the Dutch takeaway.com) is the only example I can think of.

eloisant 4y ago

Waze isn't from the UK, but it still exists 10 years after being acquired by Google.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

dzonga 4y ago

compared to Israel, yeah UK tech scene seems to be underperforming. there's massive technical talent in the uk, favorable laws and common language with the us. I think what let's the uk down, is a lot of places lose focus, talent is lost to consulting shops, bureaucracy slows a lot of things down. a counter point is look at game studios - uk seems to be delivering there. it's just other products where uk is underperforming. uk i.e london should be ahead of places like austin in terms of # of startups

_dain_ 4y ago
London is a really unattractive place when you consider salary vs housing affordability. Most of the high tech salary goes straight into the pocket of landlords. And you can forget buying. But London is where most of the innovative high-paying firms are. So tech workers are in a bind: move to London for a nominally high-paying tech job but get fucking hosed on rent and travel costs, or stay in the regions and work in a lower paid, less interesting firm. There isn't much real difference to your standard of living. It's not just the absolute level of rent either; it also goes up faster. People don't want that kind of liability, you need a raise just to stay in place, and raises aren't forthcoming lately. And it's not easy to get a London-tier salary while working remotely from rural Yorkshire or something. They've been tamping down hard on that kind of thing. The housing market is rigged for boomers and it's strangling Britain's growth. Forget freedom of movement with Europe; I'd like freedom of movement inside my own fucking country first. (And all of the above sounds similar to NYC and SF -- it is, but London's salary upside is nowhere near as high as those places. And Americans have several big metropoles to choose from, we only have the one.)
- iamben 4y ago
  I don't think the UK particularly encourages startups either. It's all very well saying you want to be a "science and technology superpower" but everything feels like buzzword bingo - quantum! AI! Corp tax is going up, entrepreneur's tax relief went from 10m to 1m... I'm just ranting. I don't know the answer, I don't know what they should be doing. But there's a ton of people doing cool things (or trying to!) and absolutely as you say, it's a whole lot harder to take any risks when London costs as much as it does and bills and expenses are doing what they're doing.
- notahacker 4y ago
  At some point more startups have got to be tempted by Birmingham unless they really need to network with the City. Has the big city stuff except glamour, close enough to London when the sales or fundraising effort needs to be there, and even the entry level devs can afford their own flat.
  - _dain_ 4y ago
    it has a population over million and doesn't even have a metro. and it's ugly as fuck. I don't know how it works out for startup economics but I wouldn't move there. there's also our sad little "Silicon Fen" around Cambridge, again rubbish because of housing affordability and lack of good transport links. it's a national tragedy that there isn't a direct railway link between Oxford and Cambridge (thanks Dr Beeching).
  - jack_riminton 4y ago
    "except glamour" lol, understatement of the millennium I say this as someone that used to live and work in London (and spent a small time living in Birmingham as a child), Birmingham has a HUGE way to go to convince anyone like me to live there It may be big, but attractive it is not
    - notahacker 4y ago
      Glamour is relative though. It's even more of an understatement to say Brum is unlikely to be a tourist mecca, but startup salary London isn't Belgravia and the Queen and the West End, it's renting a room in a bog standard Victorian house shared with four strangers in Clapham and cramming onto the Tube for half an hour to get into a Wework whilst dreaming of an exit big enough to own 25% of your own home. You might actually feel more glamorous with your own place in a posh suburb with an overground or a shiny city centre flat even if that city is Birmingham, and the format of the Wework doesn't change much. If you plonked Old Street roundabout onto the edge of Birmingham's inner ring road it'd fit in seamlessly, and for the many hipsters that love the er... bohemian nature of Shoreditch's grimy canals and rail underpasses, sketchy tower blocks and yuppie flats next to crumbling graffiti-covered Victorian buildings turned into bars to sell young trendy people expensive drinks.... just wait until they see how much of that lot Brum has!