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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

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!

_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!