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As a Brit, when I was raising the seed round for my startup, UK and European VCs would consistently try to haggle you down on price while the American VC's were

As a Brit, when I was raising the seed round for my startup, UK and European VCs would consistently try to haggle you down on price while the American VC's were exclusively focussed on trying to figure out whether this could be a billion dollar business or not (in the end we raised a $5m seed led by Spark, and have done extremely well and raised more since). The UK lost Deep Mind - which could have been OpenAI!! -- to Google. I think part of the issue is cultural - the level of ambition in the UK is just small compared to the US. Individual founders like Demis or Tom Blomfield may have it but recruiting enough talent with the ambition levels of early Palantir or OpenAI employees is so hard because there are so few. Instead, a lot of extremely smart people in the UK would rather get the 'safe' job at Google, or McKinsey than the 'this will never work but can you imagine how cool it would be if it did' job at a startup. There are probably political reasons as well. Unfortunately the UK has not been well governed for 20 years or so, and hence economic outcomes as a whole have been abysmal.

bell-cot 2y ago
> Unfortunately the UK has not been... 20 years, or 112 years? Consider just how far the UK's place in the world fell between 1911 (George V ascended to the throne of the global superpower; his Royal Navy was launching 2 to 4 new capital ships per year) and 1948 (3 years after "winning" WWII - and basics such as food, clothing, and gasoline were still strictly rationed).
- r_thambapillai 2y ago
  Very true, although I suppose a significant fraction of the decline at that time might be a result of the end of the Empire, which given that there are simply no such successful Empires anywhere in the world anymore was almost certainly inevitable. By comparison, the performance of the UK in the last 20 years vs the US or the Nordics is a singular tragedy.
  - roenxi 2y ago
    > there are simply no such successful Empires anywhere in the world anymore There is the US not-an-Empire [0] though, that'll probably count when the history books reflect on the present era. WWI/II can very easily be interpreted as a transition of power away from incompetent British leadership (indeed, European monarchies - the change pre- post- WWI is striking) towards more capable US-based leadership. It isn't clear UK public ever really grappled how insufficient their leadership theory is. Their acceptance of poor performers over the last 20+ years has been striking although it is mirrored by low standards in the US. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_military_installations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_military_inst...
    - insane_dreamer 2y ago
      I think it was more about economics than competency. By the end of WW2 the UK was bankrupt and completely ruined economically, while the US had become the industrial powerhouse of the world thanks to abundant resources, manpower, and the fact that the war largely took place far from its borders (a few tiny islands notwithstanding). By the end of WW2 the US owned nearly all the gold that Europe previously owned which led to the US Dollar the worldwide reserve currency.
      - roenxi 2y ago
        If the UK wants to pretend that WW2 (or, indeed, WW1) happened like a shock storm, unforseen and unforseeable, with no involvement from them they are welcome to do that. The result of that attitude was that the UK parliament was only allowed to govern a small and increasingly irrelevant island with lousy weather and steadily worsening economic prospects instead of a global empire. There is a lesson for people governing global empires here - don't allow major wars to blow up on your borders. Or, ideally, anywhere. Maybe spend some time promoting peace and prosperity. Train the diplomats in diplomacy. You'll notice that the US solution at the end of WWII was completely different to the European settlement at the end of WWI. And the US approach to warring was a lot more staid than the UK's. These are basic matters of competence.
        2y ago
  - bell-cot 2y ago
    I'd say ruin - in great part from the costs of two World Wars - came before the end of the Empire. Wikipedia notes of WWII - "Britain was left essentially bankrupt, with insolvency only averted in 1946 after the negotiation of a US$3.75 billion loan from the United States". Vs. the Partition and dissolution of the British Raj were in 1947.
    - pfdietz 2y ago
      Most of the world's gold was in the US by the end of the war. The flow of gold into the US starting in 1933 is thought to be why the Great Depression was moderating so much there and then: the money supply was inflating.
  - graemep 2y ago
    Not greatly different from Germany or Nordic countries, or EU average, and better than France or Japan. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-worldbank?tab=slope&time=2002..latest&country=USA~DEU~GBR~FRA~JPN~IND~OWID_EU27~SWE~NOR~DNK~FIN https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-worldbank?... Its a Europe wide problem.
    - blitzar 2y ago
      Switching to % change - EU beats US. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-worldbank?tab=slope&stackMode=relative&time=2002..latest&country=USA~DEU~GBR~FRA~JPN~IND~OWID_EU27~SWE~NOR~DNK~FIN https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-worldbank?...
      - graemep 2y ago
        That is a better graph, but the conclusion I would draw is much the same. The EU gets a boost from the inclusion of Eastern European economies that have been fast growing from a lower base. If you compare the US and the UK to the four biggest EU economies, the US is doing best by far, and the UK is doing better than three and worse than one: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-worldbank?tab=slope&stackMode=relative&time=2002..latest&country=USA~DEU~GBR~FRA~ITA~ESP https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-worldbank?...
    - marcinzm 2y ago
      If that's adjusted for cost of living and inflation then isn't that hiding the actual economic changes? If GDP falls then cost of living would likely go down and vice versa.
- throwaway48476 2y ago
  They spent the wealth of empire fighting a war and achieved what exactly? They would have been better off losing. Crazy when you think about it.
  - WillPostForFood 2y ago
    They would have been better off losing. Crazy when you think about it. Better if they had let the Nazis won and ruled the UK? WTF?
    - throwaway48476 2y ago
      That was never going to happen. And the Nazis didn't exist in 1914.
      - twixfel 2y ago
        Nah the Germans were militaristic arseholes in 1914 too.
  - mike_hearn 2y ago
    Just so everyone is clear, the Nazi plan for what to do with an occupied Britain was to enslave large parts of population, to completely erase Britain as a country, and they also considered mass deportations of the native population. "Better off losing" is not really supportable under any reading of the historical evidence.
    - hackandthink 2y ago
      Hitler admired the British Empire. https://www.quora.com/What-was-Hitlers-opinion-of-the-British-Empire https://www.quora.com/What-was-Hitlers-opinion-of-the-Britis...
- adityamwagh 2y ago
  UK also had a lot of colonies that contributed to their growth.
  - dukeyukey 2y ago
    It's thought that most European colonies actually stymied growth in their home countries.
- nine_k 2y ago
  Yes, "winning" as in not being completely destroyed, occupied, and maybe even enslaved. Check out what Poland looked like in 1940 when it lost, or what Germany looked like in 1945, or, well, 1949. USSR was also terribly battered by WWII, and its leadership was not highly competent either; I'd say both parameters were much worse than UK's. But it managed to remain a large empire with a high economic potential, and UK could not.
  - Xmd5a 2y ago
    >USSR was also terribly battered by WWII, and its leadership was not highly competent either The USSR moved all its industry eastward, as the German army advanced, waiting for the very last moment to do so. Quite an incredible feat that allowed them to beat Germany at industrial efficiency and secure victory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evacuation_in_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evacuation_in_the_Soviet_Union Here's an analysis of the mechanisms underpinning this kind of achievement according to a Russian mathematician: >One of the fathers of synergetics, G. Haken, in his article [9], recalls the following story from the Ancient Testament: “It was the custom in a certain community for the guests to bring their own wine to weddings, and all the wines were mixed before drinking. Then one guest thought that if all the other guests would bring wine, he would not notice when drinking if he brought water instead. Then the other guests did the same, and as the result they all drank water.” >In this example, two situations are possible. In the first, everyone contributes his share, giving his equal part, and everyone will equally profit. In the second, each strives for the most advantageous conditions for himself. And this can lead to the kind of result mentioned in the story. >Two different arithmetics correspond to these two situations. One arithmetic is the usual one, the one accepted in society, ensuring “equal rights,” and based on the principle “the same for everyone,” for instance in the social utopia described by Owen. In a more paradoxal form, this principle is expressed in M. Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita by Sharikov: “Grab everything and divide it up.” >The aspiration to this arithmetic is quite natural for mankind, but if society is numerous and non-homogeneous, then it can hardly be ruled according to this principle. The ideology of complete equality and equal rights, which unites people and inspires to perform heroic deeds, can effectively work only in extremal situations and for short periods of time. During these periods such an organization of society can be very effective. An example is our own country, which, after the destructions and huge losses of World War II, rapidly became stronger than before the war. >One of the authors personally witnessed such an atmosphere of psychological unity when he was working on the construction of the sarcophagus after the catastrophe of the Chernobyl nuclear facility. The forces of the scientists involved were so strongly polarized 2 that the output of each of them was increased tenfold as compared to that in normal times. During that period it was not unusual for us to call each other in the middle of the night. >Nevertheless such heroism, self-denial, and altruism, when each wants to give (and not to take) as much as possible, is an extremal situation, a system that can function only for short intervals of time. Here the psychological aspect is crucial, everyone is possessed by the same idea — to save whatever may be saved at any cost. But the psychology of the masses, which was studied by the outstanding Russian emigr´e sociologist Pitirim Sorokin, is presently studied only outside of Russia. Source: https://arxiv.org/pdf/0806.4164 https://arxiv.org/pdf/0806.4164 Now the question is: to which extent and in which ways does this apply to the subject we're discussing.
- edm0nd 2y ago
  Exactly this. Great Britain colonized huge parts of the globe and had an empire. They were kings of trade and the world. Now they are just a surveillance nanny state and hollow shell of their former self.
  - vixen99 2y ago
    I regularly see opinion pieces in the British Press advising young Brits to get out. In 2022 one writer wrote 'Britain is fed up, bitter, and practically broke – and it’s all going to get worse' and indeed it still is and getting worse. One basic problem: an unsustainable welfare and health system and overwrought bureaucracy. Today I learn that one major bank is considering leaving the UK in view of excessive 'red tape'.
    - nobodywillobsrv 2y ago
      The welfare state is horrid. Democracy is largely dead. The judiciary and bank of England are unaccountable and unassailable. The Fabians have won.
    - Peanuts99 2y ago
      > Today I learn that one major bank is considering leaving the UK in view of excessive 'red tape Or failure to compete with startup banks...
    - _hao 2y ago
      The UK has no shortage of good banks. Santander can fuck off for being worse than their competition.
      - tonyedgecombe 2y ago
        Yes, it's difficult to overstate quite how bad their customer service is. They actually lost a big cheque I deposited.
- tomcam 2y ago
  Sugar was rationed in England until 1953, and meat until 1954. Pretty rugged times.
- jampekka 2y ago
  Interestingly people, especially poor people, were better nourished during the WW 2 rationing than before the war. Also e.g. universal healthcare was establised post-war. Is number of war ships, or billionaires, a good measure for a country? https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/food-thought-rationing-second-world-war/ https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/food-thought-rationing-...
  - graemep 2y ago
    I have not drilled down into the data, but I think it highly likely poor people did not benefit. I have read that the Empire was a fiscal net negative. That was offset by it being a free market area with policies that favoured the UK, the benefits from that went primarily to a small minority.
eru 2y ago
> The UK lost Deep Mind - which could have been OpenAI!! -- to Google. Deepmind is still in the UK. And more, including foreign, bidders driving up prices for acquisitions and investments, will lead to more people making the jump.
- chii 2y ago
  > Deepmind is still in the UK they dont mean location, they mean ownership of the equity.
  - eru 2y ago
    Yes, but what does it matter? Google has equity owners all over the world, but we still treat them as an American company, too.
    - chii 2y ago
      i think you will find the majority owner of google are american. And i'm not saying it matters - i'm saying that the OP is lamenting that the UK is no longer owning innovative companies.
    - porker 2y ago
      Profit goes out of the country, reducing investment and rich UK people to invest in new UK companies. It's the same problem with many of our companies being sold to foreign investors: profits are taken outside the country (as we did to other countries in the 19th century and earlier) so our labour enriches other countries while our country gets poorer.
      - chii 2y ago
        > labour enriches other countries while our country gets poorer. in reality, the UK isn't poorer than before. It is about the same - no growth. It is only poorer when compared to the US's growth. One's labour, when being paid market rates, does not make one's country poorer. And those profits from said labour was paid for by the acquitition of the capital - money was invested. So in essense, the "poorness" that the UK feels right now is not a result of these companies getting foreign ownership, but the UK gov't lack of industrial policy and investment. Brexit is the last straw probably.
maeil 2y ago
> Instead, a lot of extremely smart people in the UK would rather get the 'safe' job at Google, or McKinsey than the 'this will never work but can you imagine how cool it would be if it did' job at a startup. This isn't just an EU thing, for what it's worth. The US is the outlier.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- itake 2y ago
  Even internally in the USA, you will see the full spectrum of EU-like VCs to Sand Hill-like VCs.
  - maeil 2y ago
    Correct, but the tail of VC being fat is unique to the US. Pretty much the rest of the world is like the UK in all but a miniscule percentage preferring stability rather than moonshots.
    - itake 2y ago
      My point is that the VCs located in a few specific zip codes prefer moonshots. The vast majority of VCs in the remainder of the USA prefer stability. You don't hear about the small capital firms investing in boring slow growing companies, because they are boring and slow growing.
    - dukeyukey 2y ago
      WOrth ponting out the UK is 3rd worldwide in VC tech investment. The US is the outlier, but if you think the UK is bad you haven't seen shit.
      - piltdownman 2y ago
        Yeah but if it's not a moonshot SaaS factory they don't want to hear the reality. For example, Ireland's state VC - Enterprise Ireland - ranked first in the world of venture capital investors by deal count in 2020 by Pitchbook. The average size of the deal compared to a Series A was laughable in context, but the ethos is there.
mrtksn 2y ago
Completely agree, the problem in Europe is not regulations or anything like that - it is a mindset issue. It is one of things that europeans can learn from Americans. My hypothesis is that this is a combination of old money and class consciousness. In other words, the rich are risk averse because all they care is preserving their wealth and the working class don’t believe and can’t even imagine that more is possible.
- bowsamic 2y ago
  Well it’s not necessarily a good thing. In Europe we are traditionalists and we retain a lot of spirit (Geist) by not striving for pure progress
  - mrtksn 2y ago
    Yes, there are advantages of a stable and well functioning systems that don't have disruptors and we indeed benefit of it as having good lives but unfortunately this can't last as those who go hard on progress and tear down everything and rebuilding again will eventually get ahead on everything and won't let us just be as we now see with US billionaires having impact over Europe. Americans feel more pain but are also rewarded, Europe has no option but to become progressive - otherwise tere will be no more Europe and the Americans and Chinese will make us adopt their ways. Oh, BTW, America is also struggling. The latest political developments are an attempt to change course - they are trying to become a bit more like Europe with the race and class based politics holding roots. They say they are anti-regulation anti-discrimination(of whites specifically) but the core MAGA movement is all about putting barriers and preserving old ways for the benefit of a subset of people. Americans are too in soul searching. Their MAGA literally means fixing what is no longer great but their demands are actually quite conservative and they already begin falling off with their accelerations partners.
    - Cumpiler69 2y ago
      >Yes, there are advantages of a stable and well functioning systems Current EU is definitely not a stable and well functioning system. Look at economic conditions, political outcomes, illegal immigration, wealth inequality, societal and political trust, homelessness rates, birth rates, free speech suppression, welfare austerity, etc Everything has been going downhill since the 2008 crash. It's a powder keg. >they are trying to become a bit more like Europe with the race and class based politics holding roots. What are you on about? Europe doesn't have much race based politics, that's a thing America keeps pushing.
bboygravity 2y ago
Isn't it also an income issue? I'm from EU and would be totally open to move to UK if there was an opportunity to make more there while working on something cool. But there simply isn't? Then there are US startups where I could likely make 2 or 3x what I make in EU or UK. So why would talent every consider moving to the UK to build a startup in 2025 anyway?
- bowsamic 2y ago
  Also even the safe job wage in the UK is perhaps only 2/3 of in Germany for example
  - Cumpiler69 2y ago
    What do you mean by that?
    - zipy124 2y ago
      He means a safe wage job pays a third less in the UK than Germany. Not sure if it's true so let's look at some stats: Germany median for software engineer: €66,000 United kingdom median: €58,000 Note depending on source, these numbers both vary broadly within the same range, but with Germany salaries being about 10-15% higher on most sources, so nowhere near the figure claimed.
      - bowsamic 2y ago
        10-15% is not hugely far from 1/3 ;)
        SkiFire13 2y ago
        You said that UK's salaries are 2/3 of the Germany ones, but this doesn't mean that the Germany ones are 1/3 more, they are 1/2 (or 50%) more. That's pretty far from 10-15%.
        2y ago
zmgsabst 2y ago
Why not hire US consultants to get from starting to mid-sized? I’m curious, if you think the issue is cultural.
- kdmtctl 2y ago
  Yep. Bring Musk aboard. /s
CalRobert 2y ago
I lived in Ireland for 10 years. It's not the same as the UK but there _is_ cultural overlap. Every time you shared a new idea with _anyone_, even things as simple as "I want to buy a site and build a house on it", the first thing you hear is how that's a bad idea, you will fail, it will never work, and you need to leave it to "professionals". Not to mention the whole idea that trying to be successful is "notions" and should be sneered at. Edit: To compare - Me: "I want to build a house" Irish friends: "That's a bad idea, you'll never make it work, you'll go bankrupt and it will kill you..." California/Oregon friends: "Fuck yeah I'll bring a nailgun"
- porker 2y ago
  (UK resident, born and bread) Yes this drives me absolutely mad. I'm a poor risk taker and can come up with all those reasons something's a bad idea, but when I've made up my mind to take the risk I want supportive people around not people who would rather you never tried anything outside their "comfort zone". And the problem runs in families. This is not therapy but every time I talked to my parents about an idea it would be dammed with faint praise or I'd be told I'm wasting my time. It's taken 20 years to work out that the more they dissed an idea is the better it actually was.
  - CalRobert 2y ago
    What nobody tells you is that doing nothing is also very risky.
    - _hao 2y ago
      You could argue that doing nothing is actually more risky! Nothing stays static in nature! You move/change or you die!
- tonyedgecombe 2y ago
  >"That's a bad idea, you'll never make it work, you'll go bankrupt and it will kill you..." There is an element of truth to that, self build projects seem to go about was well as the typical software project.
Guthur 2y ago
Circa 80% of world trade is done in USD, and the US literally creates it out of thin air, and it will all bleed into the economy somehow, someway. Without sovereign protection you just can not compete with that, ever. It's really that simple. Simply look at China they may export loads of goods but it's predominantly priced in USD, and what do they do with all that excise USD, the only thing they can do, buy US debt. It's truly perverse. Or look at every UK company that was bought up with those very same magic dollars.
gazchop 2y ago
Quite frankly, it's cultural and the thing I hear a lot is simply: fuck that for a job! I could quite happily get on fine at one of those big American style startups but I don't get excited about hype, I don't have the work culture it demands and I don't have a price on my soul. I'd rather earn a lot less, have extreme stability, have better family time and balance. On top of that there's something tasteless and unethical about a lot of the big startups. Do they really bring good things to society? Do I really want to be part of that? If I can walk away with half the money, live a modest life and stand with my principles intact, I will take that over twice the money. I don't think this is political at all. It's not a race either and we have no innate responsibility to build things like this.
- secondcoming 2y ago
  The part about that plan that worries me is the ageism in software. I'm mid-forties and it's something I think about a lot for when I have to get a new job. Anyone young should go make as much money as possible, as early as possible, so they can have the same outlook you do in later life.
  - gazchop 2y ago
    Not really had any problems with that and I'm older than you are. And quite frankly I didn't have any money really until I hit about 35. I just lived within my means.
ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago
Same. I grew up in Canada and my country didn't fund my dreams. The US did. It is a shame and the amount of loss that Canada has every single year because the dumb VCs who exist in Canada cannot look at that big picture. For example, right now there is not a single VC in Canada who does large pre seed / seed investments based on an idea and the founding team. In the US you can get a 1 million cheque within a week. That is the real reason Canada is failing on a macro scale. @dang hopefully I have kept this well balanced.
baxtr 2y ago
I agree. But I wonder what’s the underlying cause? Europe wasn’t like this for centuries. What is the cause of this mindset?
- nobodywillobsrv 2y ago
  Taxation. Socialism.
- fmajid 2y ago
  In the UK’s case, feudalism is alive and well. The entire tax system is designed so parasites descended from thugs like the Duke of Westminster or Charles of Battenberg-Saxe-Coburg und Gotha never have to pay property taxes on their extensive land holdings.
  - inglor_cz 2y ago
    That was worse in the 18th and 19th century, and yet people were willing to ground new corporations back then. I think the answer is something the left won't like - we (Europe) are killing ourselves with bureaucracy, often environmental bureaucracy. A road to hell paved with good intentions. The documentation to the Lower Thames Crossing, a planned highway tunnel, already exceeds 360 000 pages. This is just crazy. https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/lower-thames-crossing-timeline-of-the-proposed-uks-longest-road-tunnel-08-10-2024/ https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/lower-thames-crossin...
    - baxtr 2y ago
      I think you’re right that was way worse before. But on the bureaucracy: I don’t think that’s the real cause it’s rather a symptome. The cause must be something related to expected rewards and opportunity costs.
    - blitzar 2y ago
      The people who claim they didn't do something because of "bureaucracy" or "regulation" were never going to do anything anyway. It is a generic handwavey excuse for losers who never tried.
graemep 2y ago
> As a Brit, when I was raising the seed round for my startup, UK and European VCs would consistently try to haggle you down on price while the American VC's were exclusively focussed on trying to figure out whether this could be a billion dollar business or not ( Yes we have many comments on HN talking about how harmful the US VCs attitude is because they force good businesses into choosing between being unicorns and not getting funding. I do not know the truth of it, but clearly its not obvious. > Unfortunately the UK has not been well governed for 20 years or so, and hence economic outcomes as a whole have been abysmal. I commented on this earlier. The UK's economic outcomes have been similar to comparable European economies (like Germany) and better than some (like France). Whatever the problem is, its not unique to the UK: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42766107 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42766107 I do not think the UK is well run, but I think the west in general is badly run. Poorly thought out regulation, short termism in both politics and business, a focus on metrics subject to Goodhart's and Campbell's laws, and a poor understanding of the rest of the work (leading to bad foreign policy).
- PakistaniDenzel 2y ago
  > The UK's economic outcomes have been similar to comparable European economies (like Germany) and better than some (like France) Who says those countries were well governed though? IMO they are all run by idealogical morons
  - graemep 2y ago
    I agree they were also badly governed - that is my point.
- paganel 2y ago
  For the last 20 or 25 years the UK has been coasting on the North Sea oil&gas money, I'd say that worked up until the early 2010s, and then on the almost complete financialization of its economy and on selling out whatever pieces of the economy could still be sold out (that includes part of their beloved NHS). But that can only work for so long and is beneficial in the medium to long-term for a very limited number of people (basically the owners of said financial capital), at some point you have to produce some real wealth, wealth produced from real stuff via resources of the Earth + human ingenuity and, yes, + human work.
zipy124 2y ago
The safe job earns much much more unless you are the founder. Equity pay for start-ups in the UK for devs is very poor, or non-existent, and the base salary also very poor (and not even guaranteed to be paid if they go under). You can instead work for a company like nvidia, google or meta and get a huge base, and nice equity on top. If UK startups paid equity to their devs, I would work a lot harder when I've worked at them, but startups require working hard and long hours and if I've got no skin in the game, what incetive do I have to make sure the company is successful.
- shawabawa3 2y ago
  I've been shocked in my career in the UK by just how much founders will rip people off on equity In basically every UK startup I've worked at they've done 1 or all of the below: 1. Offered options in numbers with no valuation/percentage of ownership. "We offer you 40000 stock options!". When asked to clarify numbers, they delay and never tell you. Inevitably they have a value of a few pence each 2. Withdraw options unilaterally when you leave the company with no option to exercise 3. Never get round to filling in the paperwork so you never actually receive them I was _shocked_ when i worked for my first US startup and they just...gave me the options. And I could exercise them whenever I wanted. And they expired 10 years after I left the company
troupo 2y ago
> The UK lost Deep Mind - which could have been OpenAI!! -- to Google. You're focusing on one success story out of thousands. 90%, or more, of US startups only exist to be sold to the highest bidder or to coast indefinitely long in infinite investor money, and never turn a profit. There's still expectation in Europe at large that your company should have an actual business plan and a path to profitability.
- blitzar 2y ago
  + DeepMind and its founders are the examples of founders who beat the game
- dukeyukey 2y ago
  I don't think thats's true in the UK as much. Loads of startups here follow the US model.
bjackman 2y ago
Not just in startups. Feels like Arm lost almost their whole software division over a few years. This was an extremely stable high-profit-margin business, and it was obvious that it was uncompetitive on the labour market. But something in the culture stopped management from increasing salaries, so everyone buggered off to foreign companies. I hear they fixed it eventually but seems like an unnecessary loss.
aa-jv 2y ago
>There are probably political reasons as well. There are definitely political - and ultimately, military-industrial - reasons for this. The UK is deeply, deeply embedded in the Anglo-centric 5-eyes criminal superstructure, and plays a huge part in the subversion of human rights at immense scale around the world, that this criminal entity commits every second of the day. The spook factor bleeds into every technological advancement which occurs in the UK, from GCHQ outwards, like a kraken with deep, deep tentacles. I've worked with multiple UK-based startups which, as soon as they start to gain traction in international waters/markets, immediately becomes the target for GCHQ embedding/plants. This kills the startup. Until the British people start prosecuting their war criminals and seeks justice for the immense human rights abuses that occur, every millisecond of every day, as a result of their out of control military-industrial oppression apparatus, there is simply no hope for UK technological industry. The world sees this, even if the people of the UK do not - and routes around it, accordingly. Nobody really wants to work with UK-based technology groups, knowing that they are liable for immediate corruption the moment their technology becomes relevant to, say, the people of Brazil, or Africa, or China.
- pjc50 2y ago
  > immediately becomes the target for GCHQ embedding/plants. I'd be interested to hear more about this.
  - aa-jv 2y ago
    Read the Snowden revelations, its all in there. Wikileaks, too. GCHQ is a wholesale human rights-abrogating apparatus like no other.
fadesibert 2y ago
Brit / American checking in and agreeing. My first startup was a B2B SaaS and hiring in the UK was fantastic - the arbitrage was just silly. Experienced software developers (10+ years) @ GBP 70k / year - and that was close to non-finance full-market pay. The same people were averaging $250k in NYC / SF. And yet, the UK hires were often better off after all expenses than the US hires. Largely due to housing being slightly cheaper (other posters have pointed out, London is on par with SF / NY - the big difference being London expands, NYC and SF are both "islands" - yes SF is a peninsula, but commuting up 280 or 101 is not a pleasant experienced). Also, even offering private healthcare (BUPA) - the UK hires were cheaper. I'm in my late 30s and reasonably healthy - my all-in, gold-plated UK policy was GBP 2k / year - I was at $2,000 / month in the US. *However* - salaries in the UK are unsustainably low. Three reasons: [1] BOMAD - The Bank of Mom and Dad (parents paying / lending the deposit for a house so the mortgage is at a low rate) is effectively exhausted. This means that current entrants into the housing market are either renting (which is nearly as expensive as NYC, especially after the inflationary / interest rate jump), or saving to "buy" a house (I enclose in quotes because at a 95% mortgage you don't own much of your house). [2] Professional salaries outside of finance are way too low. My fiancee works in a highly skilled, professional field and her salary in 2024 was, in nominal terms the same as my starting salary in NYC 17 years ago working for a large investment bank IN THE BACK OFFICE - where salaries were decidedly blue-collar. My unproven hypothesis is that the UK professional world is still largely geared towards those with alternative assets, private incomes (especially high-prestige non-professional jobs, especially around politics). This makes it impossible to compete with US venture backed startups, even post-ZIRP, because the offer is always going to be better. And yet that private-income driven base has largely been eroded through capital gains, inheritance tax and general downward social mobility (or, perhaps, less doom-and-gloom - averaging towards the center. The difference in wealth and income between the upper-middle class and the lower-middle class has narrowed significantly). [3] There has been over the last 5-7 years significant negative messaging and tax policy against economic success. A confiscatory top-tax band, an erosion of a "job perks" friendly tax regime and a political climate that is very anti-success, even prior to the labour govt (largely started at the same time, though perhaps not by, Theresa May's 2015 speech and focus on "Just about managing"). VC in the UK is hard, largely because the majority (though by no means all) VCs are focused on aping mid-market pension managers. Their ambition is limited to businesses that already work (and yet anything transformative by definition does not work yet) - and are interested mostly in post-revenue companies with linear or lightly superlinear growth. This, IMNSHO, is largely caused by the fact that, given state expenditure and the corp and personal tax burden, there simply isn't enough capital for US style VC - the portfolio approach requires capital to absorb failures. Most VCs here cannot afford failure. The closest we get is the EIS / SEIS tax policy, which allows the offsetting of losses in failed businesses (by the equivalent of Accredited Investors) - as well as a friendly Cap Gains treatment of successes. But these are largely made as common stock investments by individuals - and limited to a very small scale. Which brings me to my final point - the SAFE note is not only not ubiquitous here, it's rare. Even pre-seed investments are either common stock or (more rarely) convertible notes. This requires a level of diligence (even on small tickets) that make capital formation incredibly burdensome. There's absolutely a path to resolving this - but the UK first has to make a political and cultural decision to embrace startup-led GDP growth, which is has not yet made.
jakey_bakey 2y ago
Been there before, and wrote about the experience - https://blog.jacobstechtavern.com/p/yes-actually-means-no-the-curious https://blog.jacobstechtavern.com/p/yes-actually-means-no-th... US vs UK investors are night and day. UK investors only want to see profitability to protect their cautious capital
946789987649 2y ago
Going through our pre-seed round atm and it is incredibly frustrating. I haven't raised in the US so it may be similar there, but the amount of time wasted for a relatively small amount of money is painful. I'm also not sure what the government can do. SEIS/EIS is a great scheme, but the SEIS limit of £250k feels almost too small to do anything meaningful, and EIS funds are generally later stage or re-investment from SEIS.
Shinchy 2y ago
I agree and it's a real shame, we used to spearhead some of the most initiative companies in technology (Acorn, Arm, Sinclair, Sage, Deepmind). Now it's just a shadow, while places like Silicon Valley or Stockholm have jetted ahead the UK just sort of stagnated - it's kind of embarrassing.
constantcrying 2y ago
European countries do not want start-ups to exist. The barriers e.g. Germany puts up make it extremely difficult for any start up to exist. Not only is the bureaucracy difficult, the labor laws make it very difficult to hire and compensate talent. Germany wants innovation to be done by large corporations, not by start ups.
marcinzm 2y ago
My view is that the US startup culture exists because of wealth inequality at the $1-$20m net worth level. Wealth inequality is socially incentivized at that level because of the lack of a decent social safety net. If you don't save money then at 50 you may end up homeless on the street due to bad luck. But if you don't get bad luck then you end up at 50 with a large amount of money that you don't have much to do with. So you start investing some in riskier things because who cares. US founders not from wealthy backgrounds can often get $500k from friends and family. I doubt those in the UK can do so. There's massive massive social costs due to this in the US so be careful what you wish for.
petesergeant 2y ago
I was also trying to raise recently. It's interesting to me that the UK has an absolutely incredibly generous startup investment scheme (SEIS)[0], and still hasn't managed to make this work. SEIS is ludicrously generous, and should make getting funding a breeze in the UK, and yet ... somehow it isn't. 0: If a few hurdles are jumped through, then an investor who gives you £250k can get £125k relief on their income tax (not what they'd have paid on £125k, literally the whole £125k), and then claim a further 50% back of the remainder from the government if you go bust.
yobbo 2y ago
Set UK/EU tech salaries at maybe 30%-50% of US, and factor in higher taxes. Then integrate over 40 years, resulting in a number from which investments can be drawn. Add to the corresponding US number all the profitable exits from previous ventures. There's just so much more US investment capital available. It can be argued that a responsibility falls on EU equity companies, pension funds, and so on, but they do not make seed investments.
mbesto 2y ago
As a former founder (formerly living in London) trying to raise VC funding in London this is exactly what my experience. I once did a pitch contest and they required we put together a business plan with financials. You want me to...what? Who on earth can read a pro forma for a pre-revenue SaaS business and say "ah yes this is worth of investment because this pro forma looks great". London is all about banking and it shows.

bell-cot 2y ago

> Unfortunately the UK has not been... 20 years, or 112 years? Consider just how far the UK's place in the world fell between 1911 (George V ascended to the throne of the global superpower; his Royal Navy was launching 2 to 4 new capital ships per year) and 1948 (3 years after "winning" WWII - and basics such as food, clothing, and gasoline were still strictly rationed).

r_thambapillai 2y ago
Very true, although I suppose a significant fraction of the decline at that time might be a result of the end of the Empire, which given that there are simply no such successful Empires anywhere in the world anymore was almost certainly inevitable. By comparison, the performance of the UK in the last 20 years vs the US or the Nordics is a singular tragedy.
- roenxi 2y ago
  > there are simply no such successful Empires anywhere in the world anymore There is the US not-an-Empire [0] though, that'll probably count when the history books reflect on the present era. WWI/II can very easily be interpreted as a transition of power away from incompetent British leadership (indeed, European monarchies - the change pre- post- WWI is striking) towards more capable US-based leadership. It isn't clear UK public ever really grappled how insufficient their leadership theory is. Their acceptance of poor performers over the last 20+ years has been striking although it is mirrored by low standards in the US. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_military_installations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_military_inst...
  - insane_dreamer 2y ago
    I think it was more about economics than competency. By the end of WW2 the UK was bankrupt and completely ruined economically, while the US had become the industrial powerhouse of the world thanks to abundant resources, manpower, and the fact that the war largely took place far from its borders (a few tiny islands notwithstanding). By the end of WW2 the US owned nearly all the gold that Europe previously owned which led to the US Dollar the worldwide reserve currency.
    - roenxi 2y ago
      If the UK wants to pretend that WW2 (or, indeed, WW1) happened like a shock storm, unforseen and unforseeable, with no involvement from them they are welcome to do that. The result of that attitude was that the UK parliament was only allowed to govern a small and increasingly irrelevant island with lousy weather and steadily worsening economic prospects instead of a global empire. There is a lesson for people governing global empires here - don't allow major wars to blow up on your borders. Or, ideally, anywhere. Maybe spend some time promoting peace and prosperity. Train the diplomats in diplomacy. You'll notice that the US solution at the end of WWII was completely different to the European settlement at the end of WWI. And the US approach to warring was a lot more staid than the UK's. These are basic matters of competence.
      - 2y ago
- bell-cot 2y ago
  I'd say ruin - in great part from the costs of two World Wars - came before the end of the Empire. Wikipedia notes of WWII - "Britain was left essentially bankrupt, with insolvency only averted in 1946 after the negotiation of a US$3.75 billion loan from the United States". Vs. the Partition and dissolution of the British Raj were in 1947.
  - pfdietz 2y ago
    Most of the world's gold was in the US by the end of the war. The flow of gold into the US starting in 1933 is thought to be why the Great Depression was moderating so much there and then: the money supply was inflating.
- graemep 2y ago
  Not greatly different from Germany or Nordic countries, or EU average, and better than France or Japan. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-worldbank?tab=slope&time=2002..latest&country=USA~DEU~GBR~FRA~JPN~IND~OWID_EU27~SWE~NOR~DNK~FIN https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-worldbank?... Its a Europe wide problem.
  - blitzar 2y ago
    Switching to % change - EU beats US. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-worldbank?tab=slope&stackMode=relative&time=2002..latest&country=USA~DEU~GBR~FRA~JPN~IND~OWID_EU27~SWE~NOR~DNK~FIN https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-worldbank?...
    - graemep 2y ago
      That is a better graph, but the conclusion I would draw is much the same. The EU gets a boost from the inclusion of Eastern European economies that have been fast growing from a lower base. If you compare the US and the UK to the four biggest EU economies, the US is doing best by far, and the UK is doing better than three and worse than one: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-worldbank?tab=slope&stackMode=relative&time=2002..latest&country=USA~DEU~GBR~FRA~ITA~ESP https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/gdp-per-capita-worldbank?...
  - marcinzm 2y ago
    If that's adjusted for cost of living and inflation then isn't that hiding the actual economic changes? If GDP falls then cost of living would likely go down and vice versa.
throwaway48476 2y ago
They spent the wealth of empire fighting a war and achieved what exactly? They would have been better off losing. Crazy when you think about it.
- WillPostForFood 2y ago
  They would have been better off losing. Crazy when you think about it. Better if they had let the Nazis won and ruled the UK? WTF?
  - throwaway48476 2y ago
    That was never going to happen. And the Nazis didn't exist in 1914.
    - twixfel 2y ago
      Nah the Germans were militaristic arseholes in 1914 too.
- mike_hearn 2y ago
  Just so everyone is clear, the Nazi plan for what to do with an occupied Britain was to enslave large parts of population, to completely erase Britain as a country, and they also considered mass deportations of the native population. "Better off losing" is not really supportable under any reading of the historical evidence.
  - hackandthink 2y ago
    Hitler admired the British Empire. https://www.quora.com/What-was-Hitlers-opinion-of-the-British-Empire https://www.quora.com/What-was-Hitlers-opinion-of-the-Britis...
adityamwagh 2y ago
UK also had a lot of colonies that contributed to their growth.
- dukeyukey 2y ago
  It's thought that most European colonies actually stymied growth in their home countries.
nine_k 2y ago
Yes, "winning" as in not being completely destroyed, occupied, and maybe even enslaved. Check out what Poland looked like in 1940 when it lost, or what Germany looked like in 1945, or, well, 1949. USSR was also terribly battered by WWII, and its leadership was not highly competent either; I'd say both parameters were much worse than UK's. But it managed to remain a large empire with a high economic potential, and UK could not.
- Xmd5a 2y ago
  >USSR was also terribly battered by WWII, and its leadership was not highly competent either The USSR moved all its industry eastward, as the German army advanced, waiting for the very last moment to do so. Quite an incredible feat that allowed them to beat Germany at industrial efficiency and secure victory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evacuation_in_the_Soviet_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evacuation_in_the_Soviet_Union Here's an analysis of the mechanisms underpinning this kind of achievement according to a Russian mathematician: >One of the fathers of synergetics, G. Haken, in his article [9], recalls the following story from the Ancient Testament: “It was the custom in a certain community for the guests to bring their own wine to weddings, and all the wines were mixed before drinking. Then one guest thought that if all the other guests would bring wine, he would not notice when drinking if he brought water instead. Then the other guests did the same, and as the result they all drank water.” >In this example, two situations are possible. In the first, everyone contributes his share, giving his equal part, and everyone will equally profit. In the second, each strives for the most advantageous conditions for himself. And this can lead to the kind of result mentioned in the story. >Two different arithmetics correspond to these two situations. One arithmetic is the usual one, the one accepted in society, ensuring “equal rights,” and based on the principle “the same for everyone,” for instance in the social utopia described by Owen. In a more paradoxal form, this principle is expressed in M. Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita by Sharikov: “Grab everything and divide it up.” >The aspiration to this arithmetic is quite natural for mankind, but if society is numerous and non-homogeneous, then it can hardly be ruled according to this principle. The ideology of complete equality and equal rights, which unites people and inspires to perform heroic deeds, can effectively work only in extremal situations and for short periods of time. During these periods such an organization of society can be very effective. An example is our own country, which, after the destructions and huge losses of World War II, rapidly became stronger than before the war. >One of the authors personally witnessed such an atmosphere of psychological unity when he was working on the construction of the sarcophagus after the catastrophe of the Chernobyl nuclear facility. The forces of the scientists involved were so strongly polarized 2 that the output of each of them was increased tenfold as compared to that in normal times. During that period it was not unusual for us to call each other in the middle of the night. >Nevertheless such heroism, self-denial, and altruism, when each wants to give (and not to take) as much as possible, is an extremal situation, a system that can function only for short intervals of time. Here the psychological aspect is crucial, everyone is possessed by the same idea — to save whatever may be saved at any cost. But the psychology of the masses, which was studied by the outstanding Russian emigr´e sociologist Pitirim Sorokin, is presently studied only outside of Russia. Source: https://arxiv.org/pdf/0806.4164 https://arxiv.org/pdf/0806.4164 Now the question is: to which extent and in which ways does this apply to the subject we're discussing.
edm0nd 2y ago
Exactly this. Great Britain colonized huge parts of the globe and had an empire. They were kings of trade and the world. Now they are just a surveillance nanny state and hollow shell of their former self.
- vixen99 2y ago
  I regularly see opinion pieces in the British Press advising young Brits to get out. In 2022 one writer wrote 'Britain is fed up, bitter, and practically broke – and it’s all going to get worse' and indeed it still is and getting worse. One basic problem: an unsustainable welfare and health system and overwrought bureaucracy. Today I learn that one major bank is considering leaving the UK in view of excessive 'red tape'.
  - nobodywillobsrv 2y ago
    The welfare state is horrid. Democracy is largely dead. The judiciary and bank of England are unaccountable and unassailable. The Fabians have won.
  - Peanuts99 2y ago
    > Today I learn that one major bank is considering leaving the UK in view of excessive 'red tape Or failure to compete with startup banks...
  - _hao 2y ago
    The UK has no shortage of good banks. Santander can fuck off for being worse than their competition.
    - tonyedgecombe 2y ago
      Yes, it's difficult to overstate quite how bad their customer service is. They actually lost a big cheque I deposited.
tomcam 2y ago
Sugar was rationed in England until 1953, and meat until 1954. Pretty rugged times.
jampekka 2y ago
Interestingly people, especially poor people, were better nourished during the WW 2 rationing than before the war. Also e.g. universal healthcare was establised post-war. Is number of war ships, or billionaires, a good measure for a country? https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/food-thought-rationing-second-world-war/ https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/food-thought-rationing-...
- graemep 2y ago
  I have not drilled down into the data, but I think it highly likely poor people did not benefit. I have read that the Empire was a fiscal net negative. That was offset by it being a free market area with policies that favoured the UK, the benefits from that went primarily to a small minority.

eru 2y ago

> The UK lost Deep Mind - which could have been OpenAI!! -- to Google. Deepmind is still in the UK. And more, including foreign, bidders driving up prices for acquisitions and investments, will lead to more people making the jump.

chii 2y ago
> Deepmind is still in the UK they dont mean location, they mean ownership of the equity.
- eru 2y ago
  Yes, but what does it matter? Google has equity owners all over the world, but we still treat them as an American company, too.
  - chii 2y ago
    i think you will find the majority owner of google are american. And i'm not saying it matters - i'm saying that the OP is lamenting that the UK is no longer owning innovative companies.
  - porker 2y ago
    Profit goes out of the country, reducing investment and rich UK people to invest in new UK companies. It's the same problem with many of our companies being sold to foreign investors: profits are taken outside the country (as we did to other countries in the 19th century and earlier) so our labour enriches other countries while our country gets poorer.
    - chii 2y ago
      > labour enriches other countries while our country gets poorer. in reality, the UK isn't poorer than before. It is about the same - no growth. It is only poorer when compared to the US's growth. One's labour, when being paid market rates, does not make one's country poorer. And those profits from said labour was paid for by the acquitition of the capital - money was invested. So in essense, the "poorness" that the UK feels right now is not a result of these companies getting foreign ownership, but the UK gov't lack of industrial policy and investment. Brexit is the last straw probably.

maeil 2y ago

> Instead, a lot of extremely smart people in the UK would rather get the 'safe' job at Google, or McKinsey than the 'this will never work but can you imagine how cool it would be if it did' job at a startup. This isn't just an EU thing, for what it's worth. The US is the outlier.

deleted 2y ago
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itake 2y ago
Even internally in the USA, you will see the full spectrum of EU-like VCs to Sand Hill-like VCs.
- maeil 2y ago
  Correct, but the tail of VC being fat is unique to the US. Pretty much the rest of the world is like the UK in all but a miniscule percentage preferring stability rather than moonshots.
  - itake 2y ago
    My point is that the VCs located in a few specific zip codes prefer moonshots. The vast majority of VCs in the remainder of the USA prefer stability. You don't hear about the small capital firms investing in boring slow growing companies, because they are boring and slow growing.
  - dukeyukey 2y ago
    WOrth ponting out the UK is 3rd worldwide in VC tech investment. The US is the outlier, but if you think the UK is bad you haven't seen shit.
    - piltdownman 2y ago
      Yeah but if it's not a moonshot SaaS factory they don't want to hear the reality. For example, Ireland's state VC - Enterprise Ireland - ranked first in the world of venture capital investors by deal count in 2020 by Pitchbook. The average size of the deal compared to a Series A was laughable in context, but the ethos is there.

mrtksn 2y ago

Completely agree, the problem in Europe is not regulations or anything like that - it is a mindset issue. It is one of things that europeans can learn from Americans. My hypothesis is that this is a combination of old money and class consciousness. In other words, the rich are risk averse because all they care is preserving their wealth and the working class don’t believe and can’t even imagine that more is possible.

bowsamic 2y ago
Well it’s not necessarily a good thing. In Europe we are traditionalists and we retain a lot of spirit (Geist) by not striving for pure progress
- mrtksn 2y ago
  Yes, there are advantages of a stable and well functioning systems that don't have disruptors and we indeed benefit of it as having good lives but unfortunately this can't last as those who go hard on progress and tear down everything and rebuilding again will eventually get ahead on everything and won't let us just be as we now see with US billionaires having impact over Europe. Americans feel more pain but are also rewarded, Europe has no option but to become progressive - otherwise tere will be no more Europe and the Americans and Chinese will make us adopt their ways. Oh, BTW, America is also struggling. The latest political developments are an attempt to change course - they are trying to become a bit more like Europe with the race and class based politics holding roots. They say they are anti-regulation anti-discrimination(of whites specifically) but the core MAGA movement is all about putting barriers and preserving old ways for the benefit of a subset of people. Americans are too in soul searching. Their MAGA literally means fixing what is no longer great but their demands are actually quite conservative and they already begin falling off with their accelerations partners.
  - Cumpiler69 2y ago
    >Yes, there are advantages of a stable and well functioning systems Current EU is definitely not a stable and well functioning system. Look at economic conditions, political outcomes, illegal immigration, wealth inequality, societal and political trust, homelessness rates, birth rates, free speech suppression, welfare austerity, etc Everything has been going downhill since the 2008 crash. It's a powder keg. >they are trying to become a bit more like Europe with the race and class based politics holding roots. What are you on about? Europe doesn't have much race based politics, that's a thing America keeps pushing.

bboygravity 2y ago

Isn't it also an income issue? I'm from EU and would be totally open to move to UK if there was an opportunity to make more there while working on something cool. But there simply isn't? Then there are US startups where I could likely make 2 or 3x what I make in EU or UK. So why would talent every consider moving to the UK to build a startup in 2025 anyway?

bowsamic 2y ago
Also even the safe job wage in the UK is perhaps only 2/3 of in Germany for example
- Cumpiler69 2y ago
  What do you mean by that?
  - zipy124 2y ago
    He means a safe wage job pays a third less in the UK than Germany. Not sure if it's true so let's look at some stats: Germany median for software engineer: €66,000 United kingdom median: €58,000 Note depending on source, these numbers both vary broadly within the same range, but with Germany salaries being about 10-15% higher on most sources, so nowhere near the figure claimed.
    - bowsamic 2y ago
      10-15% is not hugely far from 1/3 ;)
      - SkiFire13 2y ago
        You said that UK's salaries are 2/3 of the Germany ones, but this doesn't mean that the Germany ones are 1/3 more, they are 1/2 (or 50%) more. That's pretty far from 10-15%.
        2y ago

zmgsabst 2y ago

Why not hire US consultants to get from starting to mid-sized? I’m curious, if you think the issue is cultural.

kdmtctl 2y ago
Yep. Bring Musk aboard. /s

CalRobert 2y ago

I lived in Ireland for 10 years. It's not the same as the UK but there _is_ cultural overlap. Every time you shared a new idea with _anyone_, even things as simple as "I want to buy a site and build a house on it", the first thing you hear is how that's a bad idea, you will fail, it will never work, and you need to leave it to "professionals". Not to mention the whole idea that trying to be successful is "notions" and should be sneered at. Edit: To compare - Me: "I want to build a house" Irish friends: "That's a bad idea, you'll never make it work, you'll go bankrupt and it will kill you..." California/Oregon friends: "Fuck yeah I'll bring a nailgun"

porker 2y ago
(UK resident, born and bread) Yes this drives me absolutely mad. I'm a poor risk taker and can come up with all those reasons something's a bad idea, but when I've made up my mind to take the risk I want supportive people around not people who would rather you never tried anything outside their "comfort zone". And the problem runs in families. This is not therapy but every time I talked to my parents about an idea it would be dammed with faint praise or I'd be told I'm wasting my time. It's taken 20 years to work out that the more they dissed an idea is the better it actually was.
- CalRobert 2y ago
  What nobody tells you is that doing nothing is also very risky.
  - _hao 2y ago
    You could argue that doing nothing is actually more risky! Nothing stays static in nature! You move/change or you die!
tonyedgecombe 2y ago
>"That's a bad idea, you'll never make it work, you'll go bankrupt and it will kill you..." There is an element of truth to that, self build projects seem to go about was well as the typical software project.

Guthur 2y ago

Circa 80% of world trade is done in USD, and the US literally creates it out of thin air, and it will all bleed into the economy somehow, someway. Without sovereign protection you just can not compete with that, ever. It's really that simple. Simply look at China they may export loads of goods but it's predominantly priced in USD, and what do they do with all that excise USD, the only thing they can do, buy US debt. It's truly perverse. Or look at every UK company that was bought up with those very same magic dollars.

gazchop 2y ago

Quite frankly, it's cultural and the thing I hear a lot is simply: fuck that for a job! I could quite happily get on fine at one of those big American style startups but I don't get excited about hype, I don't have the work culture it demands and I don't have a price on my soul. I'd rather earn a lot less, have extreme stability, have better family time and balance. On top of that there's something tasteless and unethical about a lot of the big startups. Do they really bring good things to society? Do I really want to be part of that? If I can walk away with half the money, live a modest life and stand with my principles intact, I will take that over twice the money. I don't think this is political at all. It's not a race either and we have no innate responsibility to build things like this.

secondcoming 2y ago
The part about that plan that worries me is the ageism in software. I'm mid-forties and it's something I think about a lot for when I have to get a new job. Anyone young should go make as much money as possible, as early as possible, so they can have the same outlook you do in later life.
- gazchop 2y ago
  Not really had any problems with that and I'm older than you are. And quite frankly I didn't have any money really until I hit about 35. I just lived within my means.

ilrwbwrkhv 2y ago

Same. I grew up in Canada and my country didn't fund my dreams. The US did. It is a shame and the amount of loss that Canada has every single year because the dumb VCs who exist in Canada cannot look at that big picture. For example, right now there is not a single VC in Canada who does large pre seed / seed investments based on an idea and the founding team. In the US you can get a 1 million cheque within a week. That is the real reason Canada is failing on a macro scale. @dang hopefully I have kept this well balanced.

baxtr 2y ago

I agree. But I wonder what’s the underlying cause? Europe wasn’t like this for centuries. What is the cause of this mindset?

nobodywillobsrv 2y ago
Taxation. Socialism.
fmajid 2y ago
In the UK’s case, feudalism is alive and well. The entire tax system is designed so parasites descended from thugs like the Duke of Westminster or Charles of Battenberg-Saxe-Coburg und Gotha never have to pay property taxes on their extensive land holdings.
- inglor_cz 2y ago
  That was worse in the 18th and 19th century, and yet people were willing to ground new corporations back then. I think the answer is something the left won't like - we (Europe) are killing ourselves with bureaucracy, often environmental bureaucracy. A road to hell paved with good intentions. The documentation to the Lower Thames Crossing, a planned highway tunnel, already exceeds 360 000 pages. This is just crazy. https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/lower-thames-crossing-timeline-of-the-proposed-uks-longest-road-tunnel-08-10-2024/ https://www.newcivilengineer.com/latest/lower-thames-crossin...
  - baxtr 2y ago
    I think you’re right that was way worse before. But on the bureaucracy: I don’t think that’s the real cause it’s rather a symptome. The cause must be something related to expected rewards and opportunity costs.
  - blitzar 2y ago
    The people who claim they didn't do something because of "bureaucracy" or "regulation" were never going to do anything anyway. It is a generic handwavey excuse for losers who never tried.

graemep 2y ago

> As a Brit, when I was raising the seed round for my startup, UK and European VCs would consistently try to haggle you down on price while the American VC's were exclusively focussed on trying to figure out whether this could be a billion dollar business or not ( Yes we have many comments on HN talking about how harmful the US VCs attitude is because they force good businesses into choosing between being unicorns and not getting funding. I do not know the truth of it, but clearly its not obvious. > Unfortunately the UK has not been well governed for 20 years or so, and hence economic outcomes as a whole have been abysmal. I commented on this earlier. The UK's economic outcomes have been similar to comparable European economies (like Germany) and better than some (like France). Whatever the problem is, its not unique to the UK: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42766107 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42766107 I do not think the UK is well run, but I think the west in general is badly run. Poorly thought out regulation, short termism in both politics and business, a focus on metrics subject to Goodhart's and Campbell's laws, and a poor understanding of the rest of the work (leading to bad foreign policy).

PakistaniDenzel 2y ago
> The UK's economic outcomes have been similar to comparable European economies (like Germany) and better than some (like France) Who says those countries were well governed though? IMO they are all run by idealogical morons
- graemep 2y ago
  I agree they were also badly governed - that is my point.
paganel 2y ago
For the last 20 or 25 years the UK has been coasting on the North Sea oil&gas money, I'd say that worked up until the early 2010s, and then on the almost complete financialization of its economy and on selling out whatever pieces of the economy could still be sold out (that includes part of their beloved NHS). But that can only work for so long and is beneficial in the medium to long-term for a very limited number of people (basically the owners of said financial capital), at some point you have to produce some real wealth, wealth produced from real stuff via resources of the Earth + human ingenuity and, yes, + human work.

zipy124 2y ago

The safe job earns much much more unless you are the founder. Equity pay for start-ups in the UK for devs is very poor, or non-existent, and the base salary also very poor (and not even guaranteed to be paid if they go under). You can instead work for a company like nvidia, google or meta and get a huge base, and nice equity on top. If UK startups paid equity to their devs, I would work a lot harder when I've worked at them, but startups require working hard and long hours and if I've got no skin in the game, what incetive do I have to make sure the company is successful.

shawabawa3 2y ago
I've been shocked in my career in the UK by just how much founders will rip people off on equity In basically every UK startup I've worked at they've done 1 or all of the below: 1. Offered options in numbers with no valuation/percentage of ownership. "We offer you 40000 stock options!". When asked to clarify numbers, they delay and never tell you. Inevitably they have a value of a few pence each 2. Withdraw options unilaterally when you leave the company with no option to exercise 3. Never get round to filling in the paperwork so you never actually receive them I was _shocked_ when i worked for my first US startup and they just...gave me the options. And I could exercise them whenever I wanted. And they expired 10 years after I left the company

troupo 2y ago

> The UK lost Deep Mind - which could have been OpenAI!! -- to Google. You're focusing on one success story out of thousands. 90%, or more, of US startups only exist to be sold to the highest bidder or to coast indefinitely long in infinite investor money, and never turn a profit. There's still expectation in Europe at large that your company should have an actual business plan and a path to profitability.

blitzar 2y ago
+ DeepMind and its founders are the examples of founders who beat the game
dukeyukey 2y ago
I don't think thats's true in the UK as much. Loads of startups here follow the US model.

bjackman 2y ago

Not just in startups. Feels like Arm lost almost their whole software division over a few years. This was an extremely stable high-profit-margin business, and it was obvious that it was uncompetitive on the labour market. But something in the culture stopped management from increasing salaries, so everyone buggered off to foreign companies. I hear they fixed it eventually but seems like an unnecessary loss.

aa-jv 2y ago

>There are probably political reasons as well. There are definitely political - and ultimately, military-industrial - reasons for this. The UK is deeply, deeply embedded in the Anglo-centric 5-eyes criminal superstructure, and plays a huge part in the subversion of human rights at immense scale around the world, that this criminal entity commits every second of the day. The spook factor bleeds into every technological advancement which occurs in the UK, from GCHQ outwards, like a kraken with deep, deep tentacles. I've worked with multiple UK-based startups which, as soon as they start to gain traction in international waters/markets, immediately becomes the target for GCHQ embedding/plants. This kills the startup. Until the British people start prosecuting their war criminals and seeks justice for the immense human rights abuses that occur, every millisecond of every day, as a result of their out of control military-industrial oppression apparatus, there is simply no hope for UK technological industry. The world sees this, even if the people of the UK do not - and routes around it, accordingly. Nobody really wants to work with UK-based technology groups, knowing that they are liable for immediate corruption the moment their technology becomes relevant to, say, the people of Brazil, or Africa, or China.

pjc50 2y ago
> immediately becomes the target for GCHQ embedding/plants. I'd be interested to hear more about this.
- aa-jv 2y ago
  Read the Snowden revelations, its all in there. Wikileaks, too. GCHQ is a wholesale human rights-abrogating apparatus like no other.

fadesibert 2y ago

Brit / American checking in and agreeing. My first startup was a B2B SaaS and hiring in the UK was fantastic - the arbitrage was just silly. Experienced software developers (10+ years) @ GBP 70k / year - and that was close to non-finance full-market pay. The same people were averaging $250k in NYC / SF. And yet, the UK hires were often better off after all expenses than the US hires. Largely due to housing being slightly cheaper (other posters have pointed out, London is on par with SF / NY - the big difference being London expands, NYC and SF are both "islands" - yes SF is a peninsula, but commuting up 280 or 101 is not a pleasant experienced). Also, even offering private healthcare (BUPA) - the UK hires were cheaper. I'm in my late 30s and reasonably healthy - my all-in, gold-plated UK policy was GBP 2k / year - I was at $2,000 / month in the US. *However* - salaries in the UK are unsustainably low. Three reasons: [1] BOMAD - The Bank of Mom and Dad (parents paying / lending the deposit for a house so the mortgage is at a low rate) is effectively exhausted. This means that current entrants into the housing market are either renting (which is nearly as expensive as NYC, especially after the inflationary / interest rate jump), or saving to "buy" a house (I enclose in quotes because at a 95% mortgage you don't own much of your house). [2] Professional salaries outside of finance are way too low. My fiancee works in a highly skilled, professional field and her salary in 2024 was, in nominal terms the same as my starting salary in NYC 17 years ago working for a large investment bank IN THE BACK OFFICE - where salaries were decidedly blue-collar. My unproven hypothesis is that the UK professional world is still largely geared towards those with alternative assets, private incomes (especially high-prestige non-professional jobs, especially around politics). This makes it impossible to compete with US venture backed startups, even post-ZIRP, because the offer is always going to be better. And yet that private-income driven base has largely been eroded through capital gains, inheritance tax and general downward social mobility (or, perhaps, less doom-and-gloom - averaging towards the center. The difference in wealth and income between the upper-middle class and the lower-middle class has narrowed significantly). [3] There has been over the last 5-7 years significant negative messaging and tax policy against economic success. A confiscatory top-tax band, an erosion of a "job perks" friendly tax regime and a political climate that is very anti-success, even prior to the labour govt (largely started at the same time, though perhaps not by, Theresa May's 2015 speech and focus on "Just about managing"). VC in the UK is hard, largely because the majority (though by no means all) VCs are focused on aping mid-market pension managers. Their ambition is limited to businesses that already work (and yet anything transformative by definition does not work yet) - and are interested mostly in post-revenue companies with linear or lightly superlinear growth. This, IMNSHO, is largely caused by the fact that, given state expenditure and the corp and personal tax burden, there simply isn't enough capital for US style VC - the portfolio approach requires capital to absorb failures. Most VCs here cannot afford failure. The closest we get is the EIS / SEIS tax policy, which allows the offsetting of losses in failed businesses (by the equivalent of Accredited Investors) - as well as a friendly Cap Gains treatment of successes. But these are largely made as common stock investments by individuals - and limited to a very small scale. Which brings me to my final point - the SAFE note is not only not ubiquitous here, it's rare. Even pre-seed investments are either common stock or (more rarely) convertible notes. This requires a level of diligence (even on small tickets) that make capital formation incredibly burdensome. There's absolutely a path to resolving this - but the UK first has to make a political and cultural decision to embrace startup-led GDP growth, which is has not yet made.

jakey_bakey 2y ago

Been there before, and wrote about the experience - https://blog.jacobstechtavern.com/p/yes-actually-means-no-the-curious https://blog.jacobstechtavern.com/p/yes-actually-means-no-th... US vs UK investors are night and day. UK investors only want to see profitability to protect their cautious capital

946789987649 2y ago

Going through our pre-seed round atm and it is incredibly frustrating. I haven't raised in the US so it may be similar there, but the amount of time wasted for a relatively small amount of money is painful. I'm also not sure what the government can do. SEIS/EIS is a great scheme, but the SEIS limit of £250k feels almost too small to do anything meaningful, and EIS funds are generally later stage or re-investment from SEIS.

Shinchy 2y ago

I agree and it's a real shame, we used to spearhead some of the most initiative companies in technology (Acorn, Arm, Sinclair, Sage, Deepmind). Now it's just a shadow, while places like Silicon Valley or Stockholm have jetted ahead the UK just sort of stagnated - it's kind of embarrassing.

constantcrying 2y ago

European countries do not want start-ups to exist. The barriers e.g. Germany puts up make it extremely difficult for any start up to exist. Not only is the bureaucracy difficult, the labor laws make it very difficult to hire and compensate talent. Germany wants innovation to be done by large corporations, not by start ups.

marcinzm 2y ago

My view is that the US startup culture exists because of wealth inequality at the $1-$20m net worth level. Wealth inequality is socially incentivized at that level because of the lack of a decent social safety net. If you don't save money then at 50 you may end up homeless on the street due to bad luck. But if you don't get bad luck then you end up at 50 with a large amount of money that you don't have much to do with. So you start investing some in riskier things because who cares. US founders not from wealthy backgrounds can often get $500k from friends and family. I doubt those in the UK can do so. There's massive massive social costs due to this in the US so be careful what you wish for.

petesergeant 2y ago

I was also trying to raise recently. It's interesting to me that the UK has an absolutely incredibly generous startup investment scheme (SEIS)[0], and still hasn't managed to make this work. SEIS is ludicrously generous, and should make getting funding a breeze in the UK, and yet ... somehow it isn't. 0: If a few hurdles are jumped through, then an investor who gives you £250k can get £125k relief on their income tax (not what they'd have paid on £125k, literally the whole £125k), and then claim a further 50% back of the remainder from the government if you go bust.

yobbo 2y ago

Set UK/EU tech salaries at maybe 30%-50% of US, and factor in higher taxes. Then integrate over 40 years, resulting in a number from which investments can be drawn. Add to the corresponding US number all the profitable exits from previous ventures. There's just so much more US investment capital available. It can be argued that a responsibility falls on EU equity companies, pension funds, and so on, but they do not make seed investments.

mbesto 2y ago

As a former founder (formerly living in London) trying to raise VC funding in London this is exactly what my experience. I once did a pitch contest and they required we put together a business plan with financials. You want me to...what? Who on earth can read a pro forma for a pre-revenue SaaS business and say "ah yes this is worth of investment because this pro forma looks great". London is all about banking and it shows.