Yep, as a brit abroad I tend to think the brits end up on the side of excessive tightfistedness too often for their own good. Their approach also does not scale

Yep, as a brit abroad I tend to think the brits end up on the side of excessive tightfistedness too often for their own good. Their approach also does not scale up well, since they optimize at too small a size. One big upside of UK business culture that I don't see much of anywhere else is once your proverbial two guys in a shed are making something useful then people do come out of the woodwork to help. The US seems to do that through investments, but the UK it's often customers deliberately paying more than they might strictly have to. I think everyone that has seen success of this form has stories of customers showing up and writing cheques bigger than the amounts asked for.