9 ms·

Young Brits in Silicon Valley

91 points by kul 12y ago

georgespencer 12y ago
Support network in London is great, because people want to see a huge success story. But actually that's not what people need most (IMO). They need mentorship and support from people who have done it before. We were lucky to share our office with a YC company when we raised our Series A. I must have bugged one of the founders every day for advice on terms and which partners were cool. But now we're all just scaling like crazy and there isn't that shift up the chain towards new mentors who have gone from e.g. £10m p.a. to £100m p.a. revenue. Those people are rare overall, but concentrated in the Valley.
- jeffwass 12y ago
  Did you start in London and move to SV? Where was your London office located that you felt had a good support network?
  - georgespencer 12y ago
    No we are happily still in London and UK only. We were in Royal London House with GoCardless and Smarkets. They were (and probably are still) about 1.5 yrs ahead of us in many ways. We also are lucky to have an early investor who is on the board of Zopa. Most founders I know who have progressed for a few years have at least one or two founders under their wing informally.
    - askinakhan 12y ago
      The UK will never be able to foster the same atmosphere as Silicon Valley. We're a conservative bunch and always will be; it's almost embedded in our culture. This isn't a problem because it means we're more prudent when it comes to investing hence why we rarely get VC/Angel investment for startups unless they have an already successful business model. The best way to put it is: In the UK we mostly invest in 1 - n whereas in Silicon Valley they also invest in 0 - 1. After all, it's the birthplace of true capitalism.
      - madaxe_again 12y ago
        This is true, and it's still most readily manifested in the way that entrepreneurs are viewed and treated in this country - as crazy outcasts, who are best avoided, as you might catch the horrendous disease of independent thought.
        jarek 12y ago
        This really isn't the case in London in my experience See: the hundreds of people who attended Silicon Milkroundabout yesterday
        spacecowboy_lon 12y ago
        Unfortuntly I think CP Snows two nations is still intact and its not the technical/sceintific side that has the whip hand - in the UK techies are regarded as greasy engineers not fit to press our nose against the window (to quote tom jones) to look at the other professions.
        madaxe_again 12y ago
        That's the one. Same thing as causes my parents (and myself) to tell people that I'm unemployed, as it's easier to explain than "I run a successful startup with multi-million pound net profit" - as they then realise it's one of these technology things, and that puts me on the same rung as, say, a waste-water engineer. Actually, they're up a few rungs, as they deal with "real" things. Techies are all viewed as "the IT guy", and are there to be blamed for anything and everything, and to be belittled at every opportunity. "You wouldn't know what it's like to run a business!", says the guy who runs a pair of holiday lets, to the guy who employs 50 people and powers £1bn+ of commerce p.a. Being involved in the web in the UK is akin to having social leprosy - the only other people who will accept you or even talk to you without peering down their noses at you are other people with leprosy - sorry - other web professionals. This extends even to investors and VCs, as their view over here is that entrepreneurs/technologists are a necessary evil that you have to deal with as part of the process of making money by magic.
- smikhanov 12y ago
  [deleted]
  - georgespencer 12y ago
    Weird. Emailed you for details.
irremediable 12y ago
The London startup scene is interesting. I think it's fair to say startups here are usually less ambitious than in SF or the US in general. But they also tend to be more practical -- there's less pie-in-the-sky thinking. I've seen firsthand a surprisingly large number of startups that make a profit from day one. And a lot of startups that were funded from nonwealthy founders' savings. My impression is that we do stuff on a smaller scale, but it tends to be more reliable.
- eli_gottlieb 12y ago
  Funny. The only London startup I've heard of was ridiculously ambitious, and has largely been succeeding, since it came out of academic research. They did manage to get bought by Google, at the very least.
  - irremediable 12y ago
    I'm sure there are plenty of exceptions. I think my description is representative overall, but YMMV. Of course, if they're the only London startup you've heard of, maybe there's a bias. Crazy ambition can garner a lot of PR, especially when it succeeds. :P
  - spacecowboy_lon 12y ago
    ever here of boo :-) for the younger hn readers that was a fashion startup based in London that crashed and burned hard back in the 2000's
    - softdev12 12y ago
      there's a book by the founder of boo.com that tells the whole story. well worth a read.
      - spacecowboy_lon 12y ago
        mm must htry an dfind a copy I remember seeing the boo crew preenting at a first tuesday and was shocked how poor they where. I copuld have picked 3 first level managers from BT at rendom and woould have done a better job
GolfyMcG 12y ago
> from nobody to millionaire in weeks This is what's wrong with media today...
bengale246 12y ago
I keep getting the urge to hop on a plane to SV (from the UK) and see what happens. Wish it was that easy.
- EliRivers 12y ago
  If you do, when they ask you what you're there for, just say tourist. Don't say tourist going to SV to look at it. They'll assume you're there to work illegally and it won't go well for you.
  - yarper 12y ago
    I think what he's saying is that most brits don't have the opportunity to go over there and work, the visas rules appear to be tightening up if anything. That and most of us are unwilling to drop what we have on the off chance that we'll get a visa to go work in SV. Especially now that we can legally work anywhere in the EU without a visa..
jackgavigan 12y ago
IMO, the key difference between London and Silicon Valley is the "Pay it Forward" attitude prevalent in the Bay Area - people are prepared to help you out without any expectation that they'll receive anything in return. In London, there's more of a "What's in it for me?" attitude. One of the reasons I started organising the LDN2SFO trips was to expose more Brit entrepreneurs to the collaborative culture in the Bay Area in the hope that they would bring it back to London.
yc1010 12y ago
Well its nice to see article like this as opposed to "Young Brits in Syria"
zeeshanm 12y ago
OK - in NY - as an entrepreneur, my days are a lot unsexier than these guy. Wake up, read HN, write code, talk to customers, write more code, read HN, read programming books to learn, write more code. May be it's the Valley vibe where being an entrepreneur is like cloud9.

91 points by kul 12y ago

Support network in London is great, because people want to see a huge success story. But actually that's not what people need most (IMO). They need mentorship and support from people who have done it before. We were lucky to share our office with a YC company when we raised our Series A. I must have bugged one of the founders every day for advice on terms and which partners were cool. But now we're all just scaling like crazy and there isn't that shift up the chain towards new mentors who have gone from e.g. £10m p.a. to £100m p.a. revenue. Those people are rare overall, but concentrated in the Valley.

jeffwass 12y ago
Did you start in London and move to SV? Where was your London office located that you felt had a good support network?
- georgespencer 12y ago
  No we are happily still in London and UK only. We were in Royal London House with GoCardless and Smarkets. They were (and probably are still) about 1.5 yrs ahead of us in many ways. We also are lucky to have an early investor who is on the board of Zopa. Most founders I know who have progressed for a few years have at least one or two founders under their wing informally.
  - askinakhan 12y ago
    The UK will never be able to foster the same atmosphere as Silicon Valley. We're a conservative bunch and always will be; it's almost embedded in our culture. This isn't a problem because it means we're more prudent when it comes to investing hence why we rarely get VC/Angel investment for startups unless they have an already successful business model. The best way to put it is: In the UK we mostly invest in 1 - n whereas in Silicon Valley they also invest in 0 - 1. After all, it's the birthplace of true capitalism.
    - madaxe_again 12y ago
      This is true, and it's still most readily manifested in the way that entrepreneurs are viewed and treated in this country - as crazy outcasts, who are best avoided, as you might catch the horrendous disease of independent thought.
      - jarek 12y ago
        This really isn't the case in London in my experience See: the hundreds of people who attended Silicon Milkroundabout yesterday
        spacecowboy_lon 12y ago
        Unfortuntly I think CP Snows two nations is still intact and its not the technical/sceintific side that has the whip hand - in the UK techies are regarded as greasy engineers not fit to press our nose against the window (to quote tom jones) to look at the other professions.
        madaxe_again 12y ago
        That's the one. Same thing as causes my parents (and myself) to tell people that I'm unemployed, as it's easier to explain than "I run a successful startup with multi-million pound net profit" - as they then realise it's one of these technology things, and that puts me on the same rung as, say, a waste-water engineer. Actually, they're up a few rungs, as they deal with "real" things. Techies are all viewed as "the IT guy", and are there to be blamed for anything and everything, and to be belittled at every opportunity. "You wouldn't know what it's like to run a business!", says the guy who runs a pair of holiday lets, to the guy who employs 50 people and powers £1bn+ of commerce p.a. Being involved in the web in the UK is akin to having social leprosy - the only other people who will accept you or even talk to you without peering down their noses at you are other people with leprosy - sorry - other web professionals. This extends even to investors and VCs, as their view over here is that entrepreneurs/technologists are a necessary evil that you have to deal with as part of the process of making money by magic.
smikhanov 12y ago
[deleted]
- georgespencer 12y ago
  Weird. Emailed you for details.

irremediable 12y ago

The London startup scene is interesting. I think it's fair to say startups here are usually less ambitious than in SF or the US in general. But they also tend to be more practical -- there's less pie-in-the-sky thinking. I've seen firsthand a surprisingly large number of startups that make a profit from day one. And a lot of startups that were funded from nonwealthy founders' savings. My impression is that we do stuff on a smaller scale, but it tends to be more reliable.

eli_gottlieb 12y ago
Funny. The only London startup I've heard of was ridiculously ambitious, and has largely been succeeding, since it came out of academic research. They did manage to get bought by Google, at the very least.
- irremediable 12y ago
  I'm sure there are plenty of exceptions. I think my description is representative overall, but YMMV. Of course, if they're the only London startup you've heard of, maybe there's a bias. Crazy ambition can garner a lot of PR, especially when it succeeds. :P
- spacecowboy_lon 12y ago
  ever here of boo :-) for the younger hn readers that was a fashion startup based in London that crashed and burned hard back in the 2000's
  - softdev12 12y ago
    there's a book by the founder of boo.com that tells the whole story. well worth a read.
    - spacecowboy_lon 12y ago
      mm must htry an dfind a copy I remember seeing the boo crew preenting at a first tuesday and was shocked how poor they where. I copuld have picked 3 first level managers from BT at rendom and woould have done a better job

GolfyMcG 12y ago

> from nobody to millionaire in weeks This is what's wrong with media today...

bengale246 12y ago

I keep getting the urge to hop on a plane to SV (from the UK) and see what happens. Wish it was that easy.

EliRivers 12y ago
If you do, when they ask you what you're there for, just say tourist. Don't say tourist going to SV to look at it. They'll assume you're there to work illegally and it won't go well for you.
- yarper 12y ago
  I think what he's saying is that most brits don't have the opportunity to go over there and work, the visas rules appear to be tightening up if anything. That and most of us are unwilling to drop what we have on the off chance that we'll get a visa to go work in SV. Especially now that we can legally work anywhere in the EU without a visa..

jackgavigan 12y ago

IMO, the key difference between London and Silicon Valley is the "Pay it Forward" attitude prevalent in the Bay Area - people are prepared to help you out without any expectation that they'll receive anything in return. In London, there's more of a "What's in it for me?" attitude. One of the reasons I started organising the LDN2SFO trips was to expose more Brit entrepreneurs to the collaborative culture in the Bay Area in the hope that they would bring it back to London.

yc1010 12y ago

Well its nice to see article like this as opposed to "Young Brits in Syria"

zeeshanm 12y ago

OK - in NY - as an entrepreneur, my days are a lot unsexier than these guy. Wake up, read HN, write code, talk to customers, write more code, read HN, read programming books to learn, write more code. May be it's the Valley vibe where being an entrepreneur is like cloud9.