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I'm an American, running a startup in Scotland, funded by a Scottish angel syndicate, which functions in many ways like a "mini VC". There is intense, constant
by nemesisj 12y ago
I'm an American, running a startup in Scotland, funded by a Scottish angel syndicate, which functions in many ways like a "mini VC". There is intense, constant griping both in Scotland and in the broader UK about the funding climate vs. Silicon Valley. Having been involved in a South Florida startup previously, I can assure everyone here that there are much worse places to raise money and run a tech company than Europe.
Most of the horror stories around fund raising in Europe that I've heard involve B2C companies, or very low revenue-per-customer B2B companies that are constrained by many of the same challenges around customer acquisition (low average rev per customer, not very sticky, can't afford an inside sales team). This makes these B2B companies effectively the same as B2C in many ways.
The key thing to recognise, in my opinion, is that it's extremely difficult to raise money for a software company that's pre revenue or likely in search of product/market fit in almost any market other than a few cities in the US (NYC, Valley, Boston, Others?). Sure, there are counterexamples, but this seems to be true in general. This isn't just a European "problem" and my not even be a problem at all.
When I was playing in rock bands, we quickly learned we needed to play venues that fit our style. Playing in front of an old folks home crowd wasn't going to work. This sounds amazingly stupidly simple, but there's plenty of people ignoring this lesson in startupland with regards to fund raising. If you're sitting anywhere but a few select markets, reading Valley blogs, you're going to be in for disappointment when it comes time to apply all of your Valley knowledge in a non-Valley environment.
B2B land is so much easier than B2C land, and there's plenty of investment out there. Most software and most money made from software is in B2B land. Why not try it out? You could be surprised.