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Comment by devmonk | Hacker News Reader

At first the American side of me read this post title and agreed. It just didn't seem likely. But after reading the post, I don't think it did a very good job of describing why Britain hasn't produced more successful startups.

The primary reason that Britain doesn't accel at more, I think, is both opportunity and size of the population. If Britain were at least the size of the U.S. with otherwise the same ratio of opportunity to excel vs. the U.S. counterparts, they should have produced at least one startup-gone-global-household-name by now.

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The article mentions the Victorian times - you don't need to go that far back - Richard Branson, Alan Sugar, Clive Sinclair come to mind, although that was the 1980s. But why haven't there been any huge new successes in the last decade or so ?

I can think of a few (over-generalized) reasons:

- over-emphasis on banking and finance. The City is where the big money was made, and is disproportionately important to the UK economy (even now) so that's where the polymaths -our homegrown Zuckerbergs and Brins and Gates - went to make their fortune.

- class system. Business and government leadership comes from a very narrow circle of ex-public school and/or Oxbridge graduates who share a common disdain for science and technology. Time and again scientists and engineers have left for the US and elsewhere because they couldn't get funding at home - businessmen and politicians simply didn't "get" the potential of research.

- over-centralization. If you think Hacker News is bad with its Silicon Valley-centric worldview, come to the UK. If it's not happening in London, it's not happening. London however is a horribly expensive place to live, pushing up salaries, office costs, etc - not the ideal place for a startup. Start your business in the "provinces" however and nobody will notice you.

- bureaucracy. Both UK and EU legislation have increased the amount of paperwork needed to get started - for example employment legislation. Not sure how this compares to the US (which varies state to state) but it hasn't helped.

Maybe another reason is too many British people think in terms of the government solving the problem, or starting projects funded by quangos: "what we need is a startup scene, therefore we need government funding!"

Getting startups in touch with funding sources and getting the word out that you can fund your ventures without living off baked beans for 18 months might help encourage more people to take the leap of faith.

That's true. With the recent government cutbacks and slashing of quangos that might (hopefully) change. More than money though would be a better startup community - or communities - all over the UK, which is up to us, I suppose.

One assumes however that students and recent graduates are living off baked beans anyway (I suppose that's our equivalent of ramen profitable - Heinz profitable?)

One assumes however that students and recent graduates are living off baked beans anyway

Exactly. Based on observation of people's reaction to me being self-employed, the biggest fears are the bureaucracy and what happens when you fail. Neither of which are anywhere near the biggest challenges, so diminishing those fears seems like an easy target.

It would probably also help to get actual startup entrepreneurs to speak at universities, which by and large are run by people who have never been outside "the system".

I'm self-employed too, I didn't get much encouragement from people until I landed a corporate client.

My parents until recently still sent me emails with links to "real jobs" I should apply to. :-/

Actually it costs a pound to start a company in Britain, and by the time you can afford to hire somebody you should be able to hire a lawyer to work through the issues.

I wrote about this previous in a European context:

http://blog.awesomezombie.com/2010/06/yes-europe-does-produc...

There are plenty of recent tech success stories. European companies pretty much dominate the global telecoms and gambling markets, financial tech companies are fairly evenly split between New York and London. And while we don't dominate, the UK has a disproportionally large market share of the chip design and computer games industry.

Hello - Virgin? Body Shop?

(Tech startups, maybe. Even there our household names – PartyGaming say – are often illegal in America.)

Dyson, ARM, Amstrad, Sophos, Betfair, Last.FM immediately spring to mind as Tech Startups that have done well. For a country of our size, resources and population we do extremely well, unnaturally so one might say.

And no-one ever mentions them, but Markit Group and a host of other financial technology plays.

And hedge funds. Lots of hedge funds.

I'm not so sure. Silicon Valley draws worldwide talent. It's not just the pool of available Americans that drives the tech startup culture there.

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