Hacker News Reader

Comment by bsnnkv | Hacker News Reader

I left the UK for the USA in 2020. It was only last week that another HN commenter finally opened my eyes to the fact that since I have left the UK, I have become someone with the ability to take things from 0 to 1.[1]

I do not believe I could have achieved what I have in the last half-decade if I had stayed in the UK. There is something deeply rooted in the UK's contemporary culture (which I cannot yet fully explain in words) that serves to crush the individual ambitions of the working and middle classes.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42705792

View on HN

So good to read this and feel...validated, somehow. The UK is culturally a very difficult place to start and run a business. There's a crabs in the bucket mentality that I didnt have words for before I'd left the UK for a few years, but now when I visit or do business there is absolutely everywhere.

One business thing that really strikes me is that people in the UK treat bankruptcy as a moral failing, as if you cheated your investors, and not a strictly financial one, as in, you ran out of cash before achieving product market fit. It seems rooted in an unusually Victorian ethis, which is ironic, because in that era, businesses started and folded all the time.

I wonder how much of this has to do with a more rigid class system compared to the US.

Depends on the bankruptcy. Nobody is going to shed tears over investors losing out. Speculate to accumulate, risk and reward.

But IDK how it works in other countries, UK bankruptcies also means customers, unsecured creditors (often other small businesses), and the State (payroll taxes) also lose out.

And it leaves a bad taste when a company run at high risk of bankruptcy ("oh but we're a Start Up") screws over their suppliers which are often more traditional businesses (whether that's print designers, lawyers or tradespeople) by carrying on trading far into insolvency.

That implies a kind of arrogance ("You just have a business which pays it's bills, I have a vision) which UK culture is allergic to.

In the US, most of those suppliers understand the nature of startups and are accustomed to working with them, fully aware they are likely to fail. The deals are structured appropriate for those realities and some suppliers specialize in or have a preference for startups.

In the UK, many suppliers still treat startups like an exotic beast, or worse, a corner shop. US business has a familiarity and comfort with startups, due in no small part from being an increasingly prominent part of the American business landscape since the Second World War. It is the water they swim in.

That's interesting!

Here, failing to pay your bills is both a breach of fair play, and what "dodgy" people i.e. criminals and con-artists do.

But equally it means we can operate a bit more of an honour system in terms of lines of credit. Small businesses typically allow one another at least some amount of credit terms, which they would not offer a private individual.

Anecdotally, the British people I have interacted with in a business setting seem to have a dearth of ambition. These people weren’t depressed, but I sensed a kind of defeatist cynicism.

As an American I realize our culture encourages taking risks and we are remarkably forgiving of failure. In fact, we seem to congratulate people for the fact that they tried in addition to overlooking the failure. I’m not sure if this comes from “the frontier spirit” or if this mindset used to exist throughout the Anglosphere. In any event, I do feel bad for the UK as a whole. It just seems like things keep getting worse and at some point the national mood becomes a self fulfilling cycle.

American parents: "You can do anything you set your mind to! Anyone can be president! If you fail, pick yourself back up and try again! Your cousin with the big house started out washing cars and built an amazing success from nothing!"

British (and Irish) parents: "The whole system is rigged so don't even try, the guy in the big house up the road got it through shady government contracts, my uncle can get you a job at the council so you'll never, ever get fired, the only reason to ever save money is for retirement or a house, your cousin who tried to start a company thinks he's better than us...."

It really starts at a young age.

I remember playing (my) football (your soccer) in school and my neighbourhood as a kid.

If you were going to strike you needed to be pretty sure that you can score or that you can take the heat from your team mates if you fail.

In contrast watching kids play sports in the US, everyone is constantly trying to lift each other up after failure.

These small cultural differences easily add up in how you carry yourself in business.

Negativity seems to be culturally frowned upon in the US (what a downer). Positivity seems to be culturity frowned in Europe (naive 'happy go lucky' kind of guy).

Spot on. I’ve met several foreign exchange students during my time at university. A simple observation from one of them really stuck with me: “You Americans really like to help strangers.”

The “happy go lucky” observation squares with what I have been told by my Eastern European friend. Any stranger, or mere acquaintance, who is friendly and offering help is likely trying to obligate you into repaying the favor later on. People who for fall for this are naïve or simpletons. There’s definitely a level of trust that needs to be earned before you experience the same kind of positivity and goodwill that Americans seem to dole out to “randos” they just met.

Right after that “like to help” comment he followed it up with: “It is like you are all Golden Retrievers”. Which I found both hilarious and fitting.

A theory I've heard of why this happens is that Europeans are generally suspicious because there is a lot of international trauma considering Europe was the center of two World Wars, both relatively recently. The US on the other hand didn't have that imprinted in its collective memory.

It's the UK's aristocracy, most likely. They own nearly everything in the UK, haven't earned any of it, and the last thing they need is the invasion of rich self-made entrepreneurs.

The same thing is trending in the USA, just got started a couple hundred years later.

It'll get there.

Half my feed is Americans talking how terrible it is, the other half non-Americans (or immigrants) praising it.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com