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Comment by alexro | Hacker News Reader

In the UK there is no consent among the investors where the action should go. I was quite surprised to learn than basically every credible accelerator has it's own view of where my start-up should be based.

Oxygen - Birmingham

Ignite100 - New Castle

Seedcamp - London

I get their desire to improve local culture but hey this is just ridiculous to ask me to settle somewhere because you gave me some money. Also, start-ups thrive in a tech-savvy areas only.

This all adds to the problem and Berlin has all the odds to become the answer.

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Almost all accelerators do this. YC strongly encourages you to live in the Valley.

There is a difference when YC wants you to live in SV for YOUR success and other accelerators wanting you to live somewhere for THEIR benefit, right?

You should take a look at HackFWD http://hackfwd.com/

For them it doesn't matter where you are in Europe. However, their recruiting mechanism is referrer based.

"HackFwd takes 27% equity in exchange ..."

And it's pre-seed money. Thanks but no thanks.

I work at Seedcamp.

We don't force anyone to move their startup to London. We do suggest the new teams spend some time with us here, as it's valuable to them to be part of what is going on here - a lot of the teams come from eastern Europe where there is much less of a tech (and investment) scene. Being in London for some time enables them to take part in that, make the right connections, and then move back, here, or on - often to the US.

I believe incorporating in Germany is a lot more expensive than in the UK or Ireland though.

Yeah, but the UK, for all intents and purposes, is a 51st US state, in terms of legal and privacy concerns.

If you want to protect your startup's users, you should base your company in a country that won't extradite people on charges that aren't even applicable in said country. (O'Dwyer casus)

And where police won't sell you location and other assorted private data to the highest bidder. (NotW casus)

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