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Comment by rbanffy | Hacker News Reader

> That’s not the kind of thing young, unproven founders can pull off, anywhere.

The UK, with a comprehensive social safety net, should be more willing to take small risks. I know it's now what happens, but it'd be important to understand why something that should be actually isn't.

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UC seems almost specifically set up to prevent people on it from starting a business, with it's look-through provisions and capital limits.

What safety net? UK does not have a safety net.

That's fair. UC and the NHS are far from ideal, but, compared to the US, they are heaven.

I think that needs to be qualified heavily — salaries in the UK are much lower both in nominal and PPP terms, so there's much less opportunity to build one's own safety net, and the NHS is overwhelmingly focused on providing care for the elderly. To a young(ish) startup founder, the presence of the NHS and UC makes little to no difference.

Maybe a good way to incentivize more risky entrepreneurs is to provide a better safety net. I would, however, caution against making it too perfect (and I hate myself for saying that, because I would prefer people worked on whatever brings them happiness, not money) - part of the drive for Americans (and the reason they risk so much on it) is the need to accumulate as much capital as possible as soon as possible, because they know they won't enjoy any sort of safety net when they grow old.

Let me rephrase — in the UK we have a generous and expanding safety net, for the elderly, voted for by the elderly, and paid for at great expense by the working population.

Isn’t there a safety net for the elderly in US as well? I’m talking about Medicare.

Maybe there are talking about the "triple lock" in the UK. The triple lock mean the pensions will rise to ether match the rate of inflation, average earnings or 2.%, whichever is the highest so eventually it will be unsustainable.

The startup founder in the UK needn't worry about a bad cycling accident (happened to a friend in his thirties), an early cancer (colleague in her thirties) or losing their job just before a baby is born (friend in his thirties).

Why? Each one is life changing event. Just because some part of the bill is paid by the government does not mean it is any less worth worrying about.

Those events will always come with challenges but at least bankruptcy won't be one of them.

Why not? If you are a startup founder you might have significant capital invested and be in debt. The government will not pay your companies bills while you are unable to work.

I think a VC funding you is a much better security against any of these events than health insurance being forcibly deducted from your pay.

Those 3 events can easily saddle someone with 100k of debt. Surely you can understand how that might hamper an up and coming entrepreneur.

>Those 3 events can easily saddle someone with 100k of debt. Surely you can understand how that might hamper an up and coming entrepreneur.

That is the case in the UK as well. If you have a start up in which you have invested capital and suddenly can't work anymore that is a huge financial disaster. The state is not going to fund your business while you recover in hospital.

Also the medical debt is something you would only have if you weren't insured. Both US and UK have health insurance, the only difference is that in the UK you have to pay for it, in the US you don't.

In any case having a well funded startup is a far better safety net than a forced insurance.

> In any case having a well funded startup is a far better safety net than a forced insurance.

Not for the average person

>Not for the average person

OP was talking explicitly about start up founders.

This is true. People associate a safety net with healthcare, but young and healthy startup founders are more worried about making rent or mortgage payments if their startup should fail.

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