Not all Arab investors are bad - for example, funds associated with the Emirate of Abu Dhabi (eg. ADIA, Mubadala) has been extremely successful in their investments explicitly because Tahnoon studied engineering in San Diego (and rolled at Gracie's gym) back in the day.

Additonally, for every failed investment like builder.ai a fund like QIA and MS Ventures has had multiple other successful investments.

The perception of "shadiness" in the London VC scene arises simply because a subset of non-American VC simply does not care about value investing and product-led growth.

Additonally, it's not like the UK doesn't have good VCs and Growth Equity investors - for example Index Ventures and Ballie Guiffold both have a solid track record.

Being overly congratulatory and being overly pessimistic about the UK scene does more harm than good.

Somewhat, but not to the degree as you see in the UK, Singapore, or HK.

Until a couple years ago, it was difficult for someone without a SSN to create a Delaware C-Corp and even despite current political instability, the depth of IP, capital, and R&D available in the US is difficult to replicate outside China, Japan, and maybe India.

But it isn't true. For the rest of the world SV is still the place to go to, one way or another. The difference is just too big. What you could say is that London is the place to try to raise money if you can't raise in SV. But you'll have to realize that your chances of success are dramatically lower that way to the point that you're going to end up a with a small fraction of the stock yourself after the inevitable dilution through follow up rounds because you couldn't raise a large enough round to begin.

VC in London is harsh, both for the start-ups and for the VCs. What does happen is that a company manages to stay alive long enough to raise a secondary round in the USA, but then you can't really make the original claim in the TFA.