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The European startup ecosystem arrived

eu.techcrunch.com

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Re: The European startup ecosystem arrived

#61

Post by eftpotrm »

kgutteridge wrote: post #60
eftpotrm wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much do they want to be paid? About £40k starting, please. Best of luck to them. I know few (non-contractors) who pull in even 90% of that with substantial experience. Idle wandering of mind a while back, I came to the conclusion that if I wanted to do a startup I'd base it in Northampton. Relatively cheap area by UK standards but livable, hour by train to both central London and Birmingham/West Midlands (about h…

I am in Northampton for the transport links you mention, the reason to setup in London is however simple the majority of good people in Northampton are commuting to London. As you say its about 50-70% of the cost of living in London but still accessible

A good part of that though is circular; it's where the 'good' jobs are so people go there for the jobs so the companies set up there because that's where the 'good' people are and... I've worked in enough much smaller towns that could still draw good staff from the surrounding area. Note 'good', I'm not convinced it's more than perception.

The distances I've known people commute over the years horrify me; I know I would take a lower-paying job if it in return saved me something of the 90 minutes per day or or 8-9000 miles a year I've had to drive. From the staff I've known commuting between towns over the years, I find it hard to believe that a company offering good work and reasonable pay in a large town couldn't draw the staff and within a reasonable commuting radius of Northampton as the town in question you've easily got a 1m population, maybe more, let alone the 200k or so as the immediate local work force, keen to cut down the commute.

EDIT: I should add part of the company location suggestion is ease of reach for clients / partners, rather than staff lifestyle. Give yourself a hypothetical 10AM meeting and look at the percentage of UK business you can reach without an obnoxiously early start. London and West Midlands obviously, Thames Valley, pretty much the whole home counties, much of East Anglia, Oxfordshire, Leicester / Derby / Nottingham area, even up as far as Sheffield or Stoke.... Get yourself on the morning flights out of Luton and you've got Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dublin, Paris, Amsterdam and Brussels too at little more cost. A very powerful reach and in a cheap, densely populated area.

Re: The European startup ecosystem arrived

#62

Post by kristiandupont »

barrkel wrote: post #52
ig1 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say that as if living in a shared house was some sort of social stigma. Most single young (under say 35) professionals in London share flats, and I'm including lawyers, investment bankers, doctors, etc. One reason is that price drops disproportionately with the number of rooms, for example for a 1-bed flat you might pay £200/week but for a similar 2-bed you'd pay only £240/week. You could pay 1000/month for a "ha…

Living in a shared house (assuming no relationship with co-sharers) is a massive PITA, especially if you're as misanthropic as me. Sharing bathrooms, kitchen cleaning protocols, awkwardness / potential conflicts having guests stay over, ugh; it sucks. It's like living at home with your parents; better in some ways, worse in others, but a huge step below having one's own place. But if you have a significant other, the…

That really depends on your personality type. I don't mind sharing at all - I've been doing it frequently for a number of years now (I'm 32).

Re: The European startup ecosystem arrived

#63

Post by [deleted] »

barrkel wrote: post #52
ig1 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say that as if living in a shared house was some sort of social stigma. Most single young (under say 35) professionals in London share flats, and I'm including lawyers, investment bankers, doctors, etc. One reason is that price drops disproportionately with the number of rooms, for example for a 1-bed flat you might pay £200/week but for a similar 2-bed you'd pay only £240/week. You could pay 1000/month for a "ha…

Living in a shared house (assuming no relationship with co-sharers) is a massive PITA, especially if you're as misanthropic as me. Sharing bathrooms, kitchen cleaning protocols, awkwardness / potential conflicts having guests stay over, ugh; it sucks. It's like living at home with your parents; better in some ways, worse in others, but a huge step below having one's own place. But if you have a significant other, the…

[deleted]

Re: The European startup ecosystem arrived

#64

Post by JonnieCache »

barrkel wrote: post #52
ig1 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say that as if living in a shared house was some sort of social stigma. Most single young (under say 35) professionals in London share flats, and I'm including lawyers, investment bankers, doctors, etc. One reason is that price drops disproportionately with the number of rooms, for example for a 1-bed flat you might pay £200/week but for a similar 2-bed you'd pay only £240/week. You could pay 1000/month for a "ha…

Living in a shared house (assuming no relationship with co-sharers) is a massive PITA, especially if you're as misanthropic as me. Sharing bathrooms, kitchen cleaning protocols, awkwardness / potential conflicts having guests stay over, ugh; it sucks. It's like living at home with your parents; better in some ways, worse in others, but a huge step below having one's own place. But if you have a significant other, the…

It massively depends on who you're living with. There is a big difference between living with a bunch of people you just met on gumtree and living with your closest friends you've known for years.

Re: The European startup ecosystem arrived

#65

Post by JonnieCache »

milestinsley wrote: post #4
zumda wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Out of curiosity, what do you consider the other startup hubs in Europe? Guessing from your comment that this is the UK scene, there should be others.

Berlin has a very active, vibrant startup scene.

It's also a much nicer place than london. And they managed not to make the mistake of having an entirely speculative property market like the UK has.

Re: The European startup ecosystem arrived

#66

Post by JonnieCache »

arethuza wrote: post #47
borism wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is it something different in American climate?.. :) one can live in a cardboard box in California but not in Scotland?

Scotland would probably be one of the worst places to try living in a cardboard box - cold enough to be dangerous if you are outdoors but not cold enough to be dry. Combine that with rather unpredictable weather and rapid temperature changes (we've had temperatures changing 20C in a few days recently) and you would have a pretty miserable time in a cardboard box.

Unfortunately there are a lot of kids living on the street in scotland. It really surprised me the first time I went to Edinburgh, how many young people there were sitting in doorways. A lot of them didn't look like they'd been there long either.

Re: The European startup ecosystem arrived

#67

Post by yalforreca »

fun2have wrote: post #40
yalforreca wrote: post #31

Go to Portugal. Great weather with amazing beaches and country side, low cost of living and lot's of engineers that can speak fluent English. Also the government has subsidies for tech companies, specially in the IT sector. Spain is ok as well, but I find that people there have a hard time with English and like to party a bit too much. And the comments about London are true. It is very expensive to live here and the…

Come and join us. Read our post about opening our R&D office in Portugal. http://blog.webnographer.com/2010/10/an-rd-office-in-lisbon/ Portugal salaries maybe lower but if you have not lived in Portugal for 10 years you can apply for non-habitual status which means you pay a flat rate of tax of just 20%! Also you have the sun!

I left Lisbon around 7 years ago and moved to Barcelona for games programming gig. Moved to London 3 years ago and life has become less flexible so moving back to Lisbon is just a wish for now. But I do think about it a lot. The quality of life is just great. Miss the Ocean. I know some great people there if you need some references.

Re: The European startup ecosystem arrived

#68

Post by JoeAltmaier »

zeemonkee wrote: post #57
SimonPStevens wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally empathise with this. When I'm looking for work I see lots of firms in London hiring, but I have no interest in moving there, and although commuting is just about doable for the very short term, it totally ruins my out of work life. I would happily work remotely, but no one ever offers this. I'm not sure I quite understand the obsession companies have with London. There are plenty of talented people around t…

I can understand the obsession. As pointed out, the UK is massively centralized around a single city. Media ? London. Finance ? London. Politics ? London. And so on. There may be local centers of excellence elsewhere - and devolution has been an improvement - but if your startup relies on, for example, shmoozing clients or investors in the media or finance sectors, then London is where you want to be. Personally, I t…

That spells out perfectly the recipe needed for a fast-moving innovative risktaking startup - the pizza, the schmoozing, the all-nighters.

Working remotely and meeting a couple times a month? Preposterous in the startup environment. We're talking Agile daily standups, sharing screens and keyboards during all-nighters, doing a pitch at an hour's notice, recruiting in the coffee shop.

Its fine to contract remotely, perhaps be a peripheral player in a startup, but to be an employee, much less a founder, there's no way to do it half-way.

Re: The European startup ecosystem arrived

#69

Post by JoeAltmaier »

ig1 wrote: post #45
SimonPStevens wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I totally empathise with this. When I'm looking for work I see lots of firms in London hiring, but I have no interest in moving there, and although commuting is just about doable for the very short term, it totally ruins my out of work life. I would happily work remotely, but no one ever offers this. I'm not sure I quite understand the obsession companies have with London. There are plenty of talented people around t…

There are various reasons, but one of the big one is because the talent pool isn't large enough in most places. It's hard to get someone to move to London for a job, but it's even harder to get someone to move to a smaller city, so you get much more restricted to the local talent pool. You see hubs of companies around university towns with good CS programs (Oxford, Cambridge, Bristol, Edinburgh) as universities draw…

I live in (near) a smaller city (70,000) with a University. We have a vigorous startup landscape.

There is no monopoly on brains in a large city. In fact, as my Aunt Kate used to say, Honey attracts Flies. Big cities have a disproportionate share of not-so-good players. In smaller towns you can only stay if you're employable, have a modicum of skills.

Still, there's many other drawbacks - scarce investment, more difficult to find markets, absolutely bounded set of talent, hiring inertia (folks tend to stick to their job).

Re: The European startup ecosystem arrived

#70

Post by loewenskind »

Isofarro wrote: post #50
zeemonkee wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do get a fair amount of job offers from startups in London, but they are very inflexible about remote working (I'm in Scotland). Want me to move to London ? Sure, double whatever salary you're offering and I might consider it. Otherwise it would be a big drop in my standard of living - nice big apartment up here for cardboard box down there. There is a lot of good talent in the UK, the problem is we have a massivel…

"Sure, double whatever salary you're offering and I might consider it. Otherwise it would be a big drop in my standard of living - nice big apartment up here for cardboard box down there." I think this gets to the heart of the cultural difference between the UK and California in terms of startups. I get the feeling that people working for / running Silicon Valley startups are living extremely cheaply (hence reference…

>so working for a startup isn't much more different to a desk job in a big company

Why would invest so much of your life and earning potential at a start up? Because of that negligible chance that you'll be the next Facebook? You'd be better off working in a desk job and just using your extra money to buy lottery tickets.

In my opinion the attitude you attribute to London is the wiser one.

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