Ask HN: Where are all the London hackers working on startups?

Regardless of how one defines a startup/how the question was phrased/whether people just didn't bother to raise their hands, am I wrong to assume that a room of HN faithful should have more than ~5% of people trying to turn their software in to viable businesses?

Due to work pressures, i.e. launching soon, I saw it better to spend my time working on my startup than going to the HN event. I have 2 children, and work from home, so I need to grab any opportunity I can to work.

Also, there are now lots of startup events in London, and if you are busy then you really need to pick and choose which ones you go to. In my case I am going to the lean startup one next week, which I see as being currently more relevant (and maybe more useful) to me than the HN event.

As someone who does work on a startup in London, but didn't go last night, it's because I've found the HN London meetups to be chock-full of people who don't work on startups, but simply talk all evening about recycled opinions they've garnered from reading HN posts.

Not an interesting way to spend an evening.

Many views on why they do, and why it's so fragmented. But fragmented it is.

5. London is flat and wide with the startups not centralised

Not everyone is around Old St, and even those who are might still be grinding out code when the meetup started and then just opt not to walk in halfway through. For the ones further out, timings and stuff might put them off. People don't live around their either so it may be a trek home for some that puts them off.

6. Topics might not appeal to them

Then there's those who might go for the topics, but weren't interested in that set of topics.

7. They don't wish to have the distraction of networking when they just want to keep their heads down and get on with it

And those who have what they feel is the network they need, and so invest their time in that network alone.

I didn't go, even though I have intended to go to the last couple. The reasons above aren't my reason, but I'm speculating that there are more than just the reasons you give.

And I do have a startup (a small but profitable one, it ticks over nicely and I have a few things in the pipeline to help push it a bit further). And across the office I see another guy with a startup who managed to sell recently. And then there's people I know down near Shoreditch working on stuff. The people are clearly around, but none of the ones I know went last night.

Just asked a couple of guys here. Reasons given: Formality and agenda, hanger-ons, recruiters, aimless networking.

Concensus here was that if it was more to let off steam and pressure with a bunch of like-minded people sharing the problems informally over beer and fussball (yeah, we're thinking Bar Kick)... then most of them would be good for it.

Also, there was the shared view that DrinkTank was pretty damn good whilst it was very small, invite only and vetted (people actually doing stuff).

I've worked in startup environments in both the UK and the US.

In the US, being an entrepreneur is seen as a good thing, and people bond, mesh, and engage as a result of their common interest in stepping off the standard path.

In the UK... not so much. The vast majority of founders I know are a) busy working their nuts off and b) pretty bitter, due to the UK attitude to entrepreneurs (urgh, why would you do that? Starting your own business is stupid).

I guess what I'm getting at is that entrepreneurs in the US and the UK are pretty different - in the US, they rely on a support network of other entrepreneurs, and are part of a community. In the UK, you're on your own, definitively, and entrepreneurs shy away from potential support networks because they're so used to any large group of people being overwhelmingly comprised of naysayers.

Oh, and finally, London isn't the entire UK. You want to see startups? Get yourself out of the city. Bootstrapped startups start elsewhere in the country, as London is so disproportionately expensive - Bath, for instance, is chock full of 'em.