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Taking Risk

tomblomfield.com

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Re: Taking Risk

#81

Post by dan-robertson »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #68
dan-robertson wrote: post #55

The cultural commentary does seem right to me. People in the UK are probably more risk-averse and anti-ambition. There’s also some stuff about the culture of investors, like the thing about US startups making wild claims. This only really works because the investors in the US understand that the claims are nonsense, and VCs don’t sue the companies for fraud (because the companies are typically dead and it’s an iterat…

The claims are hyper ambitious, that's not the same thing as being nonsense. Aiming extremely high isn't somehow fraudulent. Lots of kids have plans to become pro athletes and almost all fail, but that doesn't mean all those plans were nonsense to begin with.

Lots of the claims made by startups to VCs would be considered fraud if they were ever tried in court, which they aren’t because starting such a lawsuit would be terrible for the VC, and the VCs weren’t really defrauded because they correctly understood the claims to be highly exaggerated. The difference here is in cultural standards for what it means for a startup’s claims to be true.

Re: Taking Risk

#82

Post by oblio »

yobbo wrote: post #79
sofixa wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In the UK to go bankrupt is to be painted with indelible red shame dye Is it? Do people generally know when someone (personally, or in this case, since we're talking startups, their company) goes bankrupt?

Your future employer, friends and family will know. People in general don't keep track of other random people.

> Your future employer

How will they know and why would they care, if we're talking about regular job postings?

Re: Taking Risk

#83

Post by thom »

Shrezzing wrote: post #28

> I don’t think it’s any longer about access to capital The link provided as proof for this comment is Wayve receiving a $1bn injection from Microsoft and Nvidia [1]. The $1bn raise is not the concern of a budding 23 year old graduate leaving Imperial/Cambridge/Oxford. They're looking at the first £100k capital to see them through the first few months. In the UK, the scene for the first capital injection is far weake…

Been a while since I was in this position but that first £100k used to be a cakewalk. SEIS made it almost a no-brainier for any high net worth individual to invest in startups.

Re: Taking Risk

#84

Post by tafox »

CalRobert wrote: post #46

Not the UK, but I'm a Californian who lived in Ireland for ten years. The risk aversion is _intense_. Me: "I want to build a house" My Irish friends: "That's a bad idea, you will fail, it could fall down, you don't know anything about houses". They were extra horrified that I didn't want to build it out of concrete blocks because "you can't build a house out of wood" My Californian friends (but one in particular): "F…

I also live in Europe (Germany & Austria) and what you're saying is 100% true. I like Europe, but I really miss the positive everything is worth a shot attitude in America.

Everything here is no, no, no, why would you do that? It's so demotivating, and G-d forbid you make a tiny mistake! Long term I also don't see how this place won't just keep getting poorer... unless there is a major attitude adjustment in the near future.

Also, everyone just tries to dunk on everyone with petty status games like owning a fancy car... as if that's the ultimate achievement in life... really lame & depressing.

It's the main reason I would like go back home tbh. There are a lot of problems in America and a lot of things are okay here, so it's hard to say where it's really worse, but I just don't understand why they always need to have these negative attitudes all the time... it costs nothing to have a positive attitude...? Maybe I'm just too stupid to understand.

Re: Taking Risk

#85

Post by arpinum »

CalRobert wrote: post #46

Not the UK, but I'm a Californian who lived in Ireland for ten years. The risk aversion is _intense_. Me: "I want to build a house" My Irish friends: "That's a bad idea, you will fail, it could fall down, you don't know anything about houses". They were extra horrified that I didn't want to build it out of concrete blocks because "you can't build a house out of wood" My Californian friends (but one in particular): "F…

Same experience in England. There is little celebration of business success and more likely accusations of exploitation.

The class system is also alive and well in business - the ambition of many well off uni students is to manage others. Grinding on a startup doesn't fulfil that class ambition

Re: Taking Risk

#86

Post by dukeyukey »

ggm wrote: post #23

Bankruptcy laws and social mores massively different. In the UK to go bankrupt is to be painted with indelible red shame dye. In America... going bankrupt means you are closing out the book on one failure to try another.

I can't speak for VCs, but at least in a social sense, if a friend of mine went bankrupt after a failed startup, I honestly don't think I'd even remember? Like I just wouldn't care.

Re: Taking Risk

#87

Post by rwmj »

dan-robertson wrote: post #70
rwmj wrote: post #7

The expected returns from "want[ing] to go and work at companies like McKinsey, Goldman Sachs or Google" are both greater and more certain, so perhaps the individual young people are acting quite rationally in the UK? For context I spent years in my 20s doing start ups in London, and undoubtedly would have been better off financially now if I'd worked for some soul-sucking consultancy instead. I do agree with him tha…

Yeah, but I think it’s also true in the US (even more so as pay from the non-startup careers is higher). Maybe one should ask why it’s so much more common to do the irrational thing in the US than the UK.

Could be house prices again. You really cannot survive on ramen and hope to live anywhere close to London. I know that SF is not good either, but the US does have other cities with less of a housing crisis.

Re: Taking Risk

#88

Post by dukeyukey »

darkstar_16 wrote: post #27

The post is about the UK but I suspect it is the same in most European countries. Startups just don't make sense financially.

Ironically, it probably applies the least to the UK out of basically anywhere worldwide beyond the US and maybe China.

Re: Taking Risk

#89

Post by OJFord »

red_admiral wrote: post #17

There's the risk aspect and the regulation aspect. Personally I think there's something to be said for a country where your car can't collect data on your trade union membership and sex life and pass it on to your insurers. (The UK is no longer in the EU so it's not technically subject to GDPR anymore, but they "forked" that law when they left and it's now called the Data Protection Act (DPA).

No, the Data Protection Act (2018) is just the legal instrument which sets out the (UK) GDPR. It is 'technically subject to GDPR anymore', it's just a different one (with essentially if not entirely the same contents).

Re: Taking Risk

#90

Post by aranw »

I always wondered if it has something to do with employee protections, maybe the risk of starting a business in the US feels the same as joining a company as an employee with no protection and employee rights? Although I know that has changed a lot last few years and you now need to put 2 years in a UK company to get some employee right and protections

I've always been scared and worried to go off and do my own thing without something to fall back on. I have ideas and things I'd like to build but the risk seems really high. I end up asking myself questions like "how do I pay my mortgage?", "what do I do for food?", and so on...

What can be done to make it easier to start a company in the UK?

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