171–180 of 374 posts
Surprised London holds this position given the cost of living. Housing alone eats such a massive chunk of salary that I'd expect talent to gravitate toward cities where their equity/salary goes further. How do early-stage startups compete for engineers when rent is £2k+ for a one-bedroom?
Is this really surprising? London picks up all the advantages of the UK (legal system is sound, eg in contract law, native speakers of English, the lingua franca of business, strong university tradition) and adds in its special sauce: access to the City, global-tier culture, excellent public transport (I know we moan about it, but it really is excellent), and a timezone location that easily serves the US and Asia mar…
Is it reasonable to say that in many (not all) parts of London, English no longer functions reliably as the default public language, even if most individuals technically "speak English"?
What this is, is a racist meme pretending that the significant fraction of immigrants to London who may occasionally speak their native language to each other in public is somehow a problem. Exactly equivalent to Americans panicking about Spanish.
A different perspective: https://x.com/aakashgupta/status/2016375397131420005 TL;DR: What London actually built is Europe’s most efficient farm system for US acquirers. The city does the expensive, risky work of finding founders, funding early rounds, and proving product-market fit. American companies wait until the risk is de-risked, then buy the winners at discounts enabled by London’s shrinking public markets.
"Freetrade built a profitable trading app, got acquired by IG Group for £160M after targeting a £700M valuation" That is not an accurate recollection of history. Freetrade raised money at a £700 million valuation at the very top of the market when money was plentiful, then, when the money dried up, and they were forced to go from losing money to making money, and they cut all advertising, they were able to just about…
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Working for London startups in the past, I've found they're much more polite, but much less honest and straightforward. There's a layer of britishness you have to get past sometimes to get to what people really want instead of directness.
best reasoning I've heard for this is that English is subtext heavy, like Japanese due to the history of the aristocracy. The populace were in thrall to their feudal lords and the aristocracy as serfs and servant classes for so long, that being indirect has been embedded into the language as a defense mechanism to not upset the pay masters. We get the subtext but people new to our culture might not. I remember a tech…
My stock joke is that one of these countries is a feudal warrior culture and former empire that's obsessed with tea and saving face, and the other is Japan.
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Startups might thrive there, but business investment in England (particularly in mature businesses) has not exactly been lively ever since Brexit. I can't recall the last time I heard someone talking favorably about investing in England, or at all, really.
right, people will just tell you the best places and things to invest in ... during a game of chess: "hey why'd you make that move?"
Hub / City Area,Total Tech Startups,Total Funding (2025 Est.),Total Residents (Metro),Startups per 1k Residents,Money per 1k Residents San Francisco (Bay Area),"18,052",$122.0 Billion,7.7 Million,2.34,$15.84 Million New York City,"15,000+",$45.0 Billion,19.5 Million,0.77,$2.31 Million London,"8,900",$26.0 Billion,9.0 Million,0.99,$2.89 Million Tel Aviv (Area),"2,996",$12.0 Billion,4.2 Million,0.71,$2.86 Million Beiji…
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I was going to reply to grandparent that only flat prices are coming down because of rising service charge costs, and being hard to mortgage because of cladding issues. But after some research it is indeed true that house prices are, to a lesser extent, also going down, at least in real terms, if not nominal.
I actually wrote a webapp to show this, check it out - https://housepricedashboard.co.uk/ London house prices are falling quite a lot in real terms.
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> The UK uses other parts of the county as a piggy bank to fund London projects. it's the exact opposite
Although Yes CrossRail was partly funded by a levy on London homes and businesses, London get's more funding per capita for public transport than anywhere else in the country Imagine what we achieve if we invested London levels of money in transport across the rest of the country
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Is it reasonable to say that in many (not all) parts of London, English no longer functions reliably as the default public language, even if most individuals technically "speak English"?
Across most of the world, people who do not share a common native language will speak English to each other. London is no different. What this is, is a racist meme pretending that the significant fraction of immigrants to London who may occasionally speak their native language to each other in public is somehow a problem. Exactly equivalent to Americans panicking about Spanish.
Surprised London holds this position given the cost of living. Housing alone eats such a massive chunk of salary that I'd expect talent to gravitate toward cities where their equity/salary goes further. How do early-stage startups compete for engineers when rent is £2k+ for a one-bedroom?
High rents encourages startups to be founded by those who haven't coupled up and who choose to live together.
A company of 3 single founders in their mid twenties that rent a two bed flat and then live and breath nothing but their startup collapsing on the couch each night can make two $50k angel cheques go a long way.
Edit: SEIS allows a friends and family seed round if up to £250k in London that the government will rebate 78% of in taxes (50% immediately and 28% if the company eventually goes bust).