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I’m leaving London for NYC and taking my tech startup

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Re: I’m leaving London for NYC and taking my tech startup

#2

Post by someonewhocar3s »

Because you started off an apolitical asshole, but it turns out 'marine blue' matches your eyes, and you can say 'I love how the King stretches me' because the commonwealth fits your ideals like a glove. Now you're absolutely down with the peculiarchie and Celtic subject laws.

Of course, you couldn't phantom not to have to pick a partner military - that was just a little bit too adventerious for you.

Oh, ok, I got it the wrong way around. ("Why I'm leaving, (trading) London for NYC, (and getting a tax break works anyway)") he's wrong to go to NYC. Their earlier Bitcoin regulations state it well enough. Incapable.

Re: I’m leaving London for NYC and taking my tech startup

#6

Post by jgrahamc »

Beyond that, I believe that Europe’s (particularly Britain’s) negative cultural attitude towards sales is a major inhibitor to building tech champions on the same scale as the US or China. In my thirteen years of working in the UK, I’ve learnt that in British culture sales and selling is viewed negatively.

The linked HBR article talks about self-promotion not sales. That seems quite different to me. And speaking from Cloudflare’s perspective our London-based EMEA sales team has been spectacularly effective.

Early in Eigen’s history there were many London-based employees who prioritised technological purity over commercial success; it was almost fatal for us. However hard it is, the UK needs to transform its cultural attitude to sales.

I think that’s a leadership issue not about “London”. The team we built in London was/is all about commercial success.

Re: I’m leaving London for NYC and taking my tech startup

#9

Post by ageitgey »

I run a US-based start-up with a distributed team, but I personally live in London. I'd say a lot of this is true. I don't personally know how Brexit has or hasn't affected talent availability yet, but everything else lines up with my experience. US investors throw money around and European investors are much more traditional.

But I'd like to offer a different perspective on this quote from the article:

> I am not alone in believing Europe has a problem with founders and investors, who lack ambition in comparison to the best of Silicon Valley or Shenzhen. While I have been blessed with my European investors, who are very much the exception to this rule and share my ambition, I have seen this lack of boldness during my various fundraising processes with many other investors.

The US VC market right now is very "frothy", as the VCs say. It's so frothy, you might as well say the froth has churned into butter. The article says that European investors lack "boldness", but one might instead say that US investors are lacking outlets for their ample capital and will throw money at nearly anything right now. I guess it depends on your point of view.

But the truth remains - it's a whole lot easier to raise money in the US right now.

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