Harplessblog
Opinions of an inexperienced techy!
Sunday 25 November 2007, 2:51 AM
Why is there a shortage of UK tech entrepreneurs?
Since Tim Barners-Lee's invention of the World Wide Web, almost all the cool web stuff has come from America. From early services such as Ebay and Amazon to Google, Facebook or any number of web services, the founders are American based.
So, are UK kids just uncreative?
thats unlikely, in my opinion its in the culture; like the movie industry, we've become acustomed to good things coming from America, so we wait.
Also, it seems as though its much harder to get funding in the UK. UK investors are more cautious with their money.
By contrast, in Silicon Valley, VC's will through money at anything in hope that one of them will be a big hit, and that strategy seems to work. Take Peter Thiel for example; since PayPal, he's invested in several startups, one of which hapens to be Facebook, whose recent valuation makes him a billionaire by virtue of holding a 10% stake in the company. That would more than make up for investments lost in unsuccessful startups.
Another possible contributor is the relative ease of getting a well-paying job in I.T. for example, as i type this blog entry, i see a news headline at the top of my profile page, it reads: "demand for tech graduates still strong"
Twitter and Bebo are some of the UK startups that have achieved success, but even they've had to move to Silicon Valley because its much easier to make it if you're based there.
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