>> "maybe I've fallen so in love with my new home in San Francisco"
I think perhaps you're in the epicenter of a bubble now (SF). Unless it's a $20million investment for a twitter based replyBot, it looks lame.
Meanwhile, plenty of people in the UK (And everywhere else) are building profitable online businesses quietly, just as they have done for years.
One thing that has always seemed weird to me is how companies who announce they've "won $Xm in funding" seem to be 'rated' higher than companies that are making modest profits and growing fast. IMHO "winning" investment just means you convinced someone to give you some money. Whereas a company that's profitable and growing fast, you've proven your business model - far more impressive than convincing a handful of people to give you some cash.
Much as I hate a lot of what 37signals have to say, when URL shorteners, twitter crawlers, etc getting millions in funding, you have to ask yourself if that's a good thing, impresive, or just the sign of a large bubble that will burst pretty soon. Building a business on top of another unproven business - is anyone doing any sort of risk assessment here? Or even thinking about business models? Or are they just hyping up the hype to the next level and taking the easy investment money. There's a lot to be said for just being a quietly profitable startup without all the hype+glitz+bs.
IMO, so many entrepreneurs have made it that they are paying it forward and reinvesting in the ecosystem. So while many of these companies may fail — like many do regardless of geographic location, they'll produce talent that has experience and a better understanding in the next cycle. I agree that there is hype, thats the nature of the beast with popularity and seemingly unavoidable... but it contributes to maintaining the ecosystem in SF.
Also, I've concluded most investors prefer investing in strong teams over simply a new idea. Many of the 2.0 startups are stacked with guys from 1.0 era.
I agree 100% - I have a hard time remembering when the metric for success was profitability, at least as far as internet startups are concerned.
Google comes to mind, but only because such a huge deal was made of their IPO. I think prior to that everyone considered them successful based on their popularity alone (figuring that Google was barely breaking even before their financials were released).
Perhaps the startups that are doing well arent going to the same self congratulatory parties and meetups as Paul Carr types are.
Far too many of the popular London events are overwhelmed with social-media-enterprise-consultants and as such those who do have snuck away into smaller lesser known events and are doing their best not to invite the flotsam.
Totally agree, and it's a pity he only talks about London. Up here in Edinburgh we have http://www.techmeetup.co.uk/ held within the local Uni, but all are invited and there are some clever folks there.
This meet used to be packed with techies and social media types, but recently the latter have seemed to tailed off - a few are left but seem to have a few genuinely good ideas.
I have noticed however the angel investor types aren't showing up as much but certainly there also seems to be plenty innovation funding going around within the Uni and organisations like NESTA, 4IP and EPIS.
Paul Carr just enjoys writing controversial headlines to stir up the pot. I think his statements are just as valid for many Web 2.0 businesses frankly, around the world, not just London. Things that aren't successful will naturally die. There are no shortages of businesses here in the UK and across Europe that are doing well and getting funded accordingly. Of course the volume overall is lower than Silicon Valley but that doesn't mean thing here are much different than elsewhere in the world.
Of course all this has been discussed at great length by PG, not specifically to London but generally SV vs anywhere else.
The fact is that London has most of the ingredients to be a successful startup hub: capital, talent, location, and plenty of potential exit targets. What it needs is some sort of catalyst.
AFAIK London has never claimed to be some sort of startup mecca though, so I really don't know what his point is.
You must have missed the irony. Those parties and tiny bits of cow on sticks is what he is making fun of. I have to say that I agree with his point. I don't know the London scene, but I keep an eye on the Paris scene, and that article might as well have been written for Paris. Same problem.
He makes one point in passing that is very telling: visiting big UK companies is not going to matter for the startup scene. Europe has a tendency to have large legacy companies, but not much of an entrepreneurial angle.
It's how the London scene was when I was working out there in 2000-2001. If it wasn't a problem then, it probably isn't a problem now. I got a definite sense of "work hard and play hard... but first work hard" when I was there.
Sure, he's making fun of the luvvie (UK word) events, but he's also part of those events. The irony is that he seems to love them despite knowing they're ridiculous.
I'm writing up an email to this guy (since he asks for it at the end)... Of course, it all depends on your definition of dying. After all, we're all gonna die some day, the question is, how late can you push it back? :-)
what always gets me, is why in this day and age we are still stuck on localizing everything. In this day and age, you should be able to run everything from a small village in spain from your iPhone.
Teleconferencing with investors and other CEOs, having programmers work remotely, etc. Instead the culture is so localized that everyone is pretty much expected to go to SV.
Personal communication is better. People evolved to detect all sorts of subtlety in in person communication that you just can't detect when it's filtered through some other medium.
Lets say you have 10 million dollars at stake. If in personal communication is 10% better, and communication accounts for 10% of costs (i think both are higher than 10%), you're looking at saving 100k just by being near by. Suffer now to boom later.
Agreed. I find even a two-way conversation on Skype with blocky, stuttering video is noticeably more productive than a straight phone call. The internet really needs ubiquitous video conferencing. It should be as trivial to set up as a Skype call (which, to be honest, is not always that trivial), but multi-way, cross-platform and much better quality. Maybe Opera or Google could build it into their browsers...
I think perhaps you're in the epicenter of a bubble now (SF). Unless it's a $20million investment for a twitter based replyBot, it looks lame.
Meanwhile, plenty of people in the UK (And everywhere else) are building profitable online businesses quietly, just as they have done for years.
One thing that has always seemed weird to me is how companies who announce they've "won $Xm in funding" seem to be 'rated' higher than companies that are making modest profits and growing fast. IMHO "winning" investment just means you convinced someone to give you some money. Whereas a company that's profitable and growing fast, you've proven your business model - far more impressive than convincing a handful of people to give you some cash.
Much as I hate a lot of what 37signals have to say, when URL shorteners, twitter crawlers, etc getting millions in funding, you have to ask yourself if that's a good thing, impresive, or just the sign of a large bubble that will burst pretty soon. Building a business on top of another unproven business - is anyone doing any sort of risk assessment here? Or even thinking about business models? Or are they just hyping up the hype to the next level and taking the easy investment money. There's a lot to be said for just being a quietly profitable startup without all the hype+glitz+bs.
Just my 2p.