Love the sentiment, but I'm not sure they're going about it in the right way. Of course any attention and funding is better than none, but instead of getting McKinsey to advise someone or open a few offices in East London I would much rather:
* UK GOV creates a stupidly attractive tax and investment climate so that VCs are practically falling over themselves to invest in UK companies. The EIS scheme and VCT schemes are ok, but they could make these 10x more attractive.
* Create jaw-dropping incentives for startups who deliver on what the UK GOV want, basically exporting services or creating jobs. Those kinds of companies should be afforded amazing incentives such as little to no tax for x years, no crazy 12% benefits to pay employees and how about little to no paperwork.
* Perhaps some type of matched-investment scheme, where UK GOV will match investment from private angels or VC's
* I am extremely encouraged to see that the gov is thinking about opening up procurement to small businesses. I fear that this won't happen in a timely manner and will face extreme hurdles. It is virtually impossible to get on the supplier list of the gov now, and even if you as a small hosted startup managed to pull of such a feat the first thing the local IT bod would ask for is SAS70 Type II compliance because that is government mandated. It seems crazy to us, being a UK startup, that one of the least likely customers would be our own government. You'd think they should be mandated to buy from small British companies in the spirit of helping your own economy.
It is really difficult to create a climate of risk taking that is evident in the valley which is fairly critical to this whole endeavor, I don't know how one manages to do that. But I sincerely hope someone manages to find out.
There just isn't the same tolerance for risk here in the UK and so the only mechanism I can see to break this scenario is to offer out of order incentives.
Comments
Love the sentiment, but I'm not sure they're going about it in the right way. Of course any attention and funding is better than none, but instead of getting McKinsey to advise someone or open a few offices in East London I would much rather:
* UK GOV creates a stupidly attractive tax and investment climate so that VCs are practically falling over themselves to invest in UK companies. The EIS scheme and VCT schemes are ok, but they could make these 10x more attractive. * Create jaw-dropping incentives for startups who deliver on what the UK GOV want, basically exporting services or creating jobs. Those kinds of companies should be afforded amazing incentives such as little to no tax for x years, no crazy 12% benefits to pay employees and how about little to no paperwork. * Perhaps some type of matched-investment scheme, where UK GOV will match investment from private angels or VC's * I am extremely encouraged to see that the gov is thinking about opening up procurement to small businesses. I fear that this won't happen in a timely manner and will face extreme hurdles. It is virtually impossible to get on the supplier list of the gov now, and even if you as a small hosted startup managed to pull of such a feat the first thing the local IT bod would ask for is SAS70 Type II compliance because that is government mandated. It seems crazy to us, being a UK startup, that one of the least likely customers would be our own government. You'd think they should be mandated to buy from small British companies in the spirit of helping your own economy.
It is really difficult to create a climate of risk taking that is evident in the valley which is fairly critical to this whole endeavor, I don't know how one manages to do that. But I sincerely hope someone manages to find out.
There just isn't the same tolerance for risk here in the UK and so the only mechanism I can see to break this scenario is to offer out of order incentives.