I'm guessing you aren't currently a part of the east london startup community.
I'm excited. When we moved the company here, one of my co-founders was deported (back to America). Not helpful. The investors here are very good (Index, Atlas, Accel, Eden, etc), but there's not a huge number of them. Official momentum like this has a good chance of getting other investors to have a more official presence here (a few from NY visit with some regularity, but we rarely see the valley's firms).
Little things like good internet will help a lot. My office has just 7 or 8 people in it and we're using a combination of two home DSL connections and a 3G modem. That's the best we can do and it's outrageously bad. Larger offices (20+ people) face an ongoing and unending battle just keeping their team online.
I don't really get the objection to the big tech companies having a presence.. in an ideal world would you want to boot them out of the valley, too? They offer jobs which are both an attraction to new tech talent from all over the EU and a fallback in the case that a startup doesn't work out. Without the presence of big tech companies, you also lose the primary acquirer of small tech companies.
Finally, and most importantly, they didn't just choose some arbitrary "poor" spot on the map. The particular area in east london they're targeting is arguably the best startup hub in Europe, and is undoubtedly the best in the UK. Lots of great founders are already here, and I'm pleased that there's some official support.
Comments
I'm guessing you aren't currently a part of the east london startup community.
I'm excited. When we moved the company here, one of my co-founders was deported (back to America). Not helpful. The investors here are very good (Index, Atlas, Accel, Eden, etc), but there's not a huge number of them. Official momentum like this has a good chance of getting other investors to have a more official presence here (a few from NY visit with some regularity, but we rarely see the valley's firms).
Little things like good internet will help a lot. My office has just 7 or 8 people in it and we're using a combination of two home DSL connections and a 3G modem. That's the best we can do and it's outrageously bad. Larger offices (20+ people) face an ongoing and unending battle just keeping their team online.
I don't really get the objection to the big tech companies having a presence.. in an ideal world would you want to boot them out of the valley, too? They offer jobs which are both an attraction to new tech talent from all over the EU and a fallback in the case that a startup doesn't work out. Without the presence of big tech companies, you also lose the primary acquirer of small tech companies.
Finally, and most importantly, they didn't just choose some arbitrary "poor" spot on the map. The particular area in east london they're targeting is arguably the best startup hub in Europe, and is undoubtedly the best in the UK. Lots of great founders are already here, and I'm pleased that there's some official support.