Dear London: Lets Celebrate, Focus and Stop Talking About the Valley!
Last week I was at an event in London, that was meant to be focused on and a celebration of the ecosystem both locally in London and throughout Europe. There were a selection of pitches from local start-ups followed by a short panel discussion with topic “The Innovation Climate — London”.
The event overall was good, especially the quality of the attendees and I was looking forward to proceedings. All in all things were good.
However, the Panel discussion was where I began to feel somewhat frustrated.
For around an hour there was a lively discussion by both panelists and the audience about Silicon Valley and what it takes to succeed there, or raise money there, or make London more like the West Coast. The question I have here is: What is the real tangible, actionable value in such a discussion. London will never be the Valley and instead of talking about what we in that room their could do together to improve things here we debated the issues in the Valley, much to my frustration.
I see this a lot. People are distracted and seem to want to replicate the success there. Is this a realistic objective, I think not. We here in London must focus on the local issues, the local people and how we can work together to improve the ecosystem for all involved at all levels, not simply the people that do get access into SF. Wasted energy!!
This is at times seems like an obsession. And it is not just a London thing, I see this mentality throughout Europe on a regular basis.
People in the Valley do not care or talk about anything outside of their community. They are busy and focused on what goes on locally. This ‘obsession’ I feel we have and see here only acts as a distraction.
I believe that there is so much to be positive about what is happening both in London and across rest of UK that the types of discussions I witnessed last week (and many times before) only act to distract. We have much to celebrate:
VC funding recieved in Q1 2015 reached record high:
Startups are able to attract money from the US on a more consistent basis, Transferwise and Improbable too of the biggest and most recent examples.
Future 50 continure to demostrate the growth of some of the more developed companies:
http://www.futurefifty.com/index.html
Top funds agree it is a great time to be investing in European start ups:
To mention but a few.
I realize that this post only exacerbates the problem I take umbrage with but we must together work to remove this mentality that seeks to emulate and replicate the Valley. Lets be our own thing. Tech City (not Silicon Roundabout — I vote we drop this name☺)
Our issues, are our issues. The biggest of which is the finding of talent. Improving this is necessary for any community to grow, so lets fix it.
Its like the broken window theory (one of my favorote theories ☺)
Essentially read as: fix the little things and the big will come.
As you can probably tell, I have no answers. Nor am I really trying to start a conversation, instead hoping to end one!
Peace out!
Rant over…..!
