I’m leaving London for NYC and taking my tech startup

<i>Beyond that, I believe that Europe’s (particularly Britain’s) negative cultural attitude towards sales is a major inhibitor to building tech champions on the same scale as the US or China. In my thirteen years of working in the UK, I’ve learnt that in British culture sales and selling is viewed negatively.</i><p>The linked HBR article talks about self-promotion not sales. That seems quite different to me. And speaking from Cloudflare’s perspective our London-based EMEA sales team has been spectacularly effective.<p><i>Early in Eigen’s history there were many London-based employees who prioritised technological purity over commercial success; it was almost fatal for us. However hard it is, the UK needs to transform its cultural attitude to sales.</i><p>I think that’s a leadership issue not about “London”. The team we built in London was&#x2F;is all about commercial success.

I run a US-based start-up with a distributed team, but I personally live in London. I&#x27;d say a lot of this is true. I don&#x27;t personally know how Brexit has or hasn&#x27;t affected talent availability yet, but everything else lines up with my experience. US investors throw money around and European investors are much more traditional.<p>But I&#x27;d like to offer a different perspective on this quote from the article:<p>&gt; I am not alone in believing Europe has a problem with founders and investors, who lack ambition in comparison to the best of Silicon Valley or Shenzhen. While I have been blessed with my European investors, who are very much the exception to this rule and share my ambition, I have seen this lack of boldness during my various fundraising processes with many other investors.<p>The US VC market right now is very &quot;frothy&quot;, as the VCs say. It&#x27;s so frothy, you might as well say the froth has churned into butter. The article says that European investors lack &quot;boldness&quot;, but one might instead say that US investors are lacking outlets for their ample capital and will throw money at nearly anything right now. I guess it depends on your point of view.<p>But the truth remains - it&#x27;s a whole lot easier to raise money in the US right now.

My 2c theory for the difference in investor outlook is &quot;old money&quot; vs &quot;new money&quot;. Old money is more risk averse - avoiding capital loss is more important than making the biggest gains. It&#x27;s probably not possible to preserve a fortune for hundreds or thousands of years without this kind of attitude.<p>There are a LOT of really old money families in Europe (and they are a big part of the ruling class) and I believe this colours the entire investment outlook.<p>In China the money is even newer than the US (practically no billionaires by inheritance for fairly obvious reasons), so would expect them to be even more aggressive and this seems to play out.<p>One place I see the cracks in this idea are former Soviet states. It seems like their billionaires should be more willing to back moonshot investments than they actually are. Perhaps it is because many of their billionaires are politically connected oligarchs and don&#x27;t back growth plays in the same way (more about gaining and keeping control of existing pie).<p>An alternative would be that it&#x27;s cultural in some more complex way and proportion of inherited wealth is either a factor or actually a consequence of other things going on.

I work for a company head-quartered in one continent, listed on another and I work in a third (the UK) - and sales are based all over.<p>Not for one moment saying there aren&#x27;t local issues&#x2F;idiosyncrasies - but I&#x27;m unsure how moving your company solves them, and article seems to overlook all manner of problems:<p>Aren&#x27;t you going to lose staff when you move?<p>Is everybody going to have to get up really early to talk to Europe?<p>Won&#x27;t new employees cost more in NA?<p>i.e. Why not just hire a US based sales rep to sell to your US customers, in the style that works there? (and a native speaking, convervative, tech-enabled one for Germany etc)<p>Or just register yourself at a Missouri PO, list in the US, seek US investors etc?

Clearly America is the place to be if you want to make billions in tech. The bigger question is why every single company needs to target billions of dollars. You can still build a very successful company in London and get quite wealthy, you just might not get your own private space program.<p>Meanwhile in London your workers will have free healthcare, their kids will have free higher education, etc.<p>He&#x27;s totally right about Brexit though. The talent pool in London is never going to be the same.

Sounds like the author is upset that Brexit has closed the valve on the pipeline of cheap labour from EU workers. There&#x27;s no shortage of talent in London trust me, it&#x27;s just that you&#x27;re going to have to start paying more than a pittance to get it. Brexit so far has been a positive thing for tech workers&#x27; salaries.

Not particularly convinced about the Brexit angle or the comments on sales - for example, you can bet that The City has some highly aggressive salesmen&#x2F;women given its status. But from my perspective Europe suffers from a problem of culture - there is <i>seriously</i> old money here and, I&#x27;d assert, a related, outdated zero-sum&#x2F;dog in the manger mentality. Anything like FAANG, Tesla, SpaceX etc that seriously threatens to disrupt the status quo is either stillborn, strangled at birth or shortly thereafter as this guild&#x27;s dead hand does its work.

It&#x27;s pretty common in Europe for people to get a socially-funded education then go off to the USA. It&#x27;s called brain drain and has been happening for a while, not sure why this guy needs to write an article pretending that&#x27;s not what&#x27;s happening here.

Summary: He received free money from EU. Now that he could not get enough from UK government, he is leaving.

I’m not sure I get it. This just sounds like someone wanting to move to NY and coming up with a rational for it.<p>The company still seems to be selling and recruiting in London.<p>A ‘poor sales culture’ in London won’t effect a companies ability to hire good sales people and get sales unless they’re a bad company to work for.<p>Brexit will have an impact on recruitment but there is no problem (at least there wasn’t a few years ago) getting work permits for people with AI related phds to work in a company serving financial and legal companies in the city in the UK.

As an European, I am quite happy with a less aggressive sales tactic - it makes companies focus on quality over whoever gets the loudest sales guy.

This article basically explains what most of us already know. American tech firms in general are much more concerned with raw profit than with the actual quality and purpose of the enterprise. It’s definitely a different culture.

I dont understand, does he want the technical staff to sell because he doesnt have a sales team or is it that the staff were not creating a commercial project? If thats was the case then why didnt he or other management step in and do something about it? If Brexit was a problem why didnt they just relocate to Berlin, Paris or Stockholm?<p>Or is this all to do with the much higher ratings tech companies receive in the US?

&gt; Almost my entire R&amp;D team who received PhDs from British universities had them funded by the European Union<p>Well, there you go.

I wonder how you move a company with about 200 employees to a different country and time zone.

Trying to start a business in the UK: &quot;What are you doing? You&#x27;ll fail! You&#x27;ll go bankrupt! You&#x27;ll be homeless! Why don&#x27;t you get a nice civil service job with a government pension?&quot;<p>Trying to start a business in the USA: &quot;Rock on, bro! You&#x27;re going to be the next Zuckerberg&#x2F;Gates&#x2F;Bezos!&quot;

Likely a prequel to &quot;leaving NYC for SF&quot;.

Not sure I get the part of talent pool. Exactly which part of AI research or development can&#x27;t be done as remote work?

There&#x27;s EU draft regulation regarding AI utilization. Prohibited AI would be described as, &quot;...systems or applications that manipulate human behaviour in order to circumvent the free will of the users.&quot;[0]<p>[0] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ey.com&#x2F;en_ch&#x2F;ai&#x2F;eu-draft-regulation-on-artificial-intelligence" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ey.com&#x2F;en_ch&#x2F;ai&#x2F;eu-draft-regulation-on-artificia...</a>

Hopefully crime goes back down. I was born and raised in Brooklyn during some of NY&#x27;s worst crime waves. It appears to be heading back that way again with inflation and crime. Felonious assaults are up over 18% since 2020, and robbery is up by 15.8% compared to 2020. His startup sounds like any other tech-based company. He needs techs, mathematicians, AI, data sci., etc. With the great work-from-home experiment due to COVID, and tech not really needing to be physically present in NYC, why move there for the high rents and cost of living? I ran a business in the tri-state area for 9 years, but I catered to artists and shows, manufacturing, and designed and built physical objects with tech interfaces or controls. I had to be in the area. Now I do more consultation, design, and engineering and I work around the world from a nice NY town 45 to 60 min. from NYC on the Hudson. Wouldn&#x27;t go back to NYC if you paid me. Thinking on going back to live in the rice fields of Indonesia or another bucolic place to enjoy my family more in a nice environment, if I can swing it.

None of that makes sense. The language is certainly sending off grifter alarm bells.<p>The talent pool shrunk... So I&#x27;m going to upend the entire thing and start again? How does that make sense? What talent do you need?<p>I would wager that the investment graft is drying up and thus is a play to secure funding for more US biased sources<p>Perhaps slapping AI all over your generic document product is dying a little as a strategy too.

&gt;We’re in good company making this step: SaaS giant UiPath moved its headquarters to New York in 2017 to be closer to its international customer base.<p>UiPath moved offices in the US because it is easier to finance a business in US. But even if the offices were moved most of the work it is still done in Romania.

So what does he mean exactly? He just says some vague stuff about &quot;bad at sales&quot; and smth about the &quot;culture&quot; without actually giving any examples of what he really means. He mentions Brexit, mentions hiring then says it&#x27;s not as big a deal as &quot;sales&quot;. Then mentions EU funding for workers, then stops talking.<p>So what does he mean? Do British sales people not bother contacting anyone, do all British customers hate sales people and tell them to sod off? This is like Brexit all over when someone mentions some vague thing and everyone starts commenting with their own interpretation of what it means but nobody bothers to pin down what it actually means. What does it mean? I have no clue at all. I felt like I knew more before I read this article than after.

&gt;The sad truth is that there are no listed trillion-dollar tech companies in Europe. Given Europe’s market size and depth of its talent pool, this is a surprise. Deliveroo, for example, had an extremely challenging IPO, trading at much lower multiples than some of its American peers despite better metrics.<p>Is that really a sad truth other than for VCs who want to exit based on future expectations? If you have better metrics and you make money you&#x27;re employing people and you&#x27;re paying wages and you&#x27;re growing things seem fine.<p>No doubt the US has many great tech companies but if you see some of the inflation in terms of funding rounds and evaluations slapped on companies that aren&#x27;t profitable is that really necessary to emulate?

&gt; Advances in the type of small data AI we do — AI created without vast data sets — <i>would have only been possible here in Europe</i>, with its deep and diverse technical and mathematical talent. This would have been difficult in Silicon Valley <i>given US tech’s reluctance to experiment and innovate</i>, beyond the conventional “big data AI” approach.<p>Can anyone expand on what the author is saying here&#x2F;validate it with personal experience? I have never thought of AI advances as “only” being possible in Europe, or of the US tech scene as reluctant to innovate.

I&#x27;m slightly confused. Is the traditional way not the stable way to go about things instead of how it is done in the US? These seem more like positives than negatives to me.

A little off-topic, but I find it strange to brand the company around the &quot;Eigen&quot; name when it&#x27;s already a super well-known C++ numerical library: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;eigen.tuxfamily.org&#x2F;index.php?title=Main_Page" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;eigen.tuxfamily.org&#x2F;index.php?title=Main_Page</a>

NYC is not the right choice though. Ridiculously expensive office space and wages compared to pretty much everywhere else in the US except California. The coasts are beautiful, but the idea of living there…eww. Midwest for life. Good luck.

I really like the way he describes Europe. Pretty much the way I see it as well.

That&#x27;s a good example of how a sub-par article with catchy title generates a sub-par discussion.

Best of luck.

Highest effective tax in the US, insanely expensive real estate and rents, high and rising crime [1]. Good luck, you&#x27;re gonna need it.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www1.nyc.gov&#x2F;site&#x2F;nypd&#x2F;news&#x2F;pr1006&#x2F;nypd-citywide-crime-statistics-september-2021" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www1.nyc.gov&#x2F;site&#x2F;nypd&#x2F;news&#x2F;pr1006&#x2F;nypd-citywide-cri...</a>

Are there any European websites in the Alexa top 50?<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.alexa.com&#x2F;topsites" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.alexa.com&#x2F;topsites</a><p>For all I know, Europe mostly missed the internet.<p>Will the same happen with AI, data centers, solar, crypto and biotech?