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graemep | on: UK's hardware talent is being wasted
> As a Brit, when I was raising the seed round for my startup, UK and European VCs would consistently try to haggle you down on price while the American VC's were exclusively focussed on trying to figure out whether this could be a billion dollar business or not (

Yes we have many comments on HN talking about how harmful the US VCs attitude is because they force good businesses into choosing between being unicorns and not getting funding.

I do not know the truth of it, but clearly its not obvious.

> Unfortunately the UK has not been well governed for 20 years or so, and hence economic outcomes as a whole have been abysmal.

I commented on this earlier. The UK's economic outcomes have been similar to comparable European economies (like Germany) and better than some (like France). Whatever the problem is, its not unique to the UK: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42766107

I do not think the UK is well run, but I think the west in general is badly run. Poorly thought out regulation, short termism in both politics and business, a focus on metrics subject to Goodhart's and Campbell's laws, and a poor understanding of the rest of the work (leading to bad foreign policy).

robertlagrant | parent | next
> Yes we have many comments on HN talking about how harmful the US VCs attitude is because they force good businesses into choosing between being unicorns and not getting funding.

HN has a very wide range of economic opinions, and some people are extremely uninformed about what it takes to do hard things that can't be grown organically, and what it takes to maintain a business running when it's done the hard thing in the face of competition.

ktallett | root | parent
Most of the issues here relate to scale and actual quality of the idea/business in the first place. Hard things can really be split into, challenging but a problem to solve, or this never should have become a business. The former will work well with the right sort of investors. The latter will eventually sink, the investors simply provide money and poor ideas such as trying to incorporate AI into every business model.
marcinzm | parent | next
> Yes we have many comments on HN talking about how harmful the US VCs attitude is because they force good businesses into choosing between being unicorns and not getting funding.

Most of those are people complaining about a business having to make changes because it took $50+m in funding and now needs to justify it. The business was only "good" because it got $50m and didn't need to do things like charge enough money. If it hadn't gotten that $50m then those people wouldn't consider it such a good business or even know about it.

Marazan | parent | next
It's because post GFC the USA stimulated and the EU went all in on austerity.

It is fairly clear what was the best option.

pjc50 | root | parent | next
Under-rated comment. This is basically the whole explanation. 2008 did a huge amount of damage, not just immediately but to long-term mindsets. Ironically I think it's even entrenched the meme that the only real way to make money in the UK is property. We're all Georgists now.

(this includes property as an export industry! Leaving increasing areas of the UK owned by overseas absentee landlords.)

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graemep | root | parent
The UK did not choose austerity:

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn06...

but still has worse growth than the US.

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paganel | parent | next
For the last 20 or 25 years the UK has been coasting on the North Sea oil&gas money, I'd say that worked up until the early 2010s, and then on the almost complete financialization of its economy and on selling out whatever pieces of the economy could still be sold out (that includes part of their beloved NHS).

But that can only work for so long and is beneficial in the medium to long-term for a very limited number of people (basically the owners of said financial capital), at some point you have to produce some real wealth, wealth produced from real stuff via resources of the Earth + human ingenuity and, yes, + human work.

graemep | root | parent
I agree, but my point is that the France, Germany, and other comparable European economies have the same or similar problems. The UK is not some exception, it is a typical western economy. The US is an outlier (doing better).

> that includes part of their beloved NHS

A more severe problem is that the NHS was debt funded (mostly through off balance sheet debt) in the 2000s. The government kept their promise not to increase national debt by disguising running up disguised debt in the NHS

Its also worth noting that a large chuck of NHS services, GP services in particular, were always subcontracted to private providers.

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PakistaniDenzel | parent
> The UK's economic outcomes have been similar to comparable European economies (like Germany) and better than some (like France)

Who says those countries were well governed though? IMO they are all run by idealogical morons

graemep | root | parent
I agree they were also badly governed - that is my point.