hedgehoglab

I usually do not respond on our blog to articles or blog posts elsewhere, simply because I have nothing useful to say in response or don't have a strong counter-argument to present. However, the Telegraph's commentary on the Sun Tech Mission 2009 was too much bait to resist responding to.

Unlike many of my peers, I am not out to defend the North. The problem I have is with the general slant of the article and the basis behind the opinions drawn in it.

The point that aptly illustrates everything that is wrong about businesses based in London is the following line,

"Plugging yourself in to the London circuit is the best way to generate buzz around your product. More importantly, it gives you the best chance of making the connections you need to investors and other start-ups."

This, fundamentally, is what wrong is with many businesses (especially tech) these days. Since when has business success been measured by how much PR/buzz you could generate or how much investment you could eke out of rich London bankers? The entire article is based on the assumption that to have a successful business, you have to pitch to investors, get them to invest a lot of money, generate lots of buzz around your product, and finally hope Google buys you for a ridiculous amount of money.

There are many reasons to base a business in London and I admit there might be statistically far more successful start-ups in London than in the North of England (I would love to see those stats) but to define success within the narrow scope of investment-led businesses is ignoring the large majority of grassroots, boot-strapped businesses that might never get on the news but contribute a large part to the economy.

Whatever happened to building great products, generating revenue and building sustainable long-term businesses? Are you not classified as a start-up anymore if you don't attend the hundreds of BarCamps or don't get featured on Techcrunch or ReadWriteWeb?

Given the current economic climate, what we need is more "boring" start-ups that can create jobs and pay taxes. Granted that venture-backed start-ups create immense value and wealth if they succeed but the success rate of these start-ups is certainly no more than that of other start-ups.

A lot of the article is based on opinions and comments by entrepreneurs who are biased because they are either based in London or are moving there. The kind of entrepreneurs who, with all due respect, believe that the only kind of tech company to build is the next Facebook, Youtube or Twitter.

(Update: Nick Bell from Quick.tv responds to my above over-generalisation in comments below. It was certainly not aimed at Nick and/or Quick.tv)

The article does make a fair number of valid points like the Government-funded schemes largely administered by people with little background in the tech industry. I also agree that support and advice for technology businesses is weaker than what is available in London. There are issues surrounding the quality of networking and the general ability of tech companies in the region to collaborate. However, none of these seem to be a reason to move to London. If they were, then why not just move to Silicon Valley, because as the article says, if the South were better than the North then by that measure Silicon Valley is far better than the South of England.

Will the real tech media please stand up and provide commentary and reports that reflect the fact there are more ways to do business in technology than generating buzz, building old boys networks and throwing around a lot of cash. The City of London and the financial institutions were symbolic of this and were much taunted examples of the superiority of London as a centre of business. We all know how that ended!

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