Alex Gordon-Furse

Why doesn’t the UK have more startups? Capital is fixed, technical talent is world class, tax incentives are great, visas mostly fine, university IP problems seem like they’re getting fixed. Free healthcare and social security net in the UK is a huge advantage that should make it dramatically easier to start companies vs US. There’s probably still a lack of scale-up leadership/exec hires. But, by far, the biggest barrier is cultural. Our national psyche doesn’t celebrate entrepreneurs and we have an extreme culture of risk-aversion. A huge majority of smart technical young people in the UK aspire to be lawyers or consultants or work in finance. These are safe careers with prestigious brands that guarantee people a safe, middle class lifestyle. We need our brightest young people to aspire to take risk and create world changing companies and generate billions of pounds of wealth. We need to help them believe it’s possible.