Sam Sethi has just launched the UK version of TechCrunch. TechCrunch has been influential in promoting new start ups and is widely read by many who is interested in new technology. Sam speaks about VC and Angel market in UK (I have first hand experience in attempting to raise VC funding – my impression is that VCs are as risk averse as the bankers! I know there are differing viewpoints especially from the VCs):
A number of people, including myself, recently got together to determine if there was something we could do to resolve the situation or at the very least change the status quo. As a group we asked ourselves why and more importantly how does Silicon Valley continue to produce so many new start-ups. The why factor we felt centred around the American “can do, will do” cultural mentality which differs from the UK “can do, may do”. Thus the number of people in the UK with a “will do” mentality is a much smaller pool which in-turn reflects in the fewer UK start-ups that consequently appear on the Angel VC radar.
The how factor though was slightly harder to determine but we concluded that a number of factors had came together last year – cheaper better software coupled with cheaper faster bandwidth – which had lowered the initial start-up costs, thus enabling many more entrepreneurs to prove their idea in the real world prior to seeking funding. At the same time there were also cheaper easier content creation tools appearing; namely wikis & blogs and one in particular TechCrunch.com, which we collectively felt played a major role in creating the successful environment that brought many start-ups onto the attention of the USA Angel VC’s.
Therefore the proposal was to go away and create an equivalent site which enables UK based start-ups to be viewed and reviewed in one place. Therefore I am excited to announce the launch of TechCrunch UK today. In the coming months I hope to be reviewing many UK based or focused startups.
I look forward to the date, when ebdex will be covered by TechCrunch. As a start-up, we need all the help we can get.
Tags: Start Up, TechCrunch,