[HN Gopher] How London became the rest of the world's startup ca...
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How London became the rest of the world's startup capital
https://archive.ph/ebA1T
Author : ellieh
Score : 198 points
Date : 2026-01-28 00:16 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.economist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.economist.com)
| claude_sh_1959 wrote:
| Smells like marketing stuff.. there are plenty of other places
| that i think are better.
| paradox460 wrote:
| Sand Hill road
| arjie wrote:
| That would be pretty funny to say. Where are America's
| startups founded? Principally the San Francisco Bay Area.
| What about the Rest of the World? Oh, principally the San
| Francisco Bay Area.
|
| It reminds me of the funny fact that for years I worked at a
| building in Bush St. that was nice but not particularly
| remarkable only to find out that that's where Saudi Aramco
| was originally headquartered when some Twitter post counted
| them for the Bay Area for their "Where are the top market
| capped public companies from?" segment.
| kaashif wrote:
| It's not based on marketing, it appears to be based on metrics
| like amount of venture capital raised.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Having a London domicile often leads to an overstating in
| venture capital raised _for_ the UK ecosystem.
|
| For example, I've funded Polish and Indian startups that
| chose the UK as their legal domicile because we couldn't be
| bothered to hire a legal team to draft a contract to Polish
| or Indian specifications.
|
| Builder.ai [0] is a great example of that - it was an Indian
| startup that was domiciled in London to simplify raising
| capital from Gulf investors.
|
| [0] - https://www.ft.com/content/926f4969-fda7-4e78-b106-4888
| c8704...
| fakedang wrote:
| Startups like Builder AI use London because a.) they want
| to raise money from filthy rich Arab investors and b.)
| those guys are not known for doing much due diligence. They
| go more by vibes and hype and who's on the existing cap
| table. Also c.) they are very comfortable with London
| because it was so much easier back in the day to launder or
| siphon away funds from their home countries. London is an
| extremely popular destination for Gulf Arabs.
|
| You'll get a lot of shady startups of that kind in London
| for this reason.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Not all Arab investors are bad - for example, funds
| associated with the Emirate of Abu Dhabi (eg. ADIA,
| Mubadala) has been extremely successful in their
| investments explicitly because Tahnoon studied
| engineering in San Diego (and rolled at Gracie's gym)
| back in the day.
|
| Additonally, for every failed investment like builder.ai
| a fund like QIA and MS Ventures has had multiple other
| successful investments.
|
| The perception of "shadiness" in the London VC scene
| arises simply because a subset of non-American VC simply
| does not care about value investing and product-led
| growth.
|
| Additonally, it's not like the UK doesn't have good VCs
| and Growth Equity investors - for example Index Ventures
| and Ballie Guiffold both have a solid track record.
|
| Being overly congratulatory and being overly pessimistic
| about the UK scene does more harm than good.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Does this also impact US metrics for capital raised? My
| understanding is that the Delaware C-Corp is still the
| startup standard for founders from anywhere in the world to
| raise global capital, which I imagine skews where the
| capital actually ends up flowing if they are actually
| building a company in a foreign location and just using the
| Delaware entity as a holding co.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Somewhat, but not to the degree as you see in the UK,
| Singapore, or HK.
|
| Until a couple years ago, it was difficult for someone
| without a SSN to create a Delaware C-Corp and even
| despite current political instability, the depth of IP,
| capital, and R&D available in the US is difficult to
| replicate outside China, Japan, and maybe India.
| noosphr wrote:
| Given that London has little else going for it other than a
| financial industry it's not surprising money is raised and
| companies are registered there.
|
| That said I don't know anyone doing a startup in London. But
| I know dozens in Berlin without even thinking about it.
| dukeyukey wrote:
| Eh, I know quite a few. LegalTech, hardware, obviously
| fintech, quite a bit of AI. But I work at a London startup
| so my social circle might be different to yours.
| jacquesm wrote:
| It should be based on the number of successes relative to the
| amount raised or ROI and that picture is quite different. In
| that sense London is _way_ behind SV.
| dukeyukey wrote:
| The article doesn't dispute that London is way behind SV.
| What it's saying is that for non-US funding, London
| dominates.
| jacquesm wrote:
| But it isn't true. For the rest of the world SV is still
| the place to go to, one way or another. The difference is
| just too big. What you could say is that London is the
| place to try to raise money if you can't raise in SV. But
| you'll have to realize that your chances of success are
| dramatically lower that way to the point that you're
| going to end up a with a small fraction of the stock
| yourself after the inevitable dilution through follow up
| rounds because you couldn't raise a large enough round to
| begin.
|
| VC in London is harsh, both for the start-ups and for the
| VCs. What does happen is that a company manages to stay
| alive long enough to raise a secondary round in the USA,
| but then you can't really make the original claim in the
| TFA.
| dukeyukey wrote:
| > But it isn't true. For the rest of the world SV is
| still the place to go to, one way or another.
|
| We are using different meanings for the same phrase. SV
| is the best place to raise, IF YOU CAN AND ARE WILLING TO
| RAISE THERE. But not everyone can, nor does everyone want
| to. And of the locations that are not in the US, London
| dominates.
|
| And hell, Americans raise in Boston, Seattle, NYC, and so
| on. Not even all Americans move to SV, let alone people
| who may not even get a visa to enter the US.
| dukeyukey wrote:
| For you specifically that may be true, but the numbers say
| London dominates by _far_.
| personjerry wrote:
| I'm waiting for the yearly "Waterloo is the Silicon Valley of
| Canada" article that always fails to deliver its promise.
|
| I grew up in Waterloo but it's just not it lol.
| captain_coffee wrote:
| Could you give only a few examples from those PLENTY of other
| places that are better? Like the first 10 that come to your
| mind, you made me very curious!
| quentindanjou wrote:
| Not the person you asked but I am thinking of France and
| Germany. France has Station F
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Station_F).
|
| There are also Portugal, Spain and Romania that are rising
| contenders. I am also very dubious of UK being "world first"
| flawn wrote:
| Bruder, komm nach Berlin or frere, allez a Paris
| lifestyleguru wrote:
| Come to Germany, the letters from Rundfunkbeitrag and Waldorf
| Frommer are already waiting for you!
| haspok wrote:
| You've not heard of the UK's TV license then.
| another_twist wrote:
| Oh come on. You get the BBC for that money. I gladly pay it
| byt then I work in tech.
| renewiltord wrote:
| I arrive in 2026. Decide to start a startup. By the year 2038,
| the state mandated reader of legal documents has finished
| reading out aloud to me and my co-founder. Now we find a VC.
| His documents need to be read to us both. But the Y2K38 problem
| strikes. He thinks we are in the year 1970. He needs to read us
| the "ancient company addendum". While he's reading he chokes
| and keels over, dead from the emissions from his Volkswagen.
| Our ARR may be zero, but what about our government grants? Also
| zero.
|
| My friend. He starts in France in 2026. The government mandates
| that the retiree earnings to worker earnings ratio must be
| fixed by law to what it was in 2025: 130%. For every employee I
| hire, I must also pay a retiree 1.3 times his salary. He visits
| me via train in 2038. I ask him how his trip was. Turns out he
| actually got on Deutsche Bahn train back then in 2026. I just
| didn't know because he spent all his time on Twitter explaining
| why the US approach to startups won't work. He's lucky. Pretty
| short delay for DB train.
| michaelscott wrote:
| This was crafted with a subtlety that captures the
| continental combination of infrastructural petrification and
| untethered pride perfectly. Wonderful
| FearNotDaniel wrote:
| Reminds me of how often you hear Austrian Railways announcing
| that they apologize for the late running of a train "which
| was subject to delays in a neighbouring land". They never
| name which country but it's always Germany.
| joe_mamba wrote:
| Error 404, Berlin apartment not found, or current tenant wants
| 11k for "the furniture" if I want the honor to be allowed to
| rent the apartment
| romanhn wrote:
| A different perspective:
| https://x.com/aakashgupta/status/2016375397131420005
|
| TL;DR: What London actually built is Europe's most efficient farm
| system for US acquirers. The city does the expensive, risky work
| of finding founders, funding early rounds, and proving product-
| market fit. American companies wait until the risk is de-risked,
| then buy the winners at discounts enabled by London's shrinking
| public markets.
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| There's an argument that some of these takeovers should have
| been blocked.
| dukeyukey wrote:
| > enabled by London's shrinking public markets
|
| That doesn't seem to be true?
| alephnerd wrote:
| It is -
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-09-30/london-
| dr...
|
| Edit: can't reply
|
| The majority of IPOs in 2025 were in 4 markets - US, China,
| Hong Kong, India, and South Korea [0]. It's really hard to
| exit in the LSE currently, and this article is self
| congratulatory while ignoring major recent (past 2-3 years)
| mistakes that negatively impacted the entrepreneurship scene
| in the UK (eg. the revocation of funding for Tech Nation [1]
| and the ongoing leadership crisis at Monzo [2] which makes no
| one look good).
|
| [0] - https://www.ey.com/en_pt/insights/ipo/trends
|
| [1] - https://sifted.eu/articles/tech-nation-shutting-down
|
| [2] - https://www.ft.com/content/3405c6f3-931b-4fe3-a169-a966
| 5a132...
| dukeyukey wrote:
| No it isn't, London's IPOs in 2025 were mostly towards the
| end of the year, after that article was written. London
| ended up about 8th worldwide for issuances in 2025 -
| https://www.pwc.co.uk/press-room/press-releases/research-
| com...
|
| Plus, the FTSE 100 returned 25.8% last year. That is not a
| shrinking market!
|
| EDIT: I'd prefer you not change the subject away from your
| capital markets claim, but to address the other links:
|
| 1. I didn't say London was a top 4 IPO location, just that
| it's market aren't shrinking.
|
| 2. Tech Nation still exists, and still administers that
| visa. I don't know why you posted a very out of date
| article about it.
|
| 3. It's not _ideal_ that such a high profile company is
| having issues like that, but hey, stuff happens. OpenAI had
| a whole goddamn coup and counter-coup happen!
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| > Plus, the FTSE 100 returned 25.8% last year. That is
| not a shrinking market!
|
| After a long period in the doldrums.
| monkeydust wrote:
| London and UK for that matter is great and seeding
| Startups...high quality universities, entrepreneurialism and
| attractive tax benefits for angels but for real growth capital
| it lags massively behind US and has forever.
|
| The Kraken story is one to follow to see if this
| changes...https://www.british-business-bank.co.uk/news-and-
| events/news...
| alephnerd wrote:
| This.
|
| Also UK contract law is well established and it's easy to find
| experienced transatlantic lawyers and firms (there's a reason
| UK lawyers can practice in NY and why both Hong Kong and the
| Emirate of Dubai kept poaching British judges with contract
| dispute into their business judiciary).
|
| In most cases when we'd invest in a startup abroad, the founder
| would often structure their startup as a subsidiary of a US,
| UK, Singapore (especially Indian/Chinese startups), or Cayman
| Islands (it's a BOT so you basically get it for free)
| corporation.
|
| Ironically, this ease of financial access is what makes it
| difficult to seed a lasting DeepTech startup in the UK because
| capital would often be deployed to invest in other startup
| ecosystems. I wrote about this before on HN as well [0][1][2]
|
| [0] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42768018
|
| [1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42767986
|
| [2] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42763734
| siquick wrote:
| In football we'd call the US "tap-in merchants".
| dukeyukey wrote:
| I don't know Aakash Gupta so I can't say if he's lying or just
| didn't do his research, but I know the IPO figures he cited
| there are wrong, like very wrong, which puts everything else
| there in doubt.
|
| Not to mention location of IPO not being all that important.
| But that's a whole separate thing.
| 3rodents wrote:
| "Freetrade built a profitable trading app, got acquired by IG
| Group for PS160M after targeting a PS700M valuation"
|
| That is not an accurate recollection of history. Freetrade
| raised money at a PS700 million valuation at the very top of
| the market when money was plentiful, then, when the money dried
| up, and they were forced to go from losing money to making
| money, and they cut all advertising, they were able to just
| about scrape profitability. At the point of the acquisition,
| Freetrade either needed more investment to fund more
| advertising, or get acquired. After 10 years, a dozen rounds of
| fundraising and capital drying up, PS160M is a good exit.
| Freetrade was significantly overvalued at PS700 million.
|
| https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/investing/article-142962...
| dukeyukey wrote:
| And also, IG Group is a British company, HQ'd in London,
| traded on the London Stock Exchange. "British stock trading
| company acquired by British stock trading company" is a
| pretty boring event.
| edogrider wrote:
| This checks out. I live in Silicon Valley but now work for a
| startup in London. Same vibe, less attitude.
|
| They are not the same. The energy/resources in SF/SV are 5x at a
| minimum - but London has it going on.
| HPMOR wrote:
| Yeah SF is 10x every other place in earth. People that think
| things are comparable have never lived here.
| qweiopqweiop wrote:
| 10x more insufferable tech bros too? I've never lived there
| true, but I've spent some time there to know this place isn't
| for me.
| bbarn wrote:
| Working for London startups in the past, I've found they're
| much more polite, but much less honest and straightforward.
| There's a layer of britishness you have to get past sometimes
| to get to what people really want instead of directness.
| Quarrelsome wrote:
| best reasoning I've heard for this is that English is subtext
| heavy, like Japanese due to the history of the aristocracy.
| The populace were in thrall to their feudal lords and the
| aristocracy as serfs and servant classes for so long, that
| being indirect has been embedded into the language as a
| defense mechanism to not upset the pay masters. We get the
| subtext but people new to our culture might not.
|
| I remember a technological mess being present at work and my
| team lead bringing out the classic:
|
| > it's not ideal is it?
|
| or the classic Jeeves and Wooster valet/aristocrat
| relationship with Jeeves giving it the:
|
| > as you say sir
|
| > very good sir
|
| with both statements being flexible but often being delivered
| with the dripping subtext of "yeah that's complete
| bollocks".[0]
|
| Obviously this doesn't apply to the real working classes but
| then those types are not the sort to gain a STEM education.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s03Fq1nsbng
|
| (The full scene is around 11:30 in the first episode and I
| think its captures a conversation of subtext and indirectness
| quite well).
| Oras wrote:
| > yeah that's complete bollocks
|
| We say "interesting" for that
| pjc50 wrote:
| > English is subtext heavy, like Japanese
|
| My stock joke is that one of these countries is a feudal
| warrior culture and former empire that's obsessed with tea
| and saving face, and the other is Japan.
| FearNotDaniel wrote:
| > it's not ideal is it?
|
| Oh jeez, I've literally just typed out a message on Teams
| to describe a situation where someone deployed breaking DB
| changes without the accompanied app changes as "a less-
| than-ideal scenario". Sometimes I forget I have to
| translate from British for the benefit of everyone else on
| the team (half in India, half in US, one German)
| slgeorge wrote:
| As a Brit when I started doing deals in North America one of
| the things I picked up was that I had to be explicit about
| disagreement OR where a decision was not being made yet. In
| the UK during a negotiation a 'silence' is not equal to
| agreement or disagreement, it's a NO-OP. If I didn't do this
| then prospective customers/suppliers in the USA would believe
| that I'd agreed to their request when from my perspective I
| had merely noted that they'd asked for something. Has anyone
| else run into this?
|
| The other one that's confusing is that "tabling" something
| means the complete opposite.
|
| I would separate 'politeness' and 'indirectness' a bit. I
| generally agree about 'politeness', there are plenty social
| forms that Brits still follow. For example I found the
| language/manner of New York attorneys pretty 'aggressive' the
| first few times.
|
| Indirectness, is definitely a thing - Brits speak to each
| other or signal disagreement in ways that's clear to another
| Brit, but maybe not others. The use of silence, but also some
| words that depending on tone can mean different things which
| I think is difficult for North American's to interpret.
| rconti wrote:
| How's the comp? From HN I had gotten the feeling that the UK
| was worse than most of western europe in that regard.
| dukeyukey wrote:
| According to levels.fyi London is basically the best paying
| non-US city, I think maybe beaten by some Swiss cities.
| roryirvine wrote:
| I've always found levels.fyi to be a little pessimistic for
| the UK when compared with commercially-available
| benchmarking services.
|
| I suspect it's because people on PAYE tend to think of
| their basic salary + bonus + income tax, but disregard
| NICS, pension, paid holidays, and other benefits. They end
| up reporting a total package that's 10-20% lower than it
| actually is.
| zipy124 wrote:
| Depends on the company, but typical junior salaries are
| PS35-45k a year, mid level around PS50-65k year and senior
| somewhere between PS65-85k a year. Obviously you have FAANG
| who pay significantly more and finance firms, but they are
| not the majority, and I've hired or have friends being paid
| in these ranges who are extremely talented and from top unis.
|
| Upper ranges for all levels accross the very highest paying
| employees are PS100-400k when including bonuses usually.
| Usually these are quant/quant-dev jobs and FAANG.
| sp1982 wrote:
| Yup, London has consistently showing up in geographic hotspots in
| my job postings data. I think it could be also be due to success
| of companies like DeepMind.
|
| https://jobswithgpt.com/blog/global_software-engineering_job...
| philipwhiuk wrote:
| Another British company swallowed by the US :(
| brokencode wrote:
| At least Elon Musk didn't end up getting it, which he tried
| before Google swooped in.
| sjhuda wrote:
| Yeah, lots of examples of that happening. Runna was the
| latest one I can remember. I won't be suprised at all if
| ElevenLabs is bought out by a big US player soon.
| throwaway7783 wrote:
| Funny how San Francisco can't fit the chart they have. League of
| its own I guess.
| alephnerd wrote:
| It truly is. I've seen multiple pre-seed startups and founders
| burn significant amounts of personal capital in order to land
| an O-1A visa because of how much capital and mentorship is
| available here.
| lifestyleguru wrote:
| I wonder who are these people willing to work in London and
| transfer 60% of their net income directly to landlord. Maybe
| money doesn't matter because most of the time they spend in work
| and commuting?
| ojhughes wrote:
| Isn't it the same deal in every major tech hub?
| lifestyleguru wrote:
| In other European "tech hubs" you're not going to find a job
| or will not be able to rent anything.
| LunaSea wrote:
| Or you can come to SF and live in your car or at the gym.
| retinaros wrote:
| London is #1 at that. You earn a bit more than rest of europe
| but everything is way more expensive
| dangus wrote:
| The math works out for almost every HCOL area. Your salary is
| higher. Rent is high too but people either choose to live
| further away or accept a smaller apartment/condo.
|
| London has a big commuting radius with strong regional transit
| (as maligned as it is).
| lifestyleguru wrote:
| There goes another 15% of your net income on train tickets.
| Eating out every time (because have no time for proper value
| shopping) and you are basically working in exchange of food,
| housing, and commute.
| blibble wrote:
| it wasn't even close to 15% of my net income when I was 25
|
| and it certainly isn't now that I'm quite a bit older, and
| I earn a multiple of what I did then
| conradludgate wrote:
| As long as you live within Greater London and can use TFL,
| it's more like 5%
| dangus wrote:
| Using hyperbolic percentages harms your point, it doesn't
| help it.
|
| But yeah you're right dude, _we live in a society_. We work
| to support ourselves. What a shocking surprise.
| ctrlmeta wrote:
| Where are you pulling this random 15% number from? And a
| ridiculous number too. It's more like 2% to 3% unless you
| spend your entire day traveling.
|
| I just checked how much I pay for travel. My monthly travel
| expenses is PS150 total. That's like between 2% to 3% of
| someone's net income (depends on how much net income you
| make).
|
| Do you know it is impossible to 15% of your net income in
| travel because there is a weekly fare cap:
| https://tfl.gov.uk/fares/find-fares/capping
|
| Worst case scenario, you are traveling too much every week
| to max out the fare cap across all travel zones. Your
| monthly total would be PS244. That's like 3% to 6% of your
| net income. But this is the worst case scenario. If you are
| spending 6% of your net income on travel, maybe you should
| reconsider which zone you live in.
|
| So seriously where are you pulling out this ridiculous 15%
| number from?
| lifestyleguru wrote:
| Extrapolated from past earnings, but yeah if rent takes
| 60% of net salary then monthly train will more in the
| 5-10% range of net salary.
| blibble wrote:
| > London has a big commuting radius with strong regional
| transit (as maligned as it is).
|
| yes, you can quite easily live 50 miles out and be at your
| desk in under an hour
| Citizen_Lame wrote:
| As long as you don't use trains.
| kjellsbells wrote:
| Is this really surprising? London picks up all the advantages of
| the UK (legal system is sound, eg in contract law, native
| speakers of English, the lingua franca of business, strong
| university tradition) and adds in its special sauce: access to
| the City, global-tier culture, excellent public transport (I know
| we moan about it, but it really is excellent), and a timezone
| location that easily serves the US and Asia markets.
|
| The awkwardness for founders in London is that when they want to
| IPO, London doesnt have nearly as deep a pool of capital as the
| US, so they are potentially leaving a lot of money on the table.
| hadlock wrote:
| Startups might thrive there, but business investment in England
| (particularly in mature businesses) has not exactly been lively
| ever since Brexit. I can't recall the last time I heard someone
| talking favorably about investing in England, or at all,
| really.
| funkyfiddler369 wrote:
| right, people will just tell you the best places and things
| to invest in ...
|
| during a game of chess: "hey why'd you make that move?"
| coldcity_again wrote:
| "hey why'd you make that bid?" is a valid question that
| must be answered during a game of bridge..
| pyuser583 wrote:
| Or since the anti-corruption reforms of 2015-2018.
|
| Which frustratingly overlap with Brexit, making it hard to
| tell whether this is "good driving business away" or "bad
| driving business away."
| pjc50 wrote:
| First I've heard of this - which anti-corruption reforms?
| pyuser583 wrote:
| UK Anti-Corruption Plan 2014-2015
|
| Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Act 2015 -
| outlawed bearer shares
|
| UK PSC Registry 2016
|
| Action Plan for Anti-Money Laundering and Counter-
| Terrorist Finance 2017-2022
|
| Money Laundering Regulations 2017
|
| Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018
| graemep wrote:
| Is deep enough pool of capital for the vast majority of
| businesses.
|
| Its cultural diversity is a plus for most people (other than
| people like DHH).
|
| The big problem with London is that it is very, very expensive.
| dukeyukey wrote:
| Housing is super expensive, but even that is coming down.
| Transport is a bit expensive, bit it's fine. Everything else
| is pretty reasonable!
| johnisgood wrote:
| Is it really coming down? Only in London, UK, Europe, or
| more or less globally? Where are you getting this from?
|
| I am not sure everything else is reasonable if groceries
| alone have been going up by as much as 100% throughout the
| world, heh. Maybe on an SWE salary it is reasonable, sure.
| gpderetta wrote:
| I was going to reply to grandparent that only flat prices
| are coming down because of rising service charge costs,
| and being hard to mortgage because of cladding issues.
|
| But after some research it is indeed true that house
| prices are, to a lesser extent, also going down, at least
| in real terms, if not nominal.
| rowanajmarshall wrote:
| I actually wrote a webapp to show this, check it out -
| https://housepricedashboard.co.uk/
|
| London house prices are falling quite a lot in real
| terms.
| johnisgood wrote:
| I am getting DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN.
| rowanajmarshall wrote:
| Ah shoot, it's not .com, it's .co.uk. So
| https://housepricedashboard.co.uk.
| gpderetta wrote:
| ERR_CONNECTION_RESET. HN hug of death?
| gpderetta wrote:
| Probably office firewall
| graemep wrote:
| Nice work. Have you considered add real terms changes?
| rowanajmarshall wrote:
| Already a feature, you can switch between nominal or
| inflation adjusted in the Change View panel -https://hous
| epricedashboard.co.uk/?tab=change&start=2014&end...
| johnisgood wrote:
| This is pretty good! Nice.
|
| Have you ever considered adding more countries?
| graemep wrote:
| In multiple UK regions, but the most expensive ones and
| London the most.
|
| Its coming down but from a very high level in London.
|
| I do not know about other countries, but movements do
| tend to be wide spread (at least across similar
| economies). We are seeing higher interest rates in a lot
| of countries and they are the main determinant of the
| multiple of income properties sell at.
| lurk2 wrote:
| > Its cultural diversity is a plus for most people
|
| Cultural diversity is not a draw. Africa, Latin America, and
| Central Asia are all culturally and ethnically diverse. No
| one moves to any of these places.
|
| The primary draw of a city like London is economic
| prosperity, which is ironically usually only made possible by
| ethnic homogeneity. This is the case in Britain's former
| colonies (USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand), China, Saudi
| Arabia, etc.
|
| Target cities become "culturally diverse" due to the arrival
| of migrant labor. The migrant labor itself is not seeking
| this diversity out for its own sake. New migrants have their
| movements facilitated by networks of already-landed migrants,
| who provide knowledge of the immigration process, employment
| opportunities, and material assistance to their coethnics.
|
| These people are not moving to London because they can find
| people like themselves there (there are already plenty in
| their country of origin), nor are they moving to London
| because they want to experience other cultures (this was a
| form of conspicuous consumption that went out of fashion
| years ago). At best you could say they hope that the relative
| ethnic heterogeneity will distract from their own
| foreignness, but that still doesn't amount to being drawn to
| diversity.
| hearsathought wrote:
| > This is the case in Britain's former colonies (USA
|
| The USA was never a colony of britain. The american
| colonies were.
|
| > The primary draw of a city like London is economic
| prosperity
|
| Then tokyo or singapore or dubai would have been even
| greater draws. But they are not.
|
| What becomes a "tech capital" is primarily a political
| decision. If london is a major tech center, it's because of
| political decisions within britain but primarily outside of
| britain ( the US ).
| lurk2 wrote:
| > The USA was never a colony of britain. The american
| colonies were.
|
| This is inane.
|
| > Then tokyo or singapore or dubai would have been even
| greater draws. But they are not.
|
| This doesn't logically follow, but even if it did, Tokyo
| _is_ an attractive destination for immigrants, even with
| the Japanese being notoriously xenophobic. Japan is
| homogenous and economically prosperous, the difference is
| that it restricts migrants from entering. Singapore has a
| huge population of day laborers that live in Malaysia and
| commute to Singapore. The majority of Dubai's population
| is comprised of foreign laborers.
|
| > If london is a major tech center, it's because of
| political decisions within britain but primarily outside
| of britain ( the US ).
|
| And how do those decisions get made in the absence of a
| cohesive society capable of making them?
| corimaith wrote:
| To add on this, ethnic heterogeneity (and ethnic enclaves)
| is one of the shallowest forms of diversity. If you examine
| the diversity regarding district characteristics and
| architecture, shopping options, subcultures, etc, many
| homogenous cities like Tokyo or Hong Kong are far greater
| and accommodating than London in diversity.
|
| And I would say that one reason for that is the elements I
| mention is something an individual can take seriously and
| integrate into their own world, while enclaves stay
| perpetually from the vantage of exoticism rather than
| integration.
| ifwinterco wrote:
| It's a classic example of how natural advantages and network
| effects can overcome mediocre to poor policymaking.
|
| The UK has been run by blithering idiots for decades at this
| point, but London has survived so far
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Maybe the UK has been run by blithering idiots but the
| business environment and regulations are still among the most
| attractive in Europe... not sure what that says about the
| _other_ European countries.
| ifwinterco wrote:
| Indeed, I can't speak for how other European countries work
| but if the Labour/Conservative/Whitehall nomenklatura is
| producing better results than your political system,
| something is very very wrong
| direwolf20 wrote:
| In Germany you need 25k$ and 6-12 months to establish the
| equivalent of an LLC. This is because Germany hates limited
| liability. It would prefer you to operate as a sole trader
| with unlimited liability, and then not do things that
| generate liability. Needless to say, this is scary for
| programmers.
| sumek83 wrote:
| hopefully soon down to 48h with EU-INC
| direwolf20 wrote:
| Just like the EU forced Germany to to stop prosecuting
| coffee shops for having public wifi.
| tchalla wrote:
| US founders have essentially outsourced risk to London.
|
| > What London actually built is Europe's most efficient farm
| system for US acquirers. The city does the expensive, risky
| work of finding founders, funding early rounds, and proving
| product-market fit. American companies wait until the risk is
| de-risked, then buy the winners at discounts enabled by
| London's shrinking public markets.
|
| https://xcancel.com/aakashgupta/status/2016375397131420005
| petesergeant wrote:
| Plus SEIS is the most insanely generous investment tax relief
| johnisgood wrote:
| Is it reasonable to say that in many (not all) parts of London,
| English no longer functions reliably as the default public
| language, even if most individuals technically "speak English"?
| rorytbyrne wrote:
| Not sure what point you're trying to make here in relation to
| startups.
| johnisgood wrote:
| I am not making any points. I have just heard this take a
| lot of times and I have not been around London for over 10
| years. If there is a point, it is not mine.
|
| As for its relevance: "native speakers on English", etc.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| It's not true. Where have you heard it?
| johnisgood wrote:
| There has been quite a lot of popular YouTubers spreading
| this.
|
| One of them is Kurt Caz.
|
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46809291)
|
| You should watch the video someone linked that exposes
| one of his many shady stuff.
| jddj wrote:
| No
| anonzzzies wrote:
| nope
| youngtaff wrote:
| Nope
| dukeyukey wrote:
| I don't think so. Like sure, if you're a Bangladeshi living
| in Tower Hamlets you could _probably_ get away with a limited
| life speaking only Bengali, but you could say the same about
| Spanish in swathes of the US. Realistically, you need
| English.
| ctrlmeta wrote:
| I have done a lot of social work with Bangladeshi
| community. What many people don't know that the Bangladeshi
| wives who come as dependants speak better English than
| their husbands and sometimes as good as the natives.
|
| I was surprised the first time I got into volunteer work.
| Figured that these wives have never spoken English in their
| home country. So when they moved to London, they learnt
| English from scratch and picked up the local accent and
| speaking style. Their grammar may not be perfect sometimes
| but whose is?
| pjc50 wrote:
| Across most of the world, people who do not share a common
| native language will speak English to each other. London is
| no different.
|
| What this is, is a racist meme pretending that the
| significant fraction of immigrants to London who may
| occasionally speak their native language to each other in
| public is somehow a problem. Exactly equivalent to Americans
| panicking about Spanish.
| johnisgood wrote:
| I think the "Exactly equivalent to Americans panicking
| about Spanish" comparison is good. Thanks!
| pjc50 wrote:
| I was going to add "coming into a pub in Wales and
| complaining about the occupants switching to Welsh", but
| that is a slightly different scenario. Partly because
| Welsh is much rarer.
| ctrlmeta wrote:
| > English no longer functions reliably as the default public
| language
|
| Absolutely false. My god! Have you even been to London? Stop
| consuming propaganda from Twitter/X and Facebook. It isn't
| good for your mental health.
| johnisgood wrote:
| Yes, as I have said, over 10 years.
|
| I do not use Twitter nor Facebook. I watch YouTube videos.
| These YouTubers have >1M subscribers.
| ctrlmeta wrote:
| I don't know what >1M subscribers have got to do
| anything. It is the case that many YouTubers pushing a
| specific propaganda have >1M subscribers. YouTube may be
| a little better than Twitter or Facebook but if you land
| upon any propaganda, the algorithm will loop you in and
| keep supplying more and more propaganda videos. 1M
| subscribers or 1000 subscribers doesn't matter once you
| are stuck in the loop.
|
| I see you have not been around in London for over 10
| years. How was it back when you were in London? I've been
| in London for 10 years, so I probably came when you left.
| Never once I have been in any part of London where
| English was not the lingua franca. Yes, people speak
| their native languages too among themselves but I haven't
| met anyone anywhere in my 10 years who couldn't speak
| English. I don't think this is any different from any
| other megacity of the world.
| Joeboy wrote:
| Your comment reminded of the youtuber who changed the shop
| signs in his video into scary non-English script:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPZxMVpnCBM
|
| Edit: Changed to link I like a bit more
| johnisgood wrote:
| Yes! This is partly why I brought it up. I remember that
| video from Kurt Caz.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| There are shops elsewhere in Europe with Arabic signs. You
| can go there and buy things. They're not outside of the
| ordinary statistical distribution of shops.
|
| Certain people would rather fearmonger though.
| interludead wrote:
| London ends up being this amazing on-ramp into global tech, but
| not quite the place where the biggest companies finish their
| journey
| walthamstow wrote:
| I am completely biased but I think London is one of the best
| places to live in the world, everything considered.
|
| There's a guy on Instagram who spins a wheel for a random country
| and goes to eat that cuisine somewhere in London. There are maybe
| 1 or 2 places in the world you can do that. It's an incredible
| feat of human diversity to pack hundreds of global cuisines into
| a 10 mile radius.
| lifestyleguru wrote:
| There is only so much of food one can eat and after all
| potatoes and steak do the job as well.
| CatMustard wrote:
| It's okay not to be that into food, but a bit odd to expect
| everyone else to be the same. If I had to eat steak and
| potatoes every day I'd be miserable by day 2.
| stackbutterflow wrote:
| Conversely it's true for the parent comment. Being able to
| eat food from any country is a plus only to those who are
| into that hobby. Personally it ranks pretty low in my list
| of things that make a city a great city. And if we're
| talking about food, access to fresh, high quality and
| affordable produce is way more important than being able to
| eat Afghan food at 3am. These criteria are arbitrary and
| don't make a city better than another imho.
| lifestyleguru wrote:
| Completely agree. "All food of the world at 3am" wears
| out pretty quickly. Much higher priority for me is access
| to fresh fruit, vegetables, fish, and meat at a good
| price.
| contingencies wrote:
| Back when I ran the _Shenzhen Gastronomic Society_ I did most
| of the alphabet in Bangkok one trip, beginning with Afghan. I
| 'd wager it's better food than London on average, purely based
| on freshness and tropical inputs. I think if you were to pick
| the best city on earth for food it would have to have resident
| international populations, a tropical climate, and at least
| enclaves of wealth with a relatively free visa policy. Bangkok
| fits the bill. For variety I much prefer it to Singapore, KL,
| HK, Jakarta, Taipei, etc. Best for drinks has to be HCMC. Paris
| and New York are up there too, but you have to be 0.1% to enjoy
| them exhaustively. I spent 10 years designing food robots
| mostly because so much damn awesome food is ~unavailable
| outside its origin. Now raising for GTM/growth:
| https://infinite-food.com
| judahmeek wrote:
| Where can I find a list of food unavailable outside of its
| origin?
| contingencies wrote:
| While you can often get bad versions of things if you go
| out of your way, many foods are hamstrung by supply chain,
| which is to say without a critical mass the labor intensive
| elements do not make sense or the specific crops are
| unavailable. Ask any migrant (eg. your next Uber driver)
| which foods they miss from their hometown or childhood and
| whether locally available versions are up to par. You'd be
| surprised at the details that emerge.
| bombcar wrote:
| This is incredibly true even of things you wouldn't
| expect - Mexican food in Southern California _is just
| different_ than Ohio even if you cook it yourself -
| because the ingredients may be labelled the same, but
| they 're not.
| petesergeant wrote:
| Bangkok has the best food of anywhere I've been. The country
| is obsessed with food in general, while not being snobby
| about it. It is an absolute highlight of expat life there.
| The bar/cocktail scene can also hold its own against
| literally anywhere.
| killingtime74 wrote:
| Where else have you lived though? The cost of living is high,
| healthcare is problematic, crowded, bad weather, low economic
| growth prospects.
|
| It's not even top 10 on most lists. Europe, Australia has way
| better cities.
|
| Example Sydney, life expectancy is at least 5 years more.
|
| The poverty rate in London, 26%, is double of Sydney at 13%.
|
| E.g.
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurabegleybloom/2025/06/18/the...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Liveability_Index
| fhennig wrote:
| Yes I really wish people saying "X is the best place to live
| in the world" would add where else they have lived, otherwise
| their opinion is not very useful to me.
| walthamstow wrote:
| I'm fairly well travelled. Lived in Tokyo for a bit. There's
| no perfect city. London has the best combination of all
| attributes, for me.
|
| Have you lived in London and Sydney both, or are you just
| reading numbers off of Google and "best city" lists? Sydney
| is boring and in the middle of nowhere.
| killingtime74 wrote:
| I'm from Sydney and yes lived in London, Melb, Auckland and
| Hong Kong. My main recollection of London was narrow
| streets. I think we like being in the middle of nowhere
| (geography, nuke missile target, conflict), surrounded by
| ocean. It is true, it's the one downside, it takes a long
| time to fly anywhere else.
| walthamstow wrote:
| Fair enough. I think if you like to travel, go away for
| the weekend etc then Sydney is not on the list. London
| has cheap euro flights, hub airports etc. I'm sure the
| QOL is good in all of those places of course, nice place
| to raise a family etc.
| sjtgraham wrote:
| It was one of the best places to live in up until about 10
| years ago.
|
| Places I have lived in: London, Santiago, Rio de Janeiro,
| Miami, New York, San Francisco.
| bandris wrote:
| London has a special microclimate and pleasant weather all
| year around. No extremes and less rain than other parts of
| the country.
| petesergeant wrote:
| > London has a special microclimate and pleasant weather
|
| It is hard to reconcile this with having actually lived
| there. The only benefit to the weather in London is it
| rarely gets very cold. Other than that, it gets very dark
| winters, it's rarely sunny, when it gets too hot it's
| unbearable because nowhere has aircon, and it's usually
| drizzling.
|
| The weather is appalling.
| dkdbejwi383 wrote:
| The best part about London weather is that it's rarely life
| threatening. No big storms, cyclones, floods or extreme
| temperatures.
|
| To say it's pleasant year round is probably a bit of a
| stretch for most.
| gpderetta wrote:
| Winters are dull, wet and dark. But I quite enjoy springs
| and even most summers.
| 3rodents wrote:
| You could not possibly compare Sydney and London, they are
| very different. London is a bustling diverse city, Sydney is
| a nice (big) town. Sydney is a great place, and London is far
| from perfect but they are not in the same conversation. They
| are different.
|
| The Global Liveability Index is, essentially, highlighting
| the most middle of the road cities. London (as with New York)
| has huge disparities and that guarantees it will never rank
| well on the Global Liveability Index. The people who choose
| to live in London and love London (as with the people who
| choose to live in New York and love New York) do not choose
| it because it is average.
|
| I have lived in London and Sydney and many other cities. I
| have fallen out of love with London. I would rather live in
| Sydney than London. I still cannot imagine ever describing
| Sydney as a better city than London. Just as I can't imagine
| describing Copenhagen better than London.
|
| Healthcare in London is world class. A city is crowded. The
| weather is very average for Europe.
|
| People from Sydney who move to London come to hate it, once
| the novelty wears off, just as they would with New York,
| because the Australian way of life is very different. Sydney
| is closer to island life than city life.
|
| Even with London's ongoing decline due to the U.K's
| inexplicable self sabotage, it still has something to offer.
| hollowcelery wrote:
| > People from Sydney who move to London come to hate it,
| once the novelty wears off, just as they would with New
| York
|
| Just sharing a different perspective, I'm from Sydney and
| have lived in all 3 and don't agree with this
| generalisation. I know plenty of Sydney-raised people
| who've lived in London or New York for decades, love those
| places, and don't plan to move back to Sydney any time soon
| if at all.
| bandris wrote:
| True. Generally whatever niche interest people have, they
| usually can find it in London. As a fellow passenger old lady
| once put it on the tube: "London might not be the prettiest but
| certainly the most interesting city".
|
| Though personally I find it pretty enough.
| lbreakjai wrote:
| Food only takes you so far. The housing stock is simply
| terrible. Extremely small, damp, badly insulated ... I lived in
| four boroughs, from poor Southwark to rich Richmond. Had a
| couple of friends sharing a luxury flat by the Emirates
| stadium, you could hear the neighbours two doors down.
|
| It was alright in my twenties. Built a career, made a ton of
| money before the IR35 reform, but you sort of felt like
| everyone had an expiration date, was there to build a career
| and then move away. It's not that interesting outside of zone
| 1, it's the same high street full of Prets/Nerro/Itsu (If
| you're lucky) or Paddy Power/Chicken shop/charity shop, and
| rows of small, drafty and moldy terraced houses.
|
| I wouldn't live there, but Paris is infinitely more charming,
| and keep getting more pleasant as they remove the cars from the
| city. It's a place that feels lived in, that encourages and
| rewards you for wandering.
| lbreakjai wrote:
| Oh and it's also the least spontaneous place I've lived in.
| All the food in the world, but you can't really just decide
| to try something, because everyone knows about the place, and
| they don't do bookings anyway, and everything is packed all
| the time, so there's an hour and a half queue to get in,
| after which you'll be granted a generous 35 minutes to eat
| before being softly nudged out by the waiter.
|
| This is probably good enough for the anglosaxons or the
| nordics, but food is just a small part of what makes a good
| dining experience.
| keiferski wrote:
| Yeah my biggest problem with London is how it seems to lack
| a real spontaneous street food culture, especially compared
| to New York, Paris, or Istanbul (which is particularly
| great at this.)
|
| I spent a couple days walking 40+ km around the city and
| usually I just ended up eating at Istu or Greggs or one of
| those similar chains. The same thing in NYC or Paris gets
| you an infinitely better food experience.
|
| It seems like a great city to be rich and have dinner
| reservations though.
| bf9d413906 wrote:
| 40+km, every day? Or even if total, it's a proper
| distance. I'm fascinated by that. Do you just walk around
| randomly or do you plan things you want to see ?
|
| Walking is imo one of the big "secret" ways to get to
| know a city. I fondly recall just getting lost on purpose
| in major cities, and at the end of the day take a taxi,
| or bus, or tuk-tuk back to the place I was staying. So
| many things seen, and tried, and random people
| encountered from all walks of life, it's one of the best
| things.
| keiferski wrote:
| Yeah I was doing a challenge of walking entirely across
| the city, from Woolwich to Heathrow. I think I made it to
| about Chiswick before my phone died and it was too dark
| to keep recording on my GoPro. So maybe 30-35k or so that
| day, and another 20k or so the day before and after just
| exploring the city more informally.
|
| Agreed that walking is the best way to see a city, for
| sure. I have done similar one day walks across Brooklyn,
| Manhattan, etc. and always really enjoy the experience.
| Usually I have a kind of set goal, like "walk entirely
| across X place." I think in Istanbul though I mostly just
| wandered for 100km (over the course of a week.)
|
| This past summer I walked about 124km around Paris over
| 5-6 days, going in a spiral through all the
| arrondissements. That was a great way to discover some
| new neighborhoods.
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| Man, we would get along.
| danielbarla wrote:
| I completely agree, it's fantastic both for general
| fitness, and as a way of exploring. I do this on a
| smaller scale on a daily basis, walking the 8-10 km route
| to or from my work (when we have office days). This is
| walkable in about 1.5 hours, public transport would get
| me home in around 45 minutes, so I am not really
| investing much extra time. Varying the route slightly
| keeps things interesting, and you get a surprising
| variety with small (1 to 2 street) changes.
|
| Another favourite of mine is cycling around a
| neighbourhood to get to know it; you get a totally
| different feel for things than from a car - things
| typically go by slower, and you are somehow just far more
| able to observe things.
| dgxyz wrote:
| What the hell are you doing wrong? I never eat the same
| thing twice in London?!?
| keiferski wrote:
| But are the places you're eating 1) fairly affordable and
| 2) quick / fast food and not a proper sit down
| restaurant?
|
| I had an extremely difficult time finding places with
| those requirements. Everything seemed to require sitting
| down for at least 20-30 minutes, which didn't fit my
| walking schedule.
|
| I didn't have the same problem in NYC or Paris, where
| it's very easy to find a variety of places to grab a
| kebab, baguette sandwich, pizza slice, dumplings, etc.
| dgxyz wrote:
| Yeah definitely affordable and quick. And can get all of
| those in London with zero effort. Most of the time I just
| search for food on Google Maps and pick something which
| doesn't look poisonous.
|
| For example, going here tomorrow at lunch time
| https://www.southbankcentre.co.uk/food-and-
| drink/southbank-c... - will work out what I'll eat when I
| get there.
| walthamstow wrote:
| > It's not that interesting outside of zone 1
|
| Bizarre take. Zone 1 is the absolute worst part of London,
| full of tourists and unimaginative morons.
|
| Paris is ruthlessly segregated by race and class, not what
| I'd call charming.
| lbreakjai wrote:
| The crowd is perhaps due to the concentration of world
| class museums and historical sights. I know it's hip to
| play blase and so much cooler than the mindless drones, but
| there's a reason people are flocking to zone 1 instead of
| Peckham Rye.
|
| > Paris is ruthlessly segregated by race and class, not
| what I'd call charming.
|
| As opposed to London, where you famously are as likely to
| see people of all walks of life and income comingle in a
| tesco in Dagenham as you are in Kensington.
| socalgal2 wrote:
| I don't know London all that well, I've only spent about a
| month there. But in my limited experience the food scene didn't
| come close to LA, SF, NYC, Tokyo.
|
| As an example, the LA metro Area (LA, OC, SB), 46% latino, 27%
| white, 15% asian 7% african, 3% mixed
|
| There huge sections of those cities, several kilometers long
| where you drive for miles and see majority one culture. Several
| areas majority korean, chinese, japanese, vietnamese, middle
| eastern, african,
| yladiz wrote:
| I have the opposite feeling. I would put London and NYC on
| roughly the same level, but London definitely beats SF and LA
| in terms of variety, quantity, and quality for a lot of
| cuisines. Tokyo is also not as good, but it's different
| because you can find high quality (higher than basically
| anywhere in the world), but low variety.
| foldr wrote:
| The great thing about London is that it has diversity without
| segregation. So no, you won't find a huge area of town where
| almost everyone is of the same ethnicity, but the diversity
| is still there. Race isn't the only index. A higher
| percentage of London's population is foreign-born than LA's.
|
| Food depends a lot on what you go for. You won't find much
| good Mexican food in London, but on the other hand, you can
| by a better croissant in a supermarket here than you can find
| in most of the US.
| socalgal2 wrote:
| My experience is that until you get the concentrated areas
| you don't get the actual diversity of the foods. When you
| have large areas of the same culture you start to get
| regional restaurants from the culture, specialty
| restaurants from the calture, because the market is big
| enough and business needs to distinguish themselves. You
| also get the ingredients as there's a big enough market to
| import them. When you don't have the concentration you just
| get the generic representation of the food from that
| country.
| walthamstow wrote:
| LA is much less dense than London so maybe you need
| concentration for those things, but we don't. We don't
| really have monocultural ghettoes. The beauty of London
| is how dense and intermixed it is. Cheek by jowl, as
| Shakespeare wrote.
| Ringz wrote:
| I would say [even] Berlin is better than London.
| sofixa wrote:
| I disagree, NYC was OK but LA and SF specifically, the
| average quality of food was pretty bad. There were absolutely
| good options, plenty of them, but on average, just walking
| around, seeing something that looks good and checking Google
| Maps reviews (including reading them), had 0 guarantee of the
| food being of any quality.
|
| Compared to London and Paris where you're guaranteed a good
| meal in any random place as long as the google reviews are
| ~3.5+. And even for the lower, the complaints are usually
| that the service is slow or rude, not that the food is shit
| tier quality. I mean 4.9 noted places with ramen that tastes
| like margarine and uses canned vegetables, or where the meat
| tastes bad.
| socalgal2 wrote:
| Wow, my experience is so different. The two most
| disappointing places I've ever been food wise were London
| and Paris. Spent 2 months in Paris, nothing stuck out
| except for one home cooked meal at a friend's
|
| as Tyler Cowen says, Tokyo has the best food in the world,
| and the best French food in the world.
|
| https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/david-brooks-2/
|
| Tokyo has even won best pizza as judged by the Italian
| pizza competition in Italy several years
|
| Paris has almost no East Asian food and what I did see when
| trying to find some was all in porcelain trays like
| slightly fancier Panda Express.
|
| London I found a few good places in Soho but just slightly
| out of the center it was a food desert
| sofixa wrote:
| > Paris has almost no East Asian food and what I did see
| when trying to find some was all in porcelain trays like
| slightly fancier Panda Express.
|
| This is simply not true. Are you sure you were in Paris,
| France? French people absolutely adore East Asian, and
| especially Japanese cuisine. There are the meh fast food
| options, yes, but the majority are definitely sushi
| places. And you have tons of others like Korean, Korean
| barbecue, more traditional japanese, etc.
|
| The Japanese restaurants are concentrated around rue St
| Anne; the Chinese ones around rue Volta. But not
| exclusively.
|
| As a fun exercise, Japanese is the highest represented
| origin (country) category in the Michelin guide. After
| that is Italian with slightly less. (The first category
| is "modern" which can mean anything).
| corimaith wrote:
| Unless if you plan on eating cheap kebabs or inauthentic
| asian food, a good meal in london is gonna cost you at
| least 20 pounds
| walthamstow wrote:
| Nonsense. I sat down with 3 plates of legit Japanese BBQ
| + rice and soup today for PS18. Right behind Oxford
| Circus.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Having spent some of my life on UK, I would rather live in
| Bristol or Cardiff, and travel to London on per need basis,
| than be located there.
| interludead wrote:
| And there are a few places globally that have that vibe
| eloisant wrote:
| You can do that in any big international city. NYC, LA, SF,
| Tokyo, Paris, Berlin, and I'm probably missing a lot of them.
| Way more than "1 or 2".
| stephenhuey wrote:
| You can certainly do that in Houston. Food from anywhere is
| something we have more of than most American cities, and you
| don't have to wonder if you'll be able to get a table in the
| restaurant tonight. But if you like living in densely
| populated London, you might not prefer how spread out Houston
| is. I do love visiting London to experience a totally
| different world from my usual daily life.
| dartharva wrote:
| Definitely, even Mumbai and Bangalore.
| walthamstow wrote:
| No, you can't do it in Paris or Berlin. I don't know enough
| about LA and SF but, like Berlin, they're much smaller than
| London. Berlin is 1/2 the pop of London.
|
| For example, there are 4 Uyghur restaurants just on my cycle
| to work. According to Google, Paris has 1 and Berlin has 0.
|
| Only NYC can compare for population, density and diversity.
| tremarley wrote:
| London seems equally incredible & terrible.
| colesantiago wrote:
| While startup capital flows in, the growth story is very
| different, and for those living in the UK, it isn't what it
| seems.
|
| There aren't any jobs in the UK and most are offshored to other
| low CoL countries.
|
| Young people, founders are leaving for other places like Dubai,
| Singapore and even SF for higher paying jobs.
| dukeyukey wrote:
| This doesn't seem true, I work in a UK tech company and it's an
| incredibly international team. My team has three Brits
| (including me), a Norwegian, a Swede, a Pole, and an American.
| The CEO is Irish, the CTO is German/American.
|
| Obviously that's just one data point, but every tech company is
| similar.
| hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm wrote:
| This is generally how it is. For the entry level market you
| have a realistic choice of 5 companies like Barclays, BT,
| Amazon, SKY for limited positions while competing against the
| world for them. A fresh linkedin job post for tech even for no-
| name companies gets a 100+ applicants in under an hour starting
| at 30k salaries. I'm not even sure which startups are hiring
| graduates except maybe from Oxbridge. It is obvious a lot of
| people commenting particularly in this thread are ultra-
| privileged expats where "London" is just zone 1 for them and
| are well connected in the industry. They probably don't even
| know what Morley's is. Living costs along with the high tax
| rates alone will eat up your income and I know British people
| who work in international bank's at senior positions
| complaining about these things and about mass immigration all
| the time.
| retinaros wrote:
| London is tax hell. When tou start to have a family it quickly
| escalates to the mosr expensive place on earth by far
| jacquesm wrote:
| That's got to be why one UK VC after another is closing their
| doors.
| ctrlmeta wrote:
| > That's got to be why one UK VC after another is closing their
| doors.
|
| One after another? The only one that closed office was
| Andreessen Horowitz.
|
| What's the "another"? I don't know why all the London threads
| attract this kind of dishonest comments!
| fhennig wrote:
| I live in a big continental European city that also has a start-
| up hub. The companies here are also small, creative, solving
| problems, but don't necessarily aim for an exit and growth at all
| costs, many of them want to create a sustainable business solving
| a need that people have.
|
| I think, to the economist, these are just SMEs and a start-up is
| about making money, an IPO, an exit, the unicorns. And of course
| London as one of the largest financial hubs will be a good place
| to start such a business.
|
| But I've always thought of these "SME"-type start-ups as
| belonging to the start-up category too; after all they "start up"
| a company and often have ambitious goals and creative, tech
| driven approaches to solving problems. This is how I've thought
| it would work when I was younger, and it is how I still think
| it'd be good to do today, and how I'd try to build a company if I
| have a good idea to pursue.
|
| Anyways, the point I want to make re the article is that I think
| the definition is narrow, leaves out a bunch of interesting
| companies, and thus skews the picture towards London. There are
| plenty of innovative places around Europe, it's just a different
| model of doing start-ups. IMO this overly financially motivated
| view onto the start-up world is quite a bit less interesting than
| a the broader (maybe harder to quantify) picture.
| altacc wrote:
| I think you're right that the ambitions in Europe are smaller
| and I'd say more likely healthier for those involved and maybe
| the world in general. I have spent some time working in a start
| up hub in Scandinavia and there was the usual talk of
| innovation, disruption, work hard, etc... but by 4:30 the
| offices were empty and people had gone home to their families.
| Work life balance still came first.
| eloisant wrote:
| It's not that the founders have smaller ambitions, it's that
| they can't find fundings to really grow the size of US tech
| companies.
|
| And when they do find fundings, it's in US so they move their
| company there.
| pjmlp wrote:
| I really hate the exponential growth every year, which is
| physically impossible, instead of a plain "sustainable business
| solving a need that people have." as you mention.
|
| Naturally as soon as the need is covered, and there are no new
| people to sell the product to, the exponential growth every
| year mentality bursts into entshitification, or firing half of
| the company because the targets weren't reached, but no worries
| at least the shareholders are happy.
|
| Maybe it is my European mindset that cannot grasp this MBA
| mindset into creating /destroying jobs as if people didn't
| matter.
| Lucasoato wrote:
| I feel that these shouldn't be alternatives. Calling something
| startup is up to the definition that we use; one that I like is
| the following: A startup is a temporary
| operating model designed to discover a repeatable, scalable,
| and profitable business.
|
| A friend of mine used: A company that just
| started that can scale to 100M evaluation in less than 5 years.
|
| From these point of views, there are a lot of wonderful SMEs
| that need to see the ligth. They should be supported by the
| government and the community, but they need very different
| tools from what we define as startups.
|
| A seed round of million of dollars might not make sense for a
| flower shop, but could be reasonable if you plan to develop the
| next generation B2B flower shop SaaS integration.
| stef25 wrote:
| > A company that just started that can scale to 100M
| evaluation in less than 5 years.
|
| How can you assign a name to something based on what might
| happen in < 5 years ?
| harperlee wrote:
| Whether the company targets or not that goal is a major
| distinction.
|
| For example if I open a restaurant I'm 100% guaranteed not
| to be valued 100M in 5 years.
|
| If I target to be the next social network and compete with
| TikTok, then it's a startup.
|
| Goal, ability to scale, global business from the onset,
| etc. are things you can perceive today without being able
| to read the future.
| youngtaff wrote:
| To me a startup is something that's not yet profitable
| Lionga wrote:
| so every government is a startup?
| direwolf20 wrote:
| Why should it grow to 100M in 5 years?
|
| A business can make $500k profit per year, with two
| employees, forever, and that's a moderate success. Sqlite is
| doing just that. And they're not captured by exponential
| growth, they're not going boom or bust filling sqlite with
| advertisements and AI. They just make a solid product that
| works. Is that bad?
| krashidov wrote:
| Nobody's saying that's bad. but it's not a startup. A
| "startup" is defined by growth.
| https://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html
|
| Businesses that don't have the ambition to grow very
| quickly should not take venture capital. It's a waste of
| everyone's time and energy
| stavros wrote:
| You say this as if venture capital is lying there on the
| ground for anyone to pick up. What VC do you know that
| aren't investing in companies that want to grow very
| quickly (or in companies that they then force to grow
| quickly)?
| crimsoneer wrote:
| I mean, I do slightly appreciate this (not all businesses need
| to grow 10X every year to succeed), but the other way of
| phrasing it is that London produces lots of business that
| generates lots of money.
| interludead wrote:
| Europe has plenty of cities that are great if your goal is
| "build something useful, make money, don't sell your soul," and
| those don't show up in these charts
| mcurial wrote:
| That probably applies to many cities of economically advanced
| (or even less advanced) countries. I think the (Anglo-Saxon)
| startup narrative for too long has been about growth at all
| cost, go big or die trying, sell out your company as early as
| possible to VCs and be essentially employed by them as a
| founder. Starting a normal innovative, profit-making company
| and growing it sustainably is just non-news, unfortunately.
| amsilprotag wrote:
| Any time you use the word startup you are already ceding
| ground. Startup as a term solves the problem of the VC: given
| technology is inherently risky, how do I get good returns?
| Answer: make sure the winner keeps doubling down. Create a
| culture around valorizing the few big, big winners and writing
| off-- financially and mentally-- the losers.
|
| 14 years ago now: https://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html
|
| Of course, this culture is less helpful for individuals and
| cities, who have to live with the volatility.
| notepad0x90 wrote:
| The big disadvantage is wages, and how everything is so...formal
| and bureaucratic, for lack of better terms.
|
| For example, I couldn't even hope to get employment in tech in
| the UK or Europe without a degree. Work hours and wages too, less
| pay given the tradeoffs makes sense, but getting paid more than
| others for the same role is a big problem, even if you have more
| skill/talent/experience. Or simply working long hours on salaried
| jobs, with the understanding that when the spring or whatever
| hacking cycle is over, you can take it easier, that's hard
| because of the formalities, laws,etc...
|
| Perhaps the term I'm looking for is "inflexible"?
|
| On the other hand, the reason all of that is not a problem here
| in the US is "bottom-line oriented" thinking, and that ultimately
| leads to everything getting enshittified.
|
| It feels like the UK and EU think they're happy with where their
| society is at, and they mostly want to keep things afloat? The
| type of thinking that goes with startups involves risk taking and
| experimentation outside of zones of comfort, or even outright
| laws sometimes.
|
| Would all these AI companies get away with scraping the internet
| if they were based in the UK or EU? I'm not saying they should,
| I'm saying look at the big picture results vs near-term stability
| and comforts.
|
| If I were British or European, I would want local and/or regional
| wages to be high, trade surpluses to make sense, foreign
| dependency to be minimal, military to be strong, so that social
| welfare subsidies, and all the nice pro-human laws won't require
| so much sacrifice. The US had been (no longer) in that position,
| but our deep political divisions and prevalent sub-cultures of
| cruelty prevented us from going that extra step and having the
| best of both worlds for everyone.
| hardlianotion wrote:
| Sounds more like a company problem than a London problem. Wages
| also - the distribution is very wide.
| slgeorge wrote:
| Do you have an experience working in Europe or the UK?
|
| > I couldn't even hope to get employment in tech in the UK or
| Europe without a degree
|
| Maybe this is how it looks from the outside, but it's not how
| it works in reality.
|
| My evidence is I've been working in 'tech' for 25 years and
| having hired people across the UK, Europe and North America.
| Tech is one of the most accessible career paths, particularly
| for areas that are novel and expanding rapidly - consequently
| direct experience of an area is the important currency.
|
| Often roles will advertise a 'degree' or equivalent industry
| experience. The only roles I can think of where this could be
| an issue is trying to join a large corporate organisation in
| their 'graduate' programme (e.g. a major bank), but that's the
| same situation in the USA as well.
| roryirvine wrote:
| I've had a similar career, and the only time I've ever been
| asked about my education was towards the end of the hiring
| process with a major US-based tech company back in the early
| 2010s.
|
| No UK employer has ever asked about it, to my knowledge.
| notepad0x90 wrote:
| I have no experience working in the UK, my impression is
| entirely based on what people there have told me. I've also
| looked at job postings there. In the US you'll see "or
| equivalent experience" tacked on, but not in UK, Canada, EU
| job posts I've seen so far. But I'm very glad to hear you say
| it's different.
| ebiester wrote:
| As a tangent, I'm seeing Lisbon trying to make a lot of buzz, but
| it seemingly can't crack into the larger ecosystem. What's
| missing, considering that it should be able to benefit from its
| EU integration?
| martinald wrote:
| There's a lot of problems with bureaucracy there (I've lived in
| London and Lisbon). It's a great city but the government is
| insanely inefficient (compared to the UK IME).
|
| Long term visa waits are 2 years+. In a personal example,
| Portugal was the last country _by far_ in the EU to be able to
| issue residency cards for UK people after Brexit (despite
| having a very sizeable british population). This caused a lot
| of practical problems, as it stuck everyone in a massive limbo
| - other EU countries wouldn't accept that you were a portugese
| resident with the piece of paper they gave you. It took intense
| lobbying by the British embassy and European Commission to get
| the system in place at all.
|
| In a commercial sense there are other problems. The court
| system is completely non functional. A simple civil case can
| take _years_ just to get a hearing. With appeals etc you can
| easily look at a decade. Again, there's a lot of problems in
| the UK with courts, but it is on a different scale there. This
| causes a lot of problems because businesses can get away with
| various shady stuff knowing it is basically impossible to
| enforce contractual terms - everything from landlords to b2b
| has issues.
|
| It's got an enormous amount of promise but until the
| immigration/court system improves it is very hard to do
| business there.
|
| The CEO of cloudflare has posted about this kind of stuff on
| Twitter (Cloudflare is a huge employer there) occassionaly.
| It's not positive to say the least.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| I cant speak to all this, but as an American doing a lot of work
| in London, wow transportation is incredibly great. Shockingly
| impressive. Traveling to London, and getting around London, and
| doing a lot of meetings in a small trip, is easier than anywhere
| in the US now because of how beautifully their transit system
| works (despite occasional delays which can be expected.)
|
| The rollout of the Elizabeth Line from Heathrow airport is also
| eye-opening. In NYC we speak about new subways lines with
| hundred-year plans (recall the 2nd ave subway extension) but in
| London the smoothly operating Elizabeth Line seemed to be
| introduced out of thin air.
| oceansky wrote:
| I've visited Paris and London a few months ago as a tourist.
|
| I am really impressed by London public transport, both the
| classical red double deck buses and the subway.
| techterrier wrote:
| having done a lot of work on it in a previous career, I can
| confirm that it was born out or no shortage of blood, sweat and
| signalling snafus.
| sjhuda wrote:
| Thin air? It was delivered 3 years late and cost PS5bn more
| than it should have. While projects like HS2 to the North are
| scaled back. The UK uses other parts of the county as a piggy
| bank to fund London projects.
|
| I have a dog in this fight as I'm quite close to the public
| transport industry in the North and it's pretty disheartening
| to see politicans use us as some sort of "policy win" and then
| never follow through with it. Manchester only recently got
| devolved powers meaning the region did not have to get approval
| from Westminster on how they use their money and the bus and
| tram system has completely improved in the sapce of a couple of
| years (unified tickets, tap and go) with the suburban rail to
| come into that this year.
|
| What is also interesting is that London's productivity growth
| is falling compared to Manchester, Leeds and Liverpool. So
| those cities that aren't getting the fancy new train lines are
| actually performing better.
| blibble wrote:
| > The UK uses other parts of the county as a piggy bank to
| fund London projects.
|
| it's the exact opposite
| youngtaff wrote:
| Although Yes CrossRail was partly funded by a levy on
| London homes and businesses, London get's more funding per
| capita for public transport than anywhere else in the
| country
|
| Imagine what we achieve if we invested London levels of
| money in transport across the rest of the country
| etothepii wrote:
| London pays more taxes per capita than the rest of
| country.
| yardie wrote:
| And decisions made in London have drained those other
| cities of investment and tax revenue.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| Imagine if the money spent on transport in London wasn't
| funding things like fake jobs to carry people to massive
| pensions because TFL employees can't be made redundant.
| youngtaff wrote:
| What have you got against TfL employees?
| dijit wrote:
| This is demonstrably false. The data shows the exact
| opposite.
|
| Transport spending in London was PS1,313 per capita in
| 2023/24, compared with just PS368 per head in the East
| Midlands[0] - nearly 4x the investment. Over the decade to
| 2022/23, if the North had received the same per person
| transport spending as London, it would have received PS140
| billion more[1]. The East Midlands got just PS355 per
| person, the lowest of every nation and region[1].
|
| Yes, London generates a fiscal surplus, but that's a self-
| fulfilling prophecy. London receives the highest investment
| spending for both economic and non-economic areas, relative
| to population size[2]. In 2022, infrastructure construction
| spend in London was PS8.8 billion, whilst Scotland came
| second with PS3.6 billion[3].
|
| It's circular logic:
|
| * invest heavily in London
|
| -> infrastructure drives productivity
|
| -> higher productivity generates more tax revenue
|
| -> claim London 'subsidises' other regions
|
| -> use this to justify more London investment.
|
| Infrastructure investment enhances productive potential[4],
| but all other regions are systematically denied it.
|
| London has returns on investment because it's the _only
| place that actually gets proper investment_. You can 't
| starve regions of infrastructure for decades, watch their
| productivity stagnate, then point to London's tax surplus
| as proof they are subsidising others, that's fucking
| stupid.
|
| ---
|
| [0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/1134495/transport-
| spendi...
|
| [1] https://www.ippr.org/media-office/ippr-north-and-ippr-
| reveal...
|
| [2] https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-
| briefings/sn06...
|
| [3] https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/economicoutputandproduct
| ivity...
|
| [4] https://www.bennettschool.cam.ac.uk/blog/what-role-
| infrastru...
| blibble wrote:
| > This is demonstrably false. The data shows the exact
| opposite.
|
| it is not
|
| > Yes, London generates a fiscal surplus
|
| thank you
|
| the only regions of the UK that generate a net return to
| the treasury are London, the South East and East of
| England
|
| (the East of England certainly has reasons to be upset,
| they have naff all infrastructure AND are a net payer)
|
| > You can't starve regions of infrastructure for decades,
| watch their productivity stagnate, then point to London's
| tax surplus as proof the system works, that's fucking
| stupid.
|
| fortunately I didn't claim that
|
| please put the strawman down
| dijit wrote:
| You're confusing cause and effect.
|
| London's surplus exists because the entire country funded
| its infrastructure for decades. You've just admitted
| London got massively more investment - then you point at
| the returns from that investment as proof London
| subsidises everyone else. That's absurd.
|
| Where did the PS140 billion extra that London received
| come from? National taxation. Including taxes from the
| regions that got a fraction of the spending. They funded
| your infrastructure, then you claim the resulting
| productivity is you being generous.
|
| You're not subsidising the UK. You're taking credit for
| returns on investment the entire country paid for, but
| only London received. That's not generosity, that's just
| spending other people's money on yourself then acting
| smug about the results.
|
| The 'net return to the treasury' you're celebrating was
| built with everyone's taxes concentrated in one place.
| London isn't the benefactor, it's the beneficiary
| masquerading as an altruistic donor.
| blibble wrote:
| > You're confusing cause and effect.
|
| you are arguing against a point I never made
|
| (and no, I don't live in London, I live in an underfunded
| region too)
| direwolf20 wrote:
| You're describing economies of scale -- they inevitably
| happen. London has high returns not only because of
| investment but also because it's a huge city and big
| cities generate good returns. If you built the Elizabeth
| line in the middle of nowhere, you wouldn't get a return.
| The return is enabled by the fact it's a big city.
| matt-p wrote:
| Elizabeth line will pay for itself very very quickly.
| It's entirely possible that investment in say a tram
| network in the east midlands will never pay for itself.
| Left with business cases like that it's not really a
| shock what the goverment choses. I agree it's unfair and
| self fulfilling, but this is what life is like, success
| breeds success and failure, well.
|
| I think north of 62% of elizibeth line spending was spent
| with companies outside the M25, for example building the
| trains kept a chunk of Derby in work when the factory
| would have otherwise closed (more than once!)
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cew407745jko
| tenzo wrote:
| > What is also interesting is that London's productivity
| growth is falling compared to Manchester, Leeds and
| Liverpool. So those cities that aren't getting the fancy new
| train lines are actually performing better.
|
| What data is this based on?
| sjhuda wrote:
| It's based on the Centre for Cities report: "How productive
| are the UK's big cities?" which mentions Liverpool's,
| Leed's and Manchester's productivity growth and The State
| of London Report 2025 which reports London's productivity
| decline
|
| https://www.centreforcities.org/publication/how-
| productive-a...
|
| https://data.london.gov.uk/blog/the-state-of-london-
| report-2...
| matt-p wrote:
| 3 years late is practically early in UK infrastructure! HS2
| was originally due to open in December! We're a decade off at
| least.
| anonymous908213 wrote:
| > Under the project name of Crossrail, the system was approved
| in 2007, and construction began in 2009. Originally planned to
| open in 2018, the project was repeatedly delayed [...] The
| service is named after Queen Elizabeth II, who officially
| opened the line on 17 May 2022[...].
|
| I wouldn't say _thin air_ , exactly.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| >> I wouldn't say thin air, exactly.
|
| Fair but have you seen how long things take in the US? The
| original proposal for the 2nd ave line was in 1920 and they
| have only managed to deploy four stops. I read about it in
| the news when I was in 5th grade and still read about it now,
| 40yrs later.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Avenue_Subway
|
| Similar for the Hudson tunnel which is supposed to allow
| commuter trains to function w/o the current madness...
| johnisgood wrote:
| I think it is widely known that public transport in the US is
| god awful. Public transportation is lovely in most European
| countries, IMO.
| eloisant wrote:
| It's pretty good in NYC. I heard it's nice in Boston too.
| clickety_clack wrote:
| If they ran the suburban rail more frequently Boston would
| have a phenomenal system.
| ghaff wrote:
| The suburban rail in Boston is very much _commuter_ rail.
| I live about 50 miles west (pretty near a station though
| I have to drive) and I 'll absolutely take it for a
| 9-5ish urban event. But it's completely useless for
| anything in the evening.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| NJ Transit is commuter rail and they made it not suck by
| providing usable evening and weekend service.
| krige wrote:
| Compared to rest of US? Maybe. Compared to Europe?
| Absolutely not.
| drnick1 wrote:
| I don't think so, the busiest lines of the London subway
| ("tube") don't even have AC.
|
| I also rode the subway in Paris some years ago and it
| wasn't anything to write home about.
| quotz wrote:
| Its good in NYC for american standards. For european
| standards the NYC subway is abominable. The smells, the
| grime, the homeless, its honestly like visiting the 6th
| ring of hell. Source: I am a european living in NYC.
| adastra22 wrote:
| It's not much different from Paris subway. We should
| still strive for better - Taipei is a much better model
| than any European city.
| Bnjoroge wrote:
| The bitter truth.
| rorylawless wrote:
| It isn't universally awful in the US. Washington, DC's system
| is great and should be the cornerstone of any revitalization
| that isn't so reliant on the federal government.
| johnisgood wrote:
| Thanks, good to know! How are the trains across the country
| though?
| altcognito wrote:
| Trains are not an efficient use of time for travel within
| the US.
|
| The US is huge. If you were take a 300mph (nearing
| 500kph) train (which would make it the fastest train in
| the world), it would be OVER an 8 hour trip from New York
| to LA. (Again, about 2500 miles or 4000k)
|
| Even in some of the densest areas, the trip times end up
| being pretty long due to distances: dc to New York? 600
| kilometers or almost 400 miles.
| CalRobert wrote:
| This is irrelevant, though, since the size of the country
| isn't what determines where people go. It's not like
| trains got less practical when Alaska got admitted to the
| union.
|
| Sprawling, low density, single use zoning, combined with
| parking minimums, have much more to do with it.
|
| Here's a video that explores the topic if you're curious
| https://youtu.be/REni8Oi1QJQ
| altcognito wrote:
| It is highly relevant to the question asked. What you're
| addressing is how cities should be built.
| adastra22 wrote:
| The question asked was about cross country trains.
| adastra22 wrote:
| The question was what the train network is like outside
| the cities. And the answer is we don't use trains because
| it is not efficient for the scale of the country. This is
| correct.
|
| Most people ARE interested in coast to coast travel. It
| is called flyover country for a reason.
|
| There are a few exceptions like the Baltimore corridor,
| or the San Francisco peninsula, and these are in fact
| serviced by good trains.
| estebank wrote:
| Train travel from LA to NY wouldn't be efficient, but
| there are plenty of population poles like LA to SF where
| train travel _would_ make sense and a network of those
| could make cross country travel _feasible_ if not in a
| hurry. But as the GP pointed out, it is not that useful
| if you can arrive to LA by train, if then when you arrive
| you need to rent a car before you 've even left the
| station.
|
| It is always shocking to me when I land at an airport in
| the US and there no public transport available.
|
| It is common for conversations about good local public
| transport to have a retort in some sub-thread about how
| big the US is, as if the feasibility of long distance
| travel affected the feasibility of other modes of local
| travel.
|
| You mention the SF peninsula. When I first moved there, I
| lived in the westside of SF and had friends living in
| Sunnyvale. On a weekend, it took 4 hs to get to Mountain
| View (~40miles, at the time, checking now it seems like
| Caltrain weekend service might have improved, so the same
| trip would take about 2hs), and then had to be picked up
| by car to finish the rest of the trip. It was faster
| (~3:30hs, if more expensive) to go from Paris to
| Amsterdam (>300miles) by train.
| short_sells_poo wrote:
| I see your point, but consider this: getting to and
| through a major airport is a huge pain the ass. Trains
| also tend to take you to city centers more often than
| airports, which almost always need to be a significant
| distance from anything interesting due to the noise.
|
| Let's take a hypothetical scenario:
|
| - 5 hours flight time (average for NY and LA), 2 hours on
| each side to get to and from the airport to the actual
| city. Total is 9 hours.
|
| - 10 hours train time and 1 hour on each end (which is
| generous given the proximity of train stations to city
| centers), 12 hours.
|
| The difference is not that much, and a train ride is so
| much less faff than a flight that it's not even funny.
| Little to no security theater, you don't get fondled by
| security agents, you don't have to stand hours in line
| with silly passport controls and luggage
| checkins/pickups. And the list goes on.
|
| A good train infrastructure can be vastly more pleasant
| than a good air infrastructure. Where air wins out is
| intercontinental flights where trains are truly not an
| option anymore.
| adastra22 wrote:
| If you're taking more than a half hour to get from the
| city center to the airport, you're doing it wrong.
| altcognito wrote:
| Eh, you're overselling it. Even in a hypothetical world
| with a 12 hour train trip, it still loses to an 8 hour
| plane trip.
|
| You're losing an entire day on the train. You still have
| to deal with luggage pains, now you're eating on the
| transportation which will be inferior, and will have
| similar problems with last mile transportation.
|
| Flying is currently not a great 8 hour experience, but it
| beats losing an entire day. I can do LA to NY for a
| weekend trip. (I personally wouldn't but there are some
| that would for sure)
|
| Trains can and do make sense even in the US, and we do
| ourselves great harm by underinvesting in them, but there
| will always be a place for plane travel.
| dpc050505 wrote:
| How long would it take from New York to Philadelphia, or
| Boston to DC? How long would it take between San Diego
| and SF? What about a train between Chicago and Detroit?
|
| We're building a fast train from Toronto to Quebec city
| in Canada. It's going to be a lot more comfortable and
| way faster than driving. A MP in my family takes the
| train from Montreal to Ottawa very frequently, they don't
| want to bother with parking in the capital and they can
| work on the train.
| altcognito wrote:
| > What about a train between Chicago and Detroit?
|
| I've ridden the Wolverine, it isn't half bad.
|
| I 100% agree trains might be underfunded in the US. The
| LA to NY flight will stay preferred to a hypothetical
| high speed train due to time. It is unlikely ever to be
| less than 10 hours.
|
| For train rides under 4 hours, and _if_ you can get
| trains running _smoothly_ (less stops), the time spent on
| the train and the overall integration of trains is a lot
| better as a mode of transportation.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| People aren't taking trains from Madrid to Tallinn,
| either.
|
| The proper point of comparison here is more medium length
| trips. There's no reason not to have a high speed train
| for Portland - Seattle - Vancouver, for example.
| wat10000 wrote:
| DC's system is OK. It suffers from being both a commuter
| rail system and a city transit system mashed together. It
| needs more tracks so that maintenance can be performed
| without massive delays and so express trains can be run.
| Coverage is lacking. It's good if you're going places it
| serves, but there are a lot of places it doesn't go, like
| Georgetown. And the hub-and-spoke model makes it quite
| painful for a relatively decentralized city. Going between,
| say, Bethesda and Tysons is physically possible but takes
| ages because you have to go all the way downtown first.
|
| It gets a lot of things right and is great if it has a good
| route for the trips you want to make when you want to make
| it, but mostly it shines because the situation is so much
| worse in any other American city that's not New York and
| maybe Chicago.
| Bnjoroge wrote:
| I wouldnt call dc's metro "great", maybe relative to other
| cities, it is, but globally it's subpar. Often late, dirty,
| limited reach etc
| philipallstar wrote:
| The Elizabeth Line was unbelievably expensive to build; that's
| how the UK did it.
| TuringNYC wrote:
| >> The Elizabeth Line was unbelievably expensive to build;
| that's how the UK did it.
|
| Fair. But what is also expensive is every single citizen
| taking $100 Uber rides to the airport, like in NYC. In NJ,
| the transit service has become so volatile and sporadic and
| opaque that people have reduced NJTransit use for Newark
| airport in favor of simply driving.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| That cost doesn't show up on government books, so we can
| pretend it doesn't exist. The joys of decentral planning.
| matt-p wrote:
| Wrong, $100 Uber rides boost employment and the economy!
| (Just ignore the impacts of congestion, wasted time, road
| spending)
| chpatrick wrote:
| It's a massive investment in the areas near its stations.
| flurdy wrote:
| But it is also really good. I love the completely enclosed
| platforms, ie shielded from the track and train by a glass
| wall/doors, like the Jubilee line, but all the way to the
| ceiling. This makes it both safe and very quiet.
|
| Though the platforms are huge, as the trains are long, you
| have to really make a conscious decision on which exit to use
| as they come up very far from each other. Unlike other tube
| stations, where if you don't pick the most optimal exit, you
| just have to cross the road.
| pdpi wrote:
| Some bits about the service can be pretty astounding.
|
| I used to live near the Central line. The station near home was
| open air and the exit was at the very end of the platform, so I
| always wanted to make sure I entered the train from the correct
| end. Service on the Central line is frequent enough (24 trains
| per hour off-peak), that, if I hopped off the train from the
| wrong end, the time it took me to walk the length of the
| platform was long enough for the next train to arrive.
| mft_ wrote:
| Hah, the joys of optimising your morning commute on the
| Underground.
|
| "If I stand here on the platform, then the door will open
| right in front of me, and I'll be exactly at the exit of the
| next platform where I need to change..."
| dasil003 wrote:
| Yeah or "the signs all say to walk down this long passage,
| and then back via a circuitous route for flow control, but
| my destination is actually 100 feet away through this
| unmarked passage so I'll just go that way" situation at
| Bank
| martypitt wrote:
| I've lived in London for a decade, and feel incredibly lucky to
| have access to the transit here - having lived in Aus, NZ and
| Canada previously.
|
| It's not perfect. It's late sometimes, pollution sucks, and
| often crowded - but people here who like to criticise it really
| don't recognise how much better they have it than lots of other
| places.
|
| Same with travel from here to Europe (by train), is just
| awesome.
| interludead wrote:
| And for a city that wants to be a global startup hub, that kind
| of frictionless mobility matters way more than people realize
| pjc50 wrote:
| The Elizabeth Line, formerly known as Crossrail, is a lot more
| similar to the hundred year plan:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossrail
|
| My dad was a tunnels engineer and worked on Crossrail
| feasibility studies at several points in his career across
| decades.
|
| London is is many ways one of the less impressive subway
| systems simply because much of it is so old, with small trains
| running in Victorian era tunnels. Not as bad as the Glasgow
| one, which feels like travelling on a 2/3 scale model of a
| subway with alarmingly narrow platforms.
|
| It is however a point of contention within the UK that London
| public transport is better than public transport in almost
| every other city, due to being properly nationalized.
| nialv7 wrote:
| Very true. If you really want to see rail lines materialise
| out of thin air, go to any major cities in China.
| kakacik wrote:
| To americans, London public transport feels amazing. To rest
| of Europe, its lets say OKish
| short_sells_poo wrote:
| To people who have to commute to London, particularly if
| it's not a mainline train, it's tragically bad and
| overpriced. Train outages happen on a daily basis, the fare
| is very expensive compared to mainland Europe and the
| quality is quite a bit worse.
| matt-p wrote:
| True, but it's not london public transport (e.g not TFL)
| and that may actually be the only reason it's bad. Look
| what happened when TFL took over national rail services
| inside london (silverlink > overground).
| matt-p wrote:
| I've lived in and visted many other cities in Europe.
| Public transport is often much cheaper than London, but
| there's few examples where I'd really say it was /better/.
| Can you think of an example?
| Beretta_Vexee wrote:
| Oslo and Madrid come to mind. For the worst than london,
| The Rome underground is so sparse, it not really usefull.
| Paris is dense, chaotic and overcrowded.
| matt-p wrote:
| Every single time I've been in Madrid the metro has been
| on strike. Every time. They run about 50-60% of services
| which means everything is slow and packed. I would
| actually say it's one of the worst in europe in my (I
| guess limited) experience due to that. I will have to try
| Oslo!
| 4ndrewl wrote:
| Ok, Oslo would be a small city in the UK - London has 12x
| the population. Madrid is closer. Paris is great - the
| ride is very smooth.
| storus wrote:
| Anywhere in Germany? E.g. Frankfurt has much higher
| density of subway lines and trams.
| walthamstow wrote:
| Of course the transport is good in most DE cities but
| seriously, Frankfurt is a village compared to London.
| London's network is both vast and dense.
| matt-p wrote:
| Frankfurt is less than a tenth the size, I'm not sure
| it's really a comparison. I found Berlin to be no
| better/slightly worse.
| ghaff wrote:
| It's a pretty extensive system and the pretty new Elizabeth
| Line is great. But if you take something like the Piccadilly
| Line in from the airport, you probably shouldn't have a lot
| of luggage because a lot of stations just have stairs and
| platforms are often at a significant offset from the
| underground cars. (The double decker busses also work pretty
| well although they're not generally my default.)
| zabzonk wrote:
| > a lot of stations just have stairs
|
| Very few, if any. They may not have escalators (Covent
| garden, for eg., but no-one in their right mind uses that -
| just use Leicester Square and walk on the street) but there
| are almost always ways of getting up to the street, and
| assistance is signposted for people with problems.
|
| > platforms are often at a significant offset from the
| underground cars
|
| Not sure what you mean here - mind the gap? Typically less
| on the Piccadilly than some other lines - Bank on the
| Central is particularly scary.
|
| Based on living 30-odd years in London, most of it using
| the Piccadilly line on my daily commute and to get to LHR.
|
| Sounding like a TfL groupie here, but it is a pretty good
| transit system, given geographic and budgetary constraints.
| ghaff wrote:
| It's not just the gap. The platform can also be a
| somewhat significant step up from the car. Normally not a
| big deal but a couple years back I had both real dress
| clothing and clothes for a long walk in my luggage on a
| fairly long trip overall.
|
| Agree that the Underground is good in general. I've used
| it a lot. That particular trip was just a case of having
| heavier luggage than I usually carry and I should have
| handled things differently.
| matt-p wrote:
| The Piccadilly Line was opened in 1906 for gods sake,
| forgive them for not catering to people with 3 suitcases
| very well! That's part of the reason we built the Elizabeth
| Line, to enable a better transport option for people coming
| into heathrow.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| It is interesting how infrastructure silently reflects
| society of its time.
|
| In 1906, people travelling with three suitcases would
| likely have servants carrying them, and no one cared
| particularly about comfort of servants.
| matt-p wrote:
| I'm not sure they'd of gotten the tube at all, unless
| perhaps to connect to a mainline station for a trip to
| the country? I still feel it more likely they'd of been
| driven, either by horse drawn or maybe even car (at least
| to the station) even in 1906.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| I remember some rather old photos with very well-dressed
| people waiting for the tube... so probably "it depends".
| Compared to horse-drawn carriages, the tube was fast and
| not prone to traffic jams.
| rmccue wrote:
| > Not as bad as the Glasgow one, which feels like travelling
| on a 2/3 scale model of a subway with alarmingly narrow
| platforms.
|
| For anyone who's not aware, the Glasgow Subway is _literally_
| smaller - the track gauge is 4ft (85% of standard gauge), and
| the rolling stock (trains) is similarly scaled down, to the
| point that you probably have to duck if you 're over 6ft.
| browningstreet wrote:
| Budapest subway is something similar, too.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| The oldest line which was inaugurated in the late 19th
| century, yes. (Though IIRC it is standard gauge.)
|
| The three modern lines are spacious and high-capacity.
| nanna wrote:
| I remember that one of Stockholm's train line is also
| endearingly tiny too?
| direwolf20 wrote:
| Half the Berlin lines are weirdly narrow, but not short.
| PunchyHamster wrote:
| I feel that's more "US public transport being bad"
| nervousvarun wrote:
| Right as an American this reads like "American who's never
| been to large Asian cities like Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing etc..
| christophilus wrote:
| I'm with you. Tokyo is incredible. It's the only large city
| I've ever been to where I left thinking, "I'd love to live
| there."
|
| Transportation in Japan is a whole other level compared to
| my experiences in Germany and Austria.
|
| I've never been to England, though, so can't make that
| comparison.
| dasil003 wrote:
| London and Berlin felt pretty comparable to me, with the
| airport situation better in London but the biking
| situation better in Berlin (marginally).
|
| Tokyo is just on another level entirely.
| adastra22 wrote:
| You should visit Taipei.
| esseph wrote:
| > American who's never been to large Asian cities like
| Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing
|
| 30% of all Americans have never left the North Western
| hemisphere.
| drnick1 wrote:
| I think the fundamental issue here is that many in America
| don't actually want dense cities, public transit, and more
| generally shared spaces. I, for one, would not want to live
| in condo when I can live in a house. When enough people
| want this, you end up with "urban sprawl" and one or more
| cars per house.
| yunnpp wrote:
| You make it sound like the construction of US cities were
| not at all lobbied by the auto industry back in the day
| and that urban sprawl was exclusively people's choice.
| s_dev wrote:
| A big problem in America is the entrenchment that is
| happening. People are becoming so polarised there is no
| common ground left for discussions and people aren't open to
| new ideas or thinking.
|
| I genuinely feel I can't even discuss this with many
| Americans. They stalwartly believe car culture is superior in
| every single aspect, any deviation from this narrative is
| simply met with 'you don't understand'.
|
| I recall in Ireland they asked an American on public TV what
| he thought of one of the few pedestrians only streets in
| Dublin (Liffey Street). He pointed out that he would be sorry
| for the loss of the trade on that street for the business
| involved compared to if cars were allowed to drive on it.
| It's then pointed out they make way more money since the
| transition as it's a city centre location with enormous
| footfall.
|
| He just counters that's not possible and cited some example
| in the US.
| DrScientist wrote:
| As I understand it the US car lobby had a big hand in
| designing modern America, in such a way that for most
| cities it really isn't possible to use anything else.
|
| On the other hand a lot of European cities were laid out in
| the time of horse and cart.
| yunnpp wrote:
| A lot of European cities still have Roman centres.
| wat10000 wrote:
| There was a big argument on my local (American) Nextdoor
| recently because someone encountered a line of cars on a
| road that had recently had a bike lane added to it. People
| were _outraged_ about bike lanes. And not just in the sense
| that they had to pay (via taxes) for something they didn 't
| feel was useful. The fact that the lane even existed was an
| affront. They seemed to actually believe that the bike lane
| caused delays for cars merely by existing.
| yunnpp wrote:
| How _dare_ you get in the way of my fat ass in my fat-ass
| SUV. Almost spill my capuccino that I bought at the
| drive-thru because I couldn 't get my fat ass off the
| car.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| Many European cities have this. London has the biggest, though.
| And Asian cities. Paris has a metro, Berlin has a metro, Tokyo
| has a metro, many cities in China but that information is a bit
| less accessible.
|
| China built an entire national high speed rail network while
| America was waiting to see if the Hyperloop was anything.
| cong-or wrote:
| Surprised London holds this position given the cost of living.
| Housing alone eats such a massive chunk of salary that I'd expect
| talent to gravitate toward cities where their equity/salary goes
| further. How do early-stage startups compete for engineers when
| rent is PS2k+ for a one-bedroom?
| TuringNYC wrote:
| >> Surprised London holds this position given the cost of
| living. Housing alone eats such a massive chunk of salary that
| I'd expect talent to gravitate toward cities where their
| equity/salary goes further. How do early-stage startups compete
| for engineers when rent is PS2k+ for a one-bedroom?
|
| thinking about comparisons, in SF the average 1B is $3300
| https://www.zillow.com/rental-manager/market-trends/san-fran...
|
| In NYC it is similar.
|
| SF's challenge is that the business distract is split across 2
| areas (SF, SV) 50mi apart, with extremely sparse public transit
| in SV. Everything is doable, just be prepared for $100 Uber
| bills as you go between meetings.
|
| In NY the business district is thankfully mostly centralized.
| However, poor commuter train service outside of Manhattan makes
| everything more expensive as there is insatiable appetite in
| central areas to avoid the commuter trains.
| agentcoops wrote:
| Yeah, I've lived in London, New York and San Francisco for
| work and the first had the lowest cost of living in absolute
| terms. Local developer salaries are, however, shockingly low
| outside of finance and consulting to US eyes.
|
| The public transportation point is definitely key: London is
| just so unspeakably large spatially and it's all more or less
| well-connected that there isn't the same scarcity of
| commutable apartments as in NYC/SF. It wasn't uncommon for
| older colleagues to even commute in from Kent or elsewhere in
| the English countryside -- and often their morning train
| wasn't much longer than my own.
| short_sells_poo wrote:
| The issue is that wages in London are _much_ lower for tech
| than in SF or NY. If you want to make good money in London,
| you have to work in finance, and preferably in the investment
| business.
|
| London is a very expensive city, and the median income is
| actually very low compared to it. There is a high
| concentration of people who are very well off, but everyone
| else is struggling.
| petesergeant wrote:
| Plenty of stuff much much cheaper than that outside of the
| center. Quick look in Deptford shows a bunch of 1 bedrooms for
| PS850/m
| crimsoneer wrote:
| I mean, by comparison to the booming US market, paying for
| London talent is becoming an absolute bargain...
| pjc50 wrote:
| The short answer is that you have to be pretty well off to
| start with to be a founder.
| etothepii wrote:
| Perhaps this is a feature not a bug.
|
| High rents encourages startups to be founded by those who
| haven't coupled up and who choose to live together.
|
| A company of 3 single founders in their mid twenties that rent
| a two bed flat and then live and breath nothing but their
| startup collapsing on the couch each night can make two $50k
| angel cheques go a long way.
|
| Edit: SEIS allows a friends and family seed round if up to
| PS250k in London that the government will rebate 78% of in
| taxes (50% immediately and 28% if the company eventually goes
| bust).
| zipy124 wrote:
| Most live in flat-shares, which honestly I prefer to living
| alone anyway. You can easily find central London flat shares
| for PS1000 a month which are walking distance to various
| central locations, and extremely quick by bus/bike/tube.
|
| I've lived in London for 8 years now as a student (undergaduate
| masters then PhD) and have lived on around PS20k a year (post
| tax) and it's completely fine tbh. I earn more through extra
| work but save pretty much all of it.
| interludead wrote:
| So London feels less like a Silicon Valley replacement and more
| like the world's best startup nursery
| slgeorge wrote:
| London's basically great for: 1. Startups
| 2. Scaling/Growth 3. Existing company expanding from
| USA->Europe or Europe->USA
|
| It's not as good as Silicon Valley for any of these, but no-
| where is. It's also not that good if you're trying to IPO,
| again no-where is compared to the USA.
|
| For start-ups/high-growth you get a pretty good business
| environment (legal/corporate and day-to-day running a company
| is reasonably straightforward), employees with skills and the
| employment law is pretty flexible, there's plenty of finance
| around.
|
| For Growth and USA companies that are expanding into Europe
| then London/UK is somewhat easier to understand than other
| European geo's. There's an aligned language and there's more
| cultural touchpoints - it's kind of a mid-point
| culturally/institutionally between Europe/USA.
|
| For funding/driving to late-stage and IPO there just isn't
| anywhere like the USA. But everyone has to expand to North
| America eventually, so it can be fixed at that point. Also, PE
| funding has changed a lot in the last 10 years, so if you're
| not on the 1-in-1000 rocketships there's a more steady 'good'
| path which is totally viable.
| metaPushkin wrote:
| What about taxes ?
| drdrek wrote:
| Hub / City Area,Total Tech Startups,Total Funding (2025
| Est.),Total Residents (Metro),Startups per 1k Residents,Money per
| 1k Residents
|
| San Francisco (Bay Area),"18,052",$122.0 Billion,7.7
| Million,2.34,$15.84 Million
|
| New York City,"15,000+",$45.0 Billion,19.5 Million,0.77,$2.31
| Million
|
| London,"8,900",$26.0 Billion,9.0 Million,0.99,$2.89 Million
|
| Tel Aviv (Area),"2,996",$12.0 Billion,4.2 Million,0.71,$2.86
| Million
|
| Beijing,"2,350",$18.0 Billion,21.9 Million,0.11,$0.82 Million
|
| Paris,"3,200",$10.0 Billion,13.1 Million,0.24,$0.76 Million
|
| Bangalore,"3,500",$12.0 Billion,14.0 Million,0.25,$0.86 Million
| pjc50 wrote:
| Where is this CSV from?
| nixass wrote:
| My eyes..
| m00dy wrote:
| I personally think Wyoming will be the capital of startups,
| especially 30 N Gould Str is going to be the street of world's
| startups.
| erratic_chargi wrote:
| No no you simple minded USAmerican. It's obviously going to be
| Uruguay, its on it's way to transform from MonteVideo to
| MonteLLM /s
| m00dy wrote:
| I'm not an american :)
| realty_geek wrote:
| Which makes me all the more disappointed that Birmingham (close
| to me) doesn't have a better startup ecosystem. It is an ideal
| place to benefit from London (little over an hour away) without
| the crazy prices. Anyone here based around the midlands, say
| hello / "alright bab"....
| jmyeet wrote:
| London is the money laundering capital of Europe [1]. The entire
| London property market has been propped up by Russian kleptocrats
| [2]. I'm not saying startup money is (necessarily) illegal or at
| least dubious in origin. I am saying that London's banking and
| legal system heavily favors companies and invetors. And that's
| the point. It's the same reason Delaware is the de facto standard
| for incorporation for American companies.
|
| Granted, English is widely spoken in London and that's factor for
| cross-pollination of talent between the US and the UK. It also
| has an easier visa situation than the US.
|
| On top of that, salaries in tech in London are _much_ lower than
| the US [3]. The cost of living in London is actually pretty
| awful.
|
| London's biggest problem is that the UK is no longer in the EU.
| Long term I see this as a strategic problem because (IMHO) the EU
| is going to be incentivized and ultimately forced to make their
| own versions of key US tech companies in much the same way as
| China has. And the EU won't want that outside of EU jurisdiction.
| It defeats the point.
|
| [1]:
| https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/may/14/nearly...
|
| [2]: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/mar/06/how-
| london-b...
|
| [3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17462135
| webdevver wrote:
| well, the split is both ways. lets not forget that depite a lot
| of talk and wish-casting, the EU is still largely impotent. I
| know for sure that I am envious of my colleagues in the US. but
| europe? hmm...
|
| regarding the Russian kleptocrat situation, you can't knock
| London for having a Profitable Business Arrangement. The
| biggest enemy of any Russian oligarch are other Russian
| oligarchs. it makes sense then, to keep your dragon hoard where
| none of them can touch it (possibly not even you!)
|
| ofcourse it becomes even funnier when all of them get the
| _same_ idea, converging on the same optimal strategy...
|
| indeed any and all mafiosos are welcome to safeguard their
| assets in London banks (for a price, and not neccesarily
| monetary.) whatever happened to the venezuelan gold? if that
| then serves to subsidize the rest of the UK ordinary citizenry,
| hey, you could say the UK in the business of karmic repayment.
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