It’s less against the grain than you might think! One of the reasons I wrote this was that I was fed up of hearing people in VC grumble about EIS/VCT but not have the conviction to put pen to paper.
On your specific q. I’m not disputing that there may be imbalances outside London, but that ‘inaccessible’ is overstating it. Geography matte…
It’s less against the grain than you might think! One of the reasons I wrote this was that I was fed up of hearing people in VC grumble about EIS/VCT but not have the conviction to put pen to paper.
On your specific q. I’m not disputing that there may be imbalances outside London, but that ‘inaccessible’ is overstating it. Geography matters, but I would argue that in the era of Zoom/remote work, it matters a lot less than it used to. I’ve met plenty of entrepreneurs outside the capital who’ve done very well - including one of the founders I spoke to for this piece.
I’ve seen a few of these govt. reviews on regional imbalances before, but I’ve rarely found them hugely persuasive for a couple of reasons:
Firstly, they often bulk out their citations with wildly out-of-date studies from when the UK VC ecosystem was a fraction of its current size. The ecosystem has matured so quickly in the past few years that data from 7/8 years ago probably shouldn’t be given a tonne of weight. In the past 6 years, UK VC 'dry powder' has more than tripled.
Secondly, they don’t account for variations in number and quality of company by region. They often just add up the number of deals, their median size and put them side-by-side. In a country where top academic institutions and technical talent are not evenly distributed (we can debate the reasons for this, but it’s true) - this isn’t necessarily a very useful measure. It’s partly why govt. efforts to bolster the venture market in individual regions have often failed - they literally haven’t been able to find enough teams to give money to. I document this a bit in another post: https://chalmermagne.substack.com/p/a-bridge-fund-to-nowhere
It’s less against the grain than you might think! One of the reasons I wrote this was that I was fed up of hearing people in VC grumble about EIS/VCT but not have the conviction to put pen to paper.
On your specific q. I’m not disputing that there may be imbalances outside London, but that ‘inaccessible’ is overstating it. Geography matters, but I would argue that in the era of Zoom/remote work, it matters a lot less than it used to. I’ve met plenty of entrepreneurs outside the capital who’ve done very well - including one of the founders I spoke to for this piece.
I’ve seen a few of these govt. reviews on regional imbalances before, but I’ve rarely found them hugely persuasive for a couple of reasons:
Firstly, they often bulk out their citations with wildly out-of-date studies from when the UK VC ecosystem was a fraction of its current size. The ecosystem has matured so quickly in the past few years that data from 7/8 years ago probably shouldn’t be given a tonne of weight. In the past 6 years, UK VC 'dry powder' has more than tripled.
Secondly, they don’t account for variations in number and quality of company by region. They often just add up the number of deals, their median size and put them side-by-side. In a country where top academic institutions and technical talent are not evenly distributed (we can debate the reasons for this, but it’s true) - this isn’t necessarily a very useful measure. It’s partly why govt. efforts to bolster the venture market in individual regions have often failed - they literally haven’t been able to find enough teams to give money to. I document this a bit in another post: https://chalmermagne.substack.com/p/a-bridge-fund-to-nowhere