[Fluorescence]

> Capital however is predominately held via inherited wealth

Curious to see you prove that beyond an imagined stereotype. It's not as though we are in the first generation of US entrepreneurship and there is not a huge quantity of US inherited wealth in those VC funds. The founders of Intel, Apple, Walmart, Standard Oil etc. have all passed on. And on the other side, it's not like there haven't been a dozen generations since Norman lords chopping up all the land wealth. I think only one British billionaire is an aristo, the rest are business folk.

People underestimate the effect of how wealth attracts wealth in terms of commercial hubs - money chases opportunity and opportunities chase money and they end up in the same place for all sorts of reasons. It's just a system effect rather than a consequence of higher virtues that some love grant themselves.

[pjc50]

Hmm, maybe it will be fun to go through https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_British_billionaires_b...

- Dyson: actually an innovator! Made many of the same criticisms of the UK lack of tech strategy. Promoted Brexit, which has made the situation worse by erecting barriers to a key UK market.

- Ratcliffe: owns INEOS: oil refineries. Old school engineering? Or just provision of capital?

- Hinduja: purchaser of Ashok Leyland, which became a huge success once unshackled from disastrous management of British Leyland. Counts as "engineering" but not "tech"?

- Grosvenor, 7th Duke of Westminster: classic aristo landlord. Owns large areas of London.

- Platt: hedge funds.

""The reality is that there is no willingness within the Eurozone to share wealth," he said. "In the United States, if California is having a really difficult time, the rest of the United States will send money to California. This is not the case in Europe." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Platt_(financier) , perhaps a surprising advocate of redistribution

- Coates: gambling. Counts as "tech startup" (bet365)

- Bamford: heir to JCB, the excavator company. "Engineering". Brexiter, as a result of being sued for antitrust by EU

- Branson: definitely self-made, across a large number of different companies. Space billionaire, closest figure to British Musk.

- Currie: also INEOS. Almost no wp bio.

- Reece: also INEOS. Almost no wp bio.

- Cadogan, 8th Earl Cadogan: aristo. Dead.

- Lewis: trader. Like Soros, profited from Black Wednesday. Under arrest in Manhattan.

- Reuben: metals. Seem to have made a killing from 90s Russia.

- Graff: diamonds. Looks like classic self-made from nothing story?

- Calder: Jive records.

- Morris: Home Bargains. Wildly successful discount shopkeeper.

(you know who's NOT on this list? Anyone to do with ARM. Even Hermann Hauser appears to have only £150m net worth)

[DaiPlusPlus]

> you know who's NOT on this list? Anyone to do with ARM. Even Hermann Hauser appears to have only £150m net worth)

I wonder if ARM's success, or rather, popularity and market dominanance, is because they (intentionally or otherwise) devalued themselves enough.

[fidotron]

Indeed. You can see in some of the comments here the American mentality simply could not have made ARM successful because they would have been too busy competing with their own customers. For ARM to take off and be trusted they had to knowingly leave valuable profit margins around for their customers to be able to take advantage of.

The defining question is if the world is better off by having people play that game or the one where everyone tries to takeover everything all the time.

[ethbr1]

Microsoft minted many fortunes by leaving valuable profit margins around for third party developers.

It's a longer game, so hopefully ARM employees still own some equity.

[fidotron]

Where are these third party developers that made decent money and Microsoft didn’t subsequently try to eat their piece of the pie?

It is a repeated pattern and people are not stupid. (See also the Sherlock phenomenon with Apple). Valve, for example, have to invest in proton as the ultimate back up plan. For me personally that has proven quite helpful, but your initial business has to be wildly successful for you to be able to play defensive moves like that.

This leads to a situation where mid sized companies are few in number and unstable.

[bemusedthrow75]

> and Microsoft didn’t subsequently try to eat their piece of the pie?

That second part wasn't in the original claim, though. The parent comment is right. Sure, 21st century Microsoft has come for the utilities market, for the Lotus-to-Evernote market, etc., etc., but an entire software industry really did spring up in the eighties through to the early 2000s filling gaps in Microsoft software.

[bemusedthrow75]

> For ARM to take off and be trusted they had to knowingly leave valuable profit margins around for their customers to be able to take advantage of.

Exactly this.

[londons_explore]

Indeed - they appear to be great engineers and terrible business-people.

They have collected very little profit from their market-dominating IP.

[bemusedthrow75]

They aren't terrible business people at all!

If they collected much more profit from each device sale then they wouldn't have market-dominating IP. Because they'd have competitors who could undercut them.

As it is, a tiny firm of people make an extremely good living off a margin that nobody in the business can really quibble with, and it has without conflict sustained them to do greater and greater work that has changed the world.

You watch: ARM post-IPO will inevitably have to start squeezing more juice out of the market to give to greedier, more transactional, more activist shareholders, and this will fuck up the balance entirely.

An ARM IPO isn't really going to be good for anyone, I think.

[hnhg]

I would be surprised if many Brits know of ARM as a British success story. Ditto for Raspberry Pi or Deepmind. These things are just not celebrated, it seems.

[pjc50]

If you ask people in the street to name a famous living British technologist, they might come up with Tim Berners-Lee or James Dyson, but they are never going to name Sophie Wilson.

(I wonder what answers you would get?)

[bemusedthrow75]

It is upsetting to me but you are right, they'd know Dyson. (I wish they would instead know the name Chris Duncan, the inventor of the Henry vacuum cleaner and while still a Brexiteer, a man who hasn't subsequently kicked dirt in the eye of the UK).

They wouldn't remember Tim Berners-Lee's actual name but they would be able to say, the web guy. (Which is probably better for him when he goes shopping).

[pjc50]

TBL was in the 2012 Olympic opening ceremony!

But yes, few people who actually _build_ things, get to be famous public figures. Possibly due to being too busy to engage with the media nonsense or even worse social media nonsense.

[bemusedthrow75]

He was indeed :-) But I suspect more people could recognise his charming unassuming face than remember his actual name.

[frutiger]

Alan Turing (on the £5 note) and Isambard Kingdom Brunel maybe?

[michaelt]

Alas pjc50 specified living British technologists.

I mean, Britain has many great technologists if you're willing to count the likes of Arkwright (died 1792), Babbage (died 1871), Watt (died 1819), Faraday (died 1867), Randall (died 1984), Bell (died 1922), Harrison (died 1776), Logie Baird (died 1946), Stephenson (died 1848) etc

But some would say if a country's list of technology greats has so many dead people on it, perhaps that country's glory days are over.

[extraduder_ire]

£50 pound note, william churchill is the one on the £5 note.

This is burned into my brain. because I heard a joke when the redesign came out about him going from not being accepted by his country to not being accepted in Lidl. (£50 notes are often refused in the UK for fear of counterfeit.)

[pjc50]

Yes - hence the more interesting qualifier "living"

[bemusedthrow75]

A decent number of Brits know about the Raspberry Pi, but it is true to say that a hell of a lot more know what the BBC micro:bit is.

None of them would recognise Eben Upton (except as Jason Statham)

[hnhg]

I cannot prove it, and this is entirely anecdotal, but my friends and I have observed it first-hand from VC dealings and friends in the right UK circles. Inherited generational wealth and class in my experience powers UK investment, particularly in the start-up scene, much more than in the USA. Of course, there are some exceptions I can think of in the UK but it is very much tied up with the class system there and understanding this makes life easier. The same situation affects other European countries to some degree, and many people I know have had to go to US VC firms to get funding. I have spent a lot of time working in all of these countries to some extent and the UK class system seems to be increasingly stifling. YMMV though.

[scrlk]

So I need the correct "old boys" school tie and a pair of red trousers to get funded by UK investors? :^)

[DaiPlusPlus]

Make that knee-high grey shorts, a graze on your knee, and a Prefect following closely behind you with some implement of abuse.

[kalleboo]

And find a pig that catches your eye

[Fluorescence]

Nah, the OP is talking bollocks. The angels I know are all middle/working-class entrepreneurs. There is no upper-class conspiracy holding people back, there just isn't much money. Non-Brits don't really understand that class is not money. Red trousers are closer to farmers than businessmen. If you are British and want to be a tech investor, you go to the US too.

[pjc50]

> There is no upper-class conspiracy holding people back, there just isn't much money.

I think the argument is that there _is_ plenty of money, it's just parked safely and quietly in property rather than investing in production or R&D. And not a "conspiracy" as much as the blank look the property investor class give you when you can't promise risk free leveraged 7% forever.

[MichaelZuo]

I don't see how that is anyone holding anyone back?

Why would you want to take funding from someone expecting no stress or hassle?

[pjc50]

> Why would you want to take funding from someone expecting no stress or hassle?

The important word here is "money". There isn't a surfeit of money available from more suitable investors.

[hnhg]

Thanks for the kind words. I actually agree a lot with what you say, and would just add my personal experiences, and be interested in learning more, but I don't think you established the tone for further conversation here.

[te_chris]

Absolutely. As others have alluded to: angels abound, but look at the pedigree of the associates and partners at VC funds based in London and it all falls into place. I assume it’s because it’s a relatively easy job that you don’t need much talent for. Perfect for an intelligent but bored dauphin.