[Kirby]

IMDb is, well, a worldwide collaboration, but if pressed I'd say the driving force was primarily British. (With help from America, Italy, Australia, Germany, and a few other geeks of the day.) I suppose obsessive data gathering is consistent with the stereotypical British mindset.

(It's been long since bought by Amazon, an American company, but a large portion of IMDb employees are still in the UK.)

All things considered, though, my guess is that it has a lot less to do with national character, and a lot more to do with the fact that the Valley is an oddity. It's a great place to find exactly the right mix of people to make a startup work, from potential smart employees to investors to experienced folks who can give key advice. A startup in San Jose has a better chance at making it out alive than one in London. And a fair number of entrepreneurs head to the Valley from around the world for just that reason - the statistics are hard to gather, but if you were to figure out what percentage of startup _founders_ were British, of successful companies, the gap would narrow considerably.

I'm currently at an awesome company in the Washington DC area (thinkgeek.com, a Hacker favorite!) and we're having a real hard time finding competent senior Perl people who are willing to live out here. I'm sure we'd have no problems in Palo Alto. (I lived there for most of the 90s. And would again, happily.)