[lambdasquirrel]

I was hoping for an article of more depth. The points in the article, roughly backwards.

- Taxes don't even matter to most startups because they don't make any money. Maybe they're called startups because it's hard to start up. Har har.

- If finance money were important, then Silicon Valley should have been in NYC. Others have said this on this thread and many others. Someone should write a piece that snuffs this line of reason once and for all.

- The presence of established tech companies doesn't mean much either. I'm just not even going to hit this one, beyond saying that Armonk and Redmond don't have a splash of small companies nearby them.

Independence or not, a startup hub in Scotland would be nice.

[arethuza]

Tax breaks certainly do matter to angel investors (who certainly used to get some very nice tax breaks) and founders - I co-founded a VC funded startup in Scotland in the 1990s and I benefited quite a bit from the 10% CGT rate available under tapering relief introduced by the "socialist" Labour party.

[notahacker]

In theory an independent Scotland could focus on stimulating startups, but to my knowledge the SNP (almost certainly the majority government in a newly independent Scotland) hasn't made any pledges either way on capital gains tax or investment support schemes, or indeed on retaining some of Westminster's more generous tax relief schemes on seed investment like SEIS.

They have pledged to cut taxes on profit-making corporations and air travel (and to make investments necessary to improve public services) which suggests their priorities might lie elsewhere.

[lambdasquirrel]

That's fair. Is it something that will make your startup scene "happen"? I'm not sure about that. Having the right kind of investor culture seems to matter more. Obviously you can't have a Silicon Valley in a repressive culture, but even the difference between SF and Boston is too great. I don't know how things are in Scotland.

[rjsw]

I was a founder of a startup in the 80s and there were various incentives offered by Scotland at the time to set up in Silicon Glen.