[kjellsbells]

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.

[tchalla]

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

[ifwinterco]

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]

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.

[hadlock]

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]

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?"

[pyuser583]

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.”

[interludead]

London ends up being this amazing on-ramp into global tech, but not quite the place where the biggest companies finish their journey

[petesergeant]

Plus SEIS is the most insanely generous investment tax relief

[graemep]

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.

[lurk2]

> 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.

[dukeyukey]

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]

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"?

[pjc50]

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.

[Joeboy]

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

[kjellsbells]

No. I think it's easy to underestimate what an incredible superpower native English fluency is, and the lengths that immigrants will go to ensure that their children are fluent in it. That alone stops monolingual enclaves persisting.

The net (and the UK has decades of experience in this, eg with the South Asian immigrants that arrived in the 1950s-1970s) is that while the first generation may only get to decent levels of English, their children are bilingual or monolingual in English, not monolingual in their ancestral tongue.

Occasionally you will get someone with a political axe to grind who visits an area with a lot of immigrants, doesnt hear a lot of English, and posits that there are ethnic monolingual enclaves where they cannot go. I think this is more likely to be a failure of understanding.

[dukeyukey]

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.

[rorytbyrne]

Not sure what point you’re trying to make here in relation to startups.

[ctrlmeta]

> 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.

[jddj]

No

[youngtaff]

Nope

[anonzzzies]

nope