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Ask HN: Where do uk startups go for advice online ?

22 points by ig1 ↗ HN
While I'm building my own startup one of the things I'm looking at is what makes it harder to startup in the UK versus the US. One of the main problems I'm finding is that it's much harder to find UK specific advice online.

I've attended various meetups (techcrunch uk, the songkick ones) and they're great for making contacts, but there doesn't seem to be an equivalent on-line community.

So where do all the UK startups hangout online ?

18 comments

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pclark
where are you based?

My startup is in Cambridge, and I'd love to meet you and chat startups.

warrenmiller
I'm head geek at a London based UK startup and have the same question.

I just follow Hacker News mostly :)

pclark
what startup? would kind of infrastructure would we need? ning?
mooders
I'm Southampton based and find I spend huge amounts of time scouring techcrunchUK, mashable and very few others for UK startup news. The Times online and The Guardian online are both good sources. The most fruitful is probably Twitter though.

Perhaps there is a need for us to band together and start driving more engagement - i.e. really champion a tech startup group?

ig1
I agree, it's not as if the UK has a shortage of startups, but there does seem to be lack of a community ala silicon valley.

I think creating a better community could have a significant positive impact for startups. Especially in terms of things like figuring out which professional service providers (accountants, lawyers, banks) provide the best service for startups.

mooders
It would also be pretty cool to try and bring in some professional service providers, like accountants; solicitors and bankers, to provide advice and access to services.

BusinessLink has been mentioned, but I have yet to find the quality of service to be matched to the breadth of services offered.

I do like the idea of a real tech startups vs the rest of the world kind of feel. Maybe we could get a meetup arranged somewhere fairly central - Oxford? Anyone up for this?

z303
I know here in Bristol, a lot of things happen around Open Coffee Bristol, Bathcamp and the Watershed
axod
There's a few brits in #startups on freenode. (Myself included)

If you're into advertising revenue, I'd again recommend http://www.affiliates4u.com/ Tons of good advice there.

ig1
I'm on #startups - I'm ttx.
sharpn
I'm not involved in this, but I was considering it: http://www.the-hub.net/index.html there's a London-based startup community, there's a massive warehouse near Caledonian Road with cheap rents & a good vibe. I don't know what the other London sites are like, nor how extensive or useful the 'international' element of the organisation is.
puzzle-out
I've been in the hubs at Kings X and Angel - Kings X is new, and has everything you would expect; Angel is at the top of a long flight of stairs, not refurbished to such a high standard but I get the feeling there's more of a community there, although more based in the fashion and media industry sectors. The person who set it up is a good old boy, totally genuine, and the rates are ok.
nickseeber
It's not an online community but the UK Government sponsored website is excellent:

http://www.businesslink.gov.uk/

They have a great tool which takes you through the process of making a personalised list of starting-up tasks (the business start-up organiser)

Nick

swombat
Much of the advice that matters (basically how to make something people want and how to let them know it exists) is pretty international. I don't really see the need for UK-specific start-up news.

The world is getting more global, not less. If anything, I'd suggest that someone think about how to reproduce the "start-up meetups" effect without needing to actually meet in person. Now that would be interesting - expand the size of the village, rather than contracting it.

ig1
Legal, accountancy, merchant accounts, angels, acquisition structuring, location, hiring, student loan implications, insurance, company formation, IP, visas, data protection compliance. These are a small selection of topics (taken from Gabriel's AskYC archive) where local advice is important.
jwgb
Business Link is good for general business advice but you're obviously better off with people that understand your technology, business model, etc. Again, general business advice is one thing but for UK specific tax and legals you need someone over here to talk to.

Open Coffee (http://opencoffee.ning.com/) is a great place to start, there's probably one near you. We've got roughly 3:2 - start-up businesses to lawyers, bankers, accountants, etc at OpenCoffee Bristol.

LinkedIn is OK, but better for finding potential mentors, advisers, etc, rather than general Q&A. I've found it a bit spammy with US 'experts' plugging their websites.

Twitter is rapidly becoming a real time Google and there are plenty of good UK people that will offer advice. Hat tip to http://twitter.com/z303 for pointing this thread out to me. :)

Another avenue is to get friendly with your local University incubator. Even if you're not a graduate, they'll usually dispense pretty good tech/start up advice and (should) be good hubs for finding additional advice.

As a last resort there's always email! If you talk to someone at a networking event, drop them a note to see if they'll be willing to chat. In this climate most people are willing to put in a little business development good will. Obviously they'll want payment for any heavy lifting but you should be able to work out what you need far more accurately before making that decision.

ricmorton
What makes it harder to startup in the UK versus the US? Not much, maybe the higher cost of living/higher legal fees etc. However, I agree that making a successful startup in the UK is a far harder, and it's probably due in part to that lack of an identifiable community.

There just doesn't seem to be the same depth of startup culture that exists in the US; the UK has no Silicon Valley and the online situation just reflects this. I think that's because we don't have a long history of really successful Internet startups.

The European VC scene does seem to be a little bit of a cargo cult version of the US model. The UK YCombinator doesn't exist, because there was no UK Yahoo! to sell the UK Viaweb to. As a consequence of this today's UK startup community is shepherded by individuals and companies with little Internet startup experience of their own.

It's kind of like having parents who were never themselves children.

As others have suggested on here, we could certainly build the software to create a place for UK startups to hangout. To go further and create something that makes starting up as easy in the UK as in Silicon Valley would take far more resources. Although probably not as much as you would think, as Paul Graham himself pointed out; http://www.paulgraham.com/maybe.html

ig1
I'd be shocked if there aren't already a thousand startups in london. They're just not connected.