More on Startups in UK and Bristol

Just is mostly just a brain dump of some extra bits and bob that I thought of after a big thread about startups in Bristol and the UK this afternoon.

In a lot of way the Uk seems to be better at being the best in a niche not in the mass market. If you take cars as an example, lots of racing cars are developed here or use British staff, Prodrive in rallying and endurance racing and Mclaren in F1, plus all the various small sports car people, Lotus and TVR.

Should we in Bristol, the UK or elsewhere be aiming to create a few blockbuster startups to sell out to some large company a few years down the line or instead working to produce an good environment for a much larger number of smaller lower key businesses. Having a nice, say 5 to 10 person business. That gives everyone a nice lifestyle good work life balance as the goal. With maybe the chance one of these smaller companies does end up going huge.

I guess this is the movie industry model, the big studios with the blockbusters, only a few of which pay off vs. the indie films which cost less, so need to sell less tickets/DVD/downloads to make a profit.

If you only define success as making million of pounds then you have the blockbuster high risk route, but if you define success as being paid decent money to work on interesting problems then you many be happier taking a lower risk route with still the chance of the millions and a profile that seem a better fit for what the Uk is good at.

Anyway this is just a quick brain dump of what popped into my head after the twitter thread, I’m sure I’ll have more thought in the future and probably end up changing my mind.

• Category: Startups