Defiance Capital

Why doesn’t the UK have more startups? Capital is fixed, technical talent is world class, tax incentives are great, visas mostly fine, university IP problems seem like they’re getting fixed. Free healthcare and social security net in the UK is a huge advantage that should make it dramatically easier to start companies vs US. There’s probably still a lack of scale-up leadership/exec hires. But, by far, the biggest barrier is cultural. Our national psyche doesn’t celebrate entrepreneurs and we have an extreme culture of risk-aversion. A huge majority of smart technical young people in the UK aspire to be lawyers or consultants or work in finance. These are safe careers with prestigious brands that guarantee people a safe, middle class lifestyle. We need our brightest young people to aspire to take risk and create world changing companies and generate billions of pounds of wealth. We need to help them believe it’s possible.

@mwseibel @ycombinator Couldn’t agree more

I hate that the startup world puts investors on a pedestal. As a startup founder, it distracted me from serving my users. As an investor, it distracts my companies from serving their users. Investors aren’t the heroes of the startup world.

@svangel @ycombinator What @ycombinator and @svangel have built is nothing short of incredible - no other seed funds come even close to partnering with as many unicorn founders at pre-seed and seed.

Grateful to be featured alongside our friends at @ycombinator in @TheDefianceCap's latest study of founders and venture capital funds!

Interesting article from @TheDefianceCap. Immigrant founders are statistically likely to create Unicorns, but are statistically *unlikely* to raise from top VCs. Incredible arbitrage opportunity for VC's that follow the data and invest in immigrants. techcrunch.com/2024/03/27/uni…

What were the most typical backgrounds of new unicorn founders in the US and UK between 2013 and 2023? Over 2,000 unicorn founders reviewed! techcrunch-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/techcrunch… Go to Defiancecapital.com for the full report.